State of Playdate

As its second season of games arrives, we catch up with the little yellow handheld that could

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We're greeted by a familiar sight in the opening seconds of Panic's seventh Playdate Update video, produced to announce the console's second season of games. Holding up a copy of E333 to camera, Rob Cursons, head of marketing at creative agency n-fuze and avowed supporter of independent developers, says he's loved Playdate ever since our cover story revealed it to the world, adding that he was "lucky enough" to be among its first 20,000 owners.

Cursons' choice of words is telling, his good fortune tacitly alluding to the well-documented struggles Playdate's maker has faced in producing enough devices to satisfy early demand. Panic co-founder Cabel Sasser cheerfully admits that the company's "truly incredible level of inexperience" in the hardware market "led us directly into stepping on the rake of: actually, that's going to be almost impossible to accomplish. A factory can only make so many units. Everything's going to go wrong. Everything's difficult." Not all of Panic's problems were of its own making more on which later - and it's fair to say those teething issues aren't fully over yet. The console's price at launch was $179, later increased to $199, and if you're ordering it now you can expect to pay at least $229. Sasser's smile seldom disappears from view during our chat, but it's notable that this genial man delivers the word "tariffs" with a sigh and a frown.

Even so, there's a sense that the stars are finally beginning to align for a console that, almost exactly six years on from that $24 + cover story, still feels in its relative infancy.

The 12 games in Playdate Season Two (which should be arriving at a rate of two per week as you read this) are no less than a realisation of a long-held dream.

At last, Panic is getting to fulfil the vision it had for its yolk-coloured, crankpowered handheld from the beginning.