Diora

You’ll see Diora and at first say something like, “How is this running on the Playdate?” It has 3D graphics that spin around smoothly with the crank, some of the best puzzle design you’ll ever see in any game (not just on the Playdate, but anywhere, ever), and a soundtrack that can best be described as SEGA Genesis Shadowrun but even better. After spending some time with it, you’ll know it couldn’t have appeared anywhere BUT the Playdate.

It’s a bit Captain Toad (especially the DLC) and a bit Monument Valley, but the longer you play, the more inspirations you’ll discover: Super Monkey Ball, Sokoban, Echochrome… it’s very much a Real Game for Gamers, but the tactile feeling of the puzzles could appeal to anyone that enjoys playing with toy-based puzzles or board games like Rush Hour.

The goal of each level is just to make it to the top of a tower and reboot an antenna. The reasoning for this is a mystery that slowly unfurls as you go through the game, and it’s a simple enough concept to grasp. Like most games, though, it’s easier said than done. You’ll be constantly spinning the entire world around with the crank, changing your perspective to catch something you missed, and resetting to the last checkpoint when you push a box in the wrong direction. The restartability of each stage and the numerous checkpoints, along with the small size of each area, means that even the hardest levels don’t have an absurdly large amount of possible moves. Play around with each and think outside the box and you’ll get it! This enables the game, even at its most frustrating, to be one of those rare puzzle games that made me feel smart instead of stupid. When I play with a Rubik’s Cube for a few minutes, I just make it worse. Fiddle around with a Diora level, though, working backwards in my head from the solution I know is there, and I always make it eventually.

The rhythm of the game reminded me a bit of Jolly Chimp Champ, where you’ll have an easy level that teaches you a new mechanic, then you’ll hit a few courses in a row where you utilize that new mechanic with increasing difficulty. You’ll be using the crank and D-pad constantly, but never in a “crank as fast as you can” way, so even though my brain was working hard, my hand was not cramping up. I was eager to see where the story went and had no idea how long the game would be or what left-field inspiration would strike next. (FYI: it’s a few hours long and the time flies by; it is consistently interesting and surprising right through to the finale.)

And after you’re done? Level editor! All the actual levels were apparently made with this in-game level editor, which is just… unhinged and amazing, and hopefully enough creative people (who aren’t scared of a little Data Disk mode on their PC-connected Playdate – it’s not the MOST easy thing to navigate) will get in here and make some cool levels. I think about how amazing, for example, the community is for the Trials games or Dreams, and I know that, with the right tools and some very thorough and constantly updated level editor documentation, we can bring some of that creativity to Diora’s user-created levels. You can access the level editor from basically the start of the game, but you’re going to want to play through the story mode first before diving in so you don’t get spoiled on the pile of surprises in store.

Diora, priced $15 at launch, is tied for the most expensive game on the Playdate, but it’s worth every penny. There are other games like it but at the same time… not? It wears its inspirations on its sleeve and rises above them with something truly unique, and you can’t play it anywhere except on the Playdate. It makes some of the Season One games look like little more than proof-of-concept prototypes in the way that Final Fantasy IV and VI are generationally different despite running on the same hardware. Years into the Playdate’s lifecycle, we’re reaching a whole new world of programming savvy and ingenuity, and Diora will be the measuring stick against which all future projects will be measured.

I saw gifs of the game during its development and thought it was cool looking, but it couldn’t actually be that great to play, right? It’s still just a simple little black-and-white game played on a cheese slice, no? Wrong. It is that good. People that don’t have a Playdate should buy one just to experience it, and any 2025 Game of the Year list that’s missing it just means they haven’t played it yet. If you’re even casually, barely, tangentially interested in it, get Diora. You won’t be disappointed.

(Released November 6, 2025, on Catalog. Copy provided by developer.)