The Whiteout
Scenic Route Software’s The Whiteout is Season Two’s version of Saturday Edition – it’s a side-scrolling adventure game with puzzles that can be solved by finding and using items in your inventory to advance the story. Even more than Saturday Edition, however: The Whiteout is BLEAK. Set in a near-future where it started snowing and never really stopped (Little Inferno style), it shows a depressing and all-too-likely world where working together is a thing of the past, where you need to treat nearly every person you meet as a potential cannibal, and where babies… have a bad time. It felt a lot like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, but we’re a lot closer to this reality in 2025 than we were in 2006. And that’s…a bummer. Maybe you’ll find it cathartic, but be warned that there are no good feelings here, only minor victories as you find some way to survive.
My favorite part by far was that there are usually multiple ways to get past obstacles, and many items had different uses. Example: you find a jacket that you can wear as a disguise, or you can use it to block something. This gives you multiple roads through each situation, and the developers were very careful to not let you ever get soft-locked and unable to advance. Each choice is valid, and there are multiple endings based on your decisions.
The game looks really good (and features the most stylistically effective fog I’ve seen in a Playdate game) and the sense of tension is real (even if you can immediately restart whenever you make the wrong decision and die). There are two design choices that I feel would make the game a lot more pleasant to play, though, even if the content matter is anything but. The first was already resolved with a day two patch: your character moves glacially slow, even when you need to dodge something quickly like a truck coming straight toward you. Luckily, a new “jog” button helps with that a ton. Sadly for me, I was already about 80% of the way through the game before an update let me jog. Still, great for those that haven’t played it yet! And you can still play without jogging for the "authentic and original” experience. Big props to Scenic Route for listening to the players and immediately making the game better!
The second issue is helped by the jogging, but not eliminated: there is a ton of backtracking. For example, you’ll find a shard of glass in the world, complete with item description. But, you haven’t found anything you’d need a shard of glass for yet. Instead of putting it in your pocket just in case (you’re in the apocalypse – seems very much like there could be a “just in case”), you leave it. You don’t want to carry around sharp glass in your pocket! However, that means that later, after you find something where a shard of glass would be helpful, you have to come alllllll the way back, pick it up now that you actually “need” it, then head alllll the way back to where you can use your shiny new item. If I could run fast and pick up every potentially useful thing I see on the road, The Whiteout would be an easy win. These two issues, however, made it much more of a chore to play than it had to be. With no actual obstacles between the item I need and the place I am/have to return to, I would often be checking my phone in one hand while my protagonist trudges through the snow for a solid two minutes, back to an item I already figured I’d need.
But! The game looks/sounds great (headphones recommended) and has a very specific story that it sets out to tell. There are also a few puzzles that use some of the Playdate’s under-utilized features in an interesting way. Personally, I prefer the low stakes whimsy of Post Hero vs. the setting of a world that is past fixing, but you can’t argue that it isn’t effective, and there’s really nothing else like it in Season Two. Emotionally prepare yourself, then step into the snow.
(Released June 5, 2025, as part of Season Two.)