This could be huge for smut games.
Why make an e-reader especially for this, couldn’t they just make an interactive epub books (html)? It is a cool idea tho and I want to play it on my e-reader, but I wouldn’t buy new hardware when I already have one.
Hardware settings seems a bit limited. Maybe the point is to make it very cheap? Charging via older standard microUSB port makes it a no-go for the whole of European market through conventional channels tho.
But really the 7.5" 800x480 screen def worries me. A Kobo Clara is 1072x1448 over 6" diagonal, for $120.
(Now 5000mAh battery is crazy good for an e-ink device, that’s great)
OP when the actual Crowd Funding campaign starts, please repost. I am curious nevertheless, it’s a cool idea but I also want to be able to read my books on it.
I am also interested in the open source sdk they claim it will have. I’ve been wanting to build an openbook for ages, but sourcing the pannel has proved pretty much impossible. This might wind up being the next best thing
I discovered this open-source 1024x768 6" e-paper screen while checking OP’s crowdfunding page
EDIT: they make it in 9.7" too
My initial reaction was “oh cool”, but I have a feeling most of the games would be something that can just be played on a tablet. I’ll keep an eye out, maybe it’ll be more versatile than the PlayDate.
That’s like saying you could play PICO-8 games on anything, because it’s true, but the point is to impose limitations, not to make something you could never theoretically do with another device.
Like think about the PICO-8 version of Celeste, which can run inside the main game, but which never would have been made if the PICO-8 didn’t exist, and all the other games made for that platform that wouldn’t exist if that fantasy console had never been invented.
This is similar - by creating a console with very limited resources and I/O, you create a very limited set of expectations, and then it’s easy to make games for it because Skyrim or whatever just isn’t an option, so more people can make those games.
You’re kind of arguing against yourself, here. If the point is to impose limitations in order to reduce choice exhaustion and foster creativity, then portable software like PICO-8 can do that just as well as a physical device, and creators will have a much larger potential audience.
I’ve often daydreamed (I’m sure I’m not alone) of making various kinds of electronic entertainment devices with very low specs as a challenge/creativity booster to myself and other creators. But I always come back to the realization that it makes much more sense, in a world where almost everyone has a powerful computing device with plenty of storage and a responsive colour display in their pocket, and constant Internet access, to implement them as software rather than hardware.
A handful of people may be excited enough by the physicality of a device like this that they’ll buy it, but many more people will pass it by. Look at the proliferation of games for software-based formats like PICO-8, Bitsy, Inform, and Twine, compared to development on purely physical “low spec” devices like the PlayDate. Even real vintage systems are starting to become software-based formats; new games developed for them these days will often include an “emulator-friendly” version if they do anything particularly tricky with the original hardware.
It should be trivial to run the software on other devices because it will be so low-powered, so that problem disappears.
In fact you literally said so yourself. Is that a point in the system’s favour or isn’t it?
If the physical device is also cheap then I think this could easily take off.
I think you’re forgetting the thing that is also stopping me from doing a lot of random ideas myself. It’s an extra thing to carry.
I often think “man it would be great to use my sp again”, but I can just emulate on delta on my iPhone. It’s the reason I don’t have the PlayDate and why I also don’t have a dumbphone connected to my iPhone even though I’ve thought about it as well. People want to reduce instead of adding more. It’s the reason it still drives me crazy I have 5 remotes for my TV. People just prefer to get a device that can do the most. Hell my parents in their older age are now to the point they don’t care about PCs anymore, they just have a tablet they can add a keyboard to if they want.
All this is not to say this shouldn’t exist. But if it does I really do hope they take full advantage of the setup and do try to innovate and make creative games that would only exist there.
Then you are not the target market. Idk what to tell you, your personal opinion doesn’t invalidate the whole concept.
Isn’t that kind of how I ended my whole comment?
Joystick but no keyboard is going to limit the IF options. That said it might be a great way to play gamebooks.
Interactive Fiction to make a comeback? What? Visual novels never went anywhere.
I’m assuming interactive fiction means more along the lines of Choose Your Own Adventure books or Fighting Fantasy game books.
Article mentions text adventures as well, but old school like Zork and such wouldn’t work well without a keyboard. Maybe more the nineties era Gabriel Knight and Beneath a Steel Sky,but that would suffer from a black and white screen.
I do kind of wish it had a full keyboard like the old kindle did. Tons of great IF text adventures that would almost seamlessly transfer to this format.
I would absolutely buy this if the price was reasonable and if you could play games without physical media.
Needs a color version.
Krumits tale can work on this too
I’ve never heard of crowd supply before. I presume it works similar to kickstarter. Is there a reason creators are moving away from KS? I know a lot of boardgames moved from it as well.
