Welcome to PlayDaPon, our new Playdate port of the action puzzle classic!  We wanted to write a little about this game and how we got here.

Beyond adoring the original game, writing ports of this game has had a special function for us as developers - we've used it as a way of learning new platforms.  

The first time we ported this game together was as a way of learning the Pico8 fantasy console (pictured is when we returned later with a better implementation).

Then, when @stevelavietes got excited about a C-based megadrive toolchain, he built another version.  The idea was to have a multi-tap enabled build running on an actual Sega Genesis, which we would set up on a milk crate at GDC 2020 somewhere to host 4 player IRL matches.  The project was completed and ready for play at GDC, however 2020 global events intervened and made in-person gaming not so much a thing.  We shelved that project and explored other ideas. 

Finally, we got excited about the Playdate!  Looking around the platform, we didn't see many match-3 action puzzlers and decided to give it a try ourselves.  We love the vibe and form factor of the console and when we read about the C SDK we realized we could actually port a large amount of the Genesis game and have it run on Playdate.  Written for constraints of a 16-bit system, with no stdlib or dynamic memory allocation, the Genesis code provided an amazing starting place for building the final Playdate game.

We hope you enjoy it and are looking forward to making more small games in the future!