Best Playdate Games To Sideload

You may want to know what the best Playdate games to sideload are, as there are already a tonne of quality games for the device that have been developed by the community. The Playdate is a weird little handheld console that is perfectly designed for minimalist and experimental games, and people have taken advantage of this to produce experiences you won't find on other platforms. Luckily, the Playdate makes the process of purchasing a game and putting it onto the device easy, as you just need to go to the official website and upload the game files. So check out our list of the best Playdate games to sideload onto your device right now, all of which can be found on the itch.io marketplace.

Best Playdate Games To Sideload: Bloom

Bloom is a real-time social sim about running a flower shop and dealing with familial drama through text messages. It's the closest thing the Playdate currently has to Stardew Valley currently, but it also anchors itself with a surprisingly deep narrative about the troubles of starting a new life and managing your old one. The real-time aspect is a novel mechanic that allows you to check back in over the day to complete different tasks and keep you invested.

Best Playdate Games To Sideload: Super Corporate Tax Evader

Few games make better use of Playdate's crank than Super Corporate Tax Evader. You play as a shady businessman (presumably an accountant) who is tasked with secretly shredding important documents while avoiding the ire of an agent tasked with investigating your office for fraud. Rotating the crank will shred the documents, but you need to carefully watch for dialogue cues that indicate the agent is going to open the door to your office, whereby you need to hide your crimes by putting the crank away. It's a lot of fun as you learn certain dialogue patterns and get better at hiding when you need, and shredding hard when you can. 

Best Playdate Games To Sideload: The Conquest Of Helios

The Conquest of Helios is a bite-sized strategy game about uniting all the kingdoms on the continent and becoming their ruler. You'll pick one country to begin with, and every season of the year you get four turns to perform a range of different actions. You can attempt to build your wealth up through trade, improve the moral of your population, attack your neighbours, and much more, with the overall goal of conquering the whole continent. It's very simple to jump in, but there's depth to the ways you can become a successful ruler, and with an additional hard mode to test your abilities, it can be a challenge to conquer.

Best Playdate Games To Sideload: A Joke That's Worth $0.99

A Joke That's Worth $0.99 is a perfect example of the novel game design that the Playdate promotes, employing creativity and humour for a silly but entertaining experience. The game is straightforward, you use the crank to help keep a guy with a bouncy butt in the air, while collecting stars to reveal lines for a joke. It's a challenging game, but the urge to see the punchline of the joke will drive you forward and keep you bettering your old score. 

Best Playdate Games To Sideload: BRAAAINS! Party Trivia

If you're looking for a Playdate game that you can play with a party of friends, then BRAAAINS! Party Trivia may be just for you. It's a standard trivia game with zombies, where you can answer over 1000 curated questions from 15 categories, including literature, music, history, and pop culture. If you want to play with friends, just enable the pass and play mode to enjoy the trivia together, or compete in daily challenges where you can scan and upload your score to the game's website to see how you perform on the leaderboards. 

Best Playdate Games To Sideload: Pocket Pets!

Have you not seen your Tamagotchi in years? Well, Pocket Pets! is the perfect replacement, inspired by the aforementioned device. It's a virtual pet game where you can tend to various pets of 13 different types, looking after their hunger and happiness by gardening, playing with them, and petting them of course. It's another type of game that's perfect for checking in on every few hours, and with an extra mini-game where you can fight enemies for seeds, you will have plenty to do for your virtual pets. 

There you have it! That's six of the best Playdate games to sideload onto your device, and now you know about some of the coolest experiences developed by the community so far.