Playdate is having a sitewide games sale, like a real grown-up console

The little console that could, Playdate, just like its more-established rivals. Manufacturer Panic is holding the sale to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the online store, which is officially called the Playdate Catalog.

The discounts are noteworthy. If you happen to own a Playdate, you’ll find plenty to like here. The cute little synthesizer app Playmaker is on sale for $8, instead of $15, and the action RPG Under the Castle is on sale for $7, which is a discount of 30 percent. Many titles go much lower than this. The bizarre unicycle/coffee-acquisition sim A Balanced Brew is on sale for just $2 and the Adventure-esque dungeon crawler The Keyper is only a buck.

One of the is its abundance of indie games that you can’t play anywhere else, which this sale shows off in spades. However, there’s one big game missing from the sale. Lucas Pope’s Mars After Midnight though the sale lasts until March 14, so maybe we’ll get a day-one discount.

For the uninitiated, the Playdate is a retro-styled portable console that resembles the original Nintendo Game Boy. It’s bright yellow and features a unique control mechanism in the form of a hand-powered crank. This crank is used in novel ways, like keeping the unicycler balanced in the aforementioned A Balanced Brew. It’s a gimmick, but a fun one.

Beyond the sale, new Playdate owners get 24 free games when purchasing the $200 console. These unlock on a week-by-week basis over 12 weeks. The console has technically been available for nearly two years, but as Panic worked to meet initial preorders. That’s gone now, so orders ship within a few days.