The Playdate gaming handheld is a Game Boy-Model T mashup by Firewatch publisher Panic

Indie app developer Panic may be best known for its fun and useful Mac and iOS software, but its latest venture is decidedly outside the box. Building on the success of the cross-platform game Firewatch, which it published, the team is building a handheld video game system called Playdate that’s just as fun and quirky as Panic’s iconic app icons: It’s yellow, has retro Game Boy charm, and features a Model T Ford-style crank.Panic says the device “fits perfectly in a pocket” and is built “entirely from scratch,” right down to its Playdate OS, a full-featured SDK supporting C and Lua development, and a Mac-based simulator and debugger. Instead of a color screen, Playdate sports “a black-and-white screen with high reflectivity, a crystal-clear image, and no backlight.” It also has a headphone jack. And did we mention its crank?To read this article in full, please click here