Strategies for Playdate
A downloadable game
WHAT THE DECK IS THIS?
Strategies is a flash card app for the Playdate handheld!
But it's much more than that.
You can: give presentations, review tips and strategies, read poetry and haiku, check lists, learn languages, do quizes, and play interactive fiction games...
...and it comes bundled with over 40 decks, which is over ~2,750 cards!
CONTROLS
- CRANK or L/R/U/D - change card
- A/SHAKE - random card
- B - toggle options
Lots of attention has been paid to feel and ease of use.
BUNDLED DECKS
- Creative Strategies
- Game Design & Development
- Learning & Life
- Luck & Fortune Telling
- Philosophy & Fun
- and an Interactive Fiction game
- ...over 40 decks!
- ...over 2,750 cards!
CUSTOM DECKS
You can easily add your own decks as text files. Content is easy:
- Title and author
- One line per card
- Font (a choice of 10 fonts)
- Text formatting
- (samples below)
INTERACTIVE FICTION
- Title card
- Static cards
- Interactive cards
- Definable controls (D-pad & A)
- Definable jumps/branches
- Enhanced text formatting compared to normal decks
- (Labels are coming soon)
QUIZ
- Question
- Answer (with answer or separately)
- Sound (played on question or answer)
POSSIBLE USES
- Keynote/PowerPoint for Playdate
- Present at your next conference (use the Playdate Mirror/Simulator apps)
- Speed read an e-book using the RSVP technique
- Find a way around a creative block
- Help you finish your game
- Become a better programmer
- Learn a little history
- Practice a new language
- An aid to relaxation
- Home to your next interactive fiction game
- Tabletop gaming D6/D20 dice (uses different random than deck mode)
NOTES
- It is recommended to use either crank or buttons and not both
- Make sure that a card isn't partially animated when trying to interact
THANKS TO
- Ron Lent for the initial idea
- Pat Armstrong for suggesting Truisms
- Mac Vogelsang for his work on pd-options
CREDITS
Full list of credits for the bundled decks is in this dev blog.
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $5 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Download demo
Development log
- Changelog (1.2.3)Apr 29, 2024
- Changelog (1.2.2)Apr 05, 2024
- Changelog (1.2.1)Aug 21, 2023
- Changelog (1.2)Aug 19, 2023
- Changelog (1.1)Jul 29, 2023
- Where to put your Custom Decks?Jul 27, 2023
- Font choices (1.2)Jul 26, 2023
- Example: Interactive Fiction (1.2)Jul 26, 2023
Comments
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Hey, I love the app but I'm having a bit of trouble understanding how custom decks and quizzes work. Just looking at the capital cities deck, I open the deck but it's clunky, I guess is the right word.
For example, sometimes when I press "A", it shows the answer, but shortly after it removes the answer. Other times, pressing "A" will just move to the next card right after flashing the answer for a quick second. Other times the crank will just repeat a card.
I'm not really sure if I'm doing something wrong.
Hi. I just tried it using 2.5.0 in the Simulator and on my Device and it works as intended. In the quiz deck, successive presses of the A button will alternate between showing the answer and moving to the next card. Holding down A will skip through the cards.
Be aware that it’s recommended to use either the crank or the buttons. So if you’ve cranked and the card is partially animated there may be some odd behaviour, as movement of the crank will hide the answer. Dock the crank to correct this. If that’s your problem, please do let me know!
Do you have any plans to list this app on the Playdate catalog?
No, it will only ever be here. Thanks for asking!
Hey! Question 👀 Is it possible to sideload the txt files via Playdate website? Or just data disk mode?
Only via data disk mode, system limitation.
How can I see the answers on quiz?
Press the A button
Cool app!
I am making a flash card deck for learning Portuguese phrases and I ran into a display problem. Characters with accents are not displaying correctly on the playdate. Has anyone gotten special characters to work successfully?
Examples from my deck:
With the fonts "pixel" and "sans" the special characters seem to get dropped. With menu option Custom Fonts:Off the special characters are replaced with a white box.
I saved the text file with Unicode UTF-8 encoding. The linked webpage for the font "pixel" (UniPixels Plane0) shows the special characters.
Thanks! I’ll have to add those characters to the fonts. I’m afraid it will have to wait until after Christmas. Apologies.
Really liking the app. Just one question
I have made two decks, one is center aligned, and the other is left aligned (with quite a large margin on the left). Is there an option in the text file or the options inside the game that changes this? I can't work out why the two files align differently.
Currently it’s a bit of a hack that I can’t believe is still in there and still unmentioned. Left alignment is triggered by the text bullet “- “ sequence of characters, so it’s per card mostly added for items with lists so they all align.
How would you like it to work? I’ll improve this for 1.2.
I feel like it currently works pretty well. It just confused me initially because I pasted some text with a random dash in it & the whole card changed.
The only thing I would say is maybe move the text a little bit towards the left, as it is quite a big left margin. Otherwise, a great app!
This is the only issue that I couldn’t get to for 1.2, will look at it ASAP in future.
Where do you put the txt files? Not sure how to install them.
Good question! It’s can be tricky the first time.
com.gingerbeardman.strategies.decks.Sideloaded manually:
/PLAYDATE/Data/com.gingerbeardman.strategies/decksSideloaded via Playdate website:
/PLAYDATE/Data/user.XXXX.com.gingerbeardman.strategies/decksThis is completely brilliant! Thank you for releasing it.
My only issue upon first use is the way the crank operates: I turn the crank in the direction that feels natural for me to go forward in the card order, but instead it goes backward. Perhaps we have different intuitions about this? I think this could be corrected with an option to invert the crank direction.
Oh, and is there a list mode that lists all the decks and lets you select from them? I didn't see one but it would be nice.
Hold on, now I might understand upon trying it out some more.
The problem isn't the crank direction. The crank direction fits the animation. The problem is that the animation doesn't make sense to me. One card is lifted up to reveal another card lying under it, right? That card lying under it should be the NEXT card in the sequence. Instead it's the PREVIOUS card. So I'll be on card 39, and it gets lifted up to reveal the card under it, which is card 38. That makes no sense to me, it should be card 40.
Yes, I see what you mean regarding the next/prev card. I’ll take another look and fix this! Thanks.
I’ll look into a long list of the decks, too. But no promises for that one.
I’ve addressed this in version 1.1, there were a few changes required but it feels/looks much better and more obvious. Most immediately you’ll notice that left/right have been swapped, and new cards come in and go on top.
Awesome, looking forward to digging into 1.1!
Also I've been using this app with a number of my own custom decks now. Works great!
Great! Keen to hear about the types of decks you’re using so I can make sure you have everything you need for a good experience.
When I try the "little rapa" deck, the dpad and buttons do nothing on the "Welcome, traveler" slide. I can crank to advance, but then it's no longer a game.
Thanks for this great bug report! I need to disable and ignore the crank in game mode. If the crank is out, game mode will currently not work correctly. Once you dock the crank, it will work. On the welcome slide, you can press any button to proceed.
This is now fixed in version 1.1, by disabling the crank in game mode. Thanks again for reporting it!