I may have been neglecting my Playdate of late. Mainly because it’s hard to see the screen when it isn’t sunny. However, Panic released a big update this week with a new on-device store and a couple more free games, so I had a look. And then ended up completing this.

It’s a fishing game (hence “Reel”) where you ride a hook down into a building, winching up and down with the crank, whilst avoiding magnets, lasers and drones. You collect money bags on the way, and then the main item of the level to nick (hence “Steal”) is at the bottom, which you hook and then winch back in again.

Actually doing this isn’t very hard. It doesn’t seem you can die or fail, as being lasered or whatever just bumps you off the hook but you can get picked back up again. The trickiness is doing it fast enough for a medal, without falling off the hook for another medal, and getting all the money for the third medal. I didn’t do all that, but I did steal all the target items and complete the story.

Nice, quirky, silly. Kind of like most Playdate games, I’ve found.

Yes, I have a Playdate! Finally! And yes, this is the first game I’ve completed on it!

Casual Birder is a little like that Bit Orchard or Toem in a way. It’s a sort of adventure game set in a town obsessed with taking photos of birds. The aim is to take part in a bird photography competition, but of course things are made difficult in a number of ways. For starters, some of the birds are a bit shy, or fast, or hide in the dark, so you must perform various tasks to make them photographable. Worse, is that the local yoofs have elected themselves as the gatekeepers of bird photography so you have to placate them before you’re allowed to enter the contest.

Taking photos is done by moving your camera’s viewfinder around the screen, but you usually need to focus the shot with the Playdate’s crank to get a perfect picture for your album. It’s not always obvious which way you’re supposed to wind, what with the photo subjects being tiny and a black and white screen not being the most useful way of showing depth so “blurring” is more “stippling”, but it’s not really a problem.

The game is filled with silly characters and events, and although short (90 minutes, tops, I’d say), it’s a nice little thing and certainly more in-depth and “proper game”-like than the other Playdate titles I’ve played so far.