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.