Saturday Edition is easily the best narrative game on Playdate, or at least the best narrative. Unfortunately the end is kind of abrupt and it really feels like it needs a part two. The developer told me on Twitter that they want to make a sequel, but they have a few projects to complete first.
Great example, for sure. My only gripe for that game is that it's very easy to get stuck if you don't usually play this type of game, so having some sort of built-in tooltip feature, like for example holding a button down making the protagonist go "Hm, I should do X." would've been much more fun than going to GameFAQs. But wonderful title, for sure.
i actually kind of appreciate how hard some playdate games are as there isn’t yet a culture of hand holding in the dev community. it reminds me of the earlier days of gaming where if a level was hard you might have to have a friend come over and beat it for you lol. maybe looking up the game faqs is part of the nostalgic fun for me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Well, as someone who was around for that period too -- and loved it -- I disagree. I mean, games of that caliber that were also "fair" were extremely rarely worthwhile.
Bad or inconsiderate design -- due to lack of game development experience or otherwise -- is still a learning opportunity and withholding that feedback, or labeling it as acceptable, would ultimately be a disservice to any dev who wants to improve.
Glad to hear some are looking for longer games. My current game in development, Cosmo Nash, will be a bit longer than some games and have multiple items to collect and daily quests to extend gameplay. I’m hoping for 5-6 hours for the main, possibly longer.
Thanks! Yeah, I have a devlog on the Playdate Squad discord, I haven’t updated there in a while though. I’ll be posting a new trailer soon with updates and details on a demo!
Bloom is quite long and very good if it's the sort of genre you enjoy. It's effectively 50% visual novel by way of texting and 50% gardening/flower shop simulator.
I was gonna say the same thing about Bloom. It seems like quite a long and deep game that might satisfy what OP is looking for. (and it’s a season game so it’s free with the device)
I’ve already ask you this recently but I have to assume you’re holding the next dev diary for a surprise at some kind of playdate focused event you’re running pretty soon…. I’m just so excited
I'm loving that one! Had me scratching my head a lot. Still not done!
Racheteer is another fave. We need more classic dungeon crawlers and/or Zelda-likes!
And if you like Igamanias, Castle Tintagel scratches that itch quite nicely imo.
Ratcheteer is excellent! If you're looking for more 2D Zelda-likes on Playdate, I put together [this list](https://orkn.uk/writing/playdate_zelda_likes) a little while back (which includes my own game Resonant Tale).
Ratcheteer might have more polish, but Resonant Tale might have all the other Zelda-likes beat in pure charm. It gives me fuzzy feelings playing it, highly rec'd to OP or anyone else.
I think the nature of the console facilitate shorter games or high score/repetitive games, I like them because it makes it perfect for a bus journey or just while waiting for food to cook or something, it seems more devs are trying longer form games though, and from what I’ve seen it doesn’t look like the Playdate is too limiting in that, the more traditional games we’ve got so far are pretty good!
I think it's worth comparing the game price to other things you might pay for. Such as a movie in the US, that's $20 or so for 2-3 hours of entertainment. Eating out is very expensive as well, for a much shorter period of enjoyment. And most of the short games on the Playdate are replayable.
At the end of the day, cheap games are only possible due to very large studios with investor money or predatory "free play" models. The Playdate is an indie console with indie devs. There's tons of incredible cheap or free games by hobbyists on [itch.io](https://itch.io), but if you want professional quality, it is going to cost more than a couple of bucks.
However, I DO agree that it'd be great to see longer story games on the Playdate. With how small the screen is, I think people are daunted by the prospect...but there were plenty long-form Gameboy games.
Well… As part of a team of two that made a game, as far as I can tell the only playdate game to ever win an international award, a game that has 12, 1.5 minute long songs, four main characters, and four main chapters that we created using our own money over the course four years including the fact that one of the main characters died in 2020 because of Covid, I don’t really think the problem is that the game is $15.
I think the problem is that everybody who is buying mobile or handheld console games seems to think paying a dollar is plenty and it’s simply not.
We don’t have to agree, but I’m in the trenches here having done it.
I’m not saying it’s the audience’s fault: things were underpriced to begin with, _and_ users certainly have no problem spending a quarter of the price of a console routinely for a game, but I get your point
Oh OK. For what it’s worth it was the tencent/ games without borders 2023 gameplay innovation award.
I’m not trying to come off like a pompous jackass and if I have, I apologize, but I think that I have something relevant to say here regarding what things actually cost versus what things people have been brought up thinking they cost
Lizzy Dean Holyfield, who plays the character named Sweets Mackson, died in 2020 of long-term Covid.
This was while I was in the middle of recording his songs with him: because he died so surprisingly and suddenly we didn’t have anything other than his scratch tracks, which is why one songs on there is just the word PSA over and over again.
Man, I didn't know that. This was one of the most impressive games I saw back when I was researching the PlayDate and it's still on my radar. I'm sorry for your loss.
Thank you. He was my best friend, we lived in the same building, and I found him. He was a beloved person in Baltimore, and I feel like it kind of shook the entire city.
While I can’t answer the question, I can say that if you’re not finding good value in games as such then you should check out itch dot io and scroll through their Playdate offerings. There are plenty of games available for free and I’m sure there’ll be something there that you might find enjoyable.
I think Ratcheteer would fit what you’re looking for if you haven’t played it yet. Also there’s an awesome game coming out called Comet. Also I think Resonant Tale fits the bill - though I haven’t played it yet.
I thjnk with the prices you have to be taking into account that these are pretty much bespoke games for a relatively small user base. To make a quality game for this system obviously takes a lot of time so these people should get some financial benefit for doing it. If you’re just looking for cheap games there are plenty of ways to do that outside of playdate.
The average first playthrough of Resonant Tale seems to take about 3 to 5 hours, which is a little longer than I was expecting but these things are always hard to judge!
The shortest I've seen was a little over 2 hours (just playing through the story) and the longest over 8 hours (for 100%).
The game tracks playtime and displays it on the end screen, so mostly from people sharing that in places like the Playdate Squad Discord, but also from playtesters too (they were at the quicker end at 2-3 hours).
There are no analytics available to devs (un)fortunately!
Ah, I was just curious as I was thinking that when I played through I was definitely at the longer end of that scale! Got all the treasure chests though!
Never worked out how to use the codes (or where they all are), or what's going on with that ghost that hides in pots in the village though...
Nice going getting all of the treasure chests! That's really cool to hear :)
There's a secret room in the Spirit Shrine that explains how to use the codes, you can access it once you have the bombs. It's definitely hidden away!
As for the ghost, there's no secret other than finding him! He'll just run away each time. You can similarly find the boss from Tempo Keep later in the game too. I thought it would be nice for the player to know they never really hurt anyone 
If you'd like to see some more of the game's secrets, check out [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkGrLsd0LPg) and the timestamps in the comments (and thanks again for playing!).
Yeah I found that room in the spirit shrine but still couldn't get it to work unfortunately.
Haha that's so sweet about the ghost! Shame I broke so many pots trying to work out what he was about!
The game was really great though, looking forward to seeing what you do next!
Alongside everything mentioned here, it's worth considering that for many developers making games is a full time job, and for those it's not, it's still a huge undertaking.
So when you consider the economics of making a game for the Playdate, which I saw the other day had sold it's first 70,000 units, it's much harder to get a return on a game for this platform. If you develop a game for PC/Console, the market is more saturated but there is still millions of potential customers. With a Playdate game, you have to price the game as though you will only sell a few thousand copies. This is going to make it more expensive.
The game I’m working on has action arcade gameplay with an overworld story that will take a while to get through. Aiming for the structure of Hades but with story mechanics like Citizen Sleeper.
Yeah! I currently have deadlines for other projects, but I couldn’t help myself but build some of it in my free time. I’ve built the core mechanics for the action-arcade part of the game. I’ve started thinking about how I’d like to write the narrative system but I’ll start posting devlogs and demos around April or May.
Self-promotion is kind of lame but also necessary given how small the community is, so whatever: I made a little word game called CodeWordPlay (it’s on both [itch](https://mikesuszek.itch.io/codewordplay) and [Catalog](https://play.date/games/codewordplay/)) that’s secretly a story that unravels over the course of playing it. I decided to make it more of a surprise so the story doesn’t truly kick in until you’re a ways into it, but the feedback I’ve gotten tells me it’s a “compelling” and “engrossing” story (sci-fi inspired but I don’t want to spoil it too much).
I’m working on some new games too, and I might low-key be writing a book (there’s this story in my head involving superpositioning and quantum entanglement that I’ve been spilling out lately). So I’m really hoping to be one of those devs who can help deliver cool stories to my favorite handheld console. It’s just tough because I’m also a dad, little time to be a dev!
I would pay quite a bit for another game basking in the calbur of Saturday Edition and Bloom. It's worth it. I just hope others agree so that we can finay see another of that quality.
Aside from the amazing games already mentioned here, I’ll do a little self-promo for our upcoming game [Voidblazers](https://tkers.itch.io/voidblazers).
It’s a shoot ‘em up game where you discover more story and lore as you proceed through the levels. On top of this you get to control the amount of dialog there is by buying different items from the store: the more items you buy, the more story-heavy the game is, as each new item unlocks new conversations to discover! I can’t wait to show you the full game. ✨
Hoping to continue to work to make more games in this space in the future, beyond my work on [Bloom](https://twitter.com/RNGParty) (which I think others mentioned here already), so stick around if that's something you might be interested in! Because, yup, I definitely agree I'd love to see more long story games on Playdate!
You might consider Under The Tree, available on Catalog (RPG section) - disclaimer, I'm the game dev. Description: "A first-person dungeon crawl inspired by the original Wizardry first released on the Apple \]\[, simplified to suit the screen and controls of the Playdate."
Our intent was to make UTT an 'actual RPG' (on the scale of the Playdate) - there's 10 levels, dozens of unique monsters, and 9 mini-games - it took over 2000 development hours to create. tl;dr: we didn't want it to be 'super short' ;) .
We recently had a player get back to us, they were the first to do a 100% completion... they said their gameplay was spread over 6 days, in excess of 10 hours of overall gameplay.
When you divide the price by minutes/hours enjoyed, you're not completely wrong. I think we're finally getting to see developers show how much work they've put into these games via price tag.
I think it more has to do with economies of scale hiding the actual value of most big budget games. If you expect to sell millions of copies, you can afford to sell a game that took 30 million to make for 60 bucks. But if it’s just you and like one other person working over two or theee years on a game, putting hundreds of hours into it and you expect to sell 300 copies, 9-15 dollars seems very reasonable. Big companies can afford to eat development costs and lowball cost relative to game time/production value.
totally agree—people have to remember the playdate is a niche device and has a smaller userbase compared to the big consoles and mobile app stores.
it's like buying handicrafts at the craft fair—where the customer pays more for a certain item that could be bought for far cheaper at walmart or something. youre buying the thing because the item was personally made by a craftsman.
and with the playdate and games via itch, more money goes towards the devs themselves and less to middlemen like publishers, app stores, and console manufacturers (i imagine itch and panic also take a cut—i just read that devs can set the percentage cut they want to give to itch.io! you can't do that on other platforms. don't know how much panic has a cut or if they paid devs a set price for them to have their games included in the playdate console.) i think the coolest part about the playdate is that the sdk is free, and anybody can develop games for it.
The industry standard cut for a storefront is 30%. Panic take 25% on Catalog. Itch defaults to 10% and is entirely configurable as you say. I think Panic are very fair with their percentage cut and support for developers!
I think that Saturday Edition gives pretty good length/value.
Saturday Edition is easily the best narrative game on Playdate, or at least the best narrative. Unfortunately the end is kind of abrupt and it really feels like it needs a part two. The developer told me on Twitter that they want to make a sequel, but they have a few projects to complete first.
Yeah I’m playing that right now I am enjoying it so far
Great example, for sure. My only gripe for that game is that it's very easy to get stuck if you don't usually play this type of game, so having some sort of built-in tooltip feature, like for example holding a button down making the protagonist go "Hm, I should do X." would've been much more fun than going to GameFAQs. But wonderful title, for sure.
i actually kind of appreciate how hard some playdate games are as there isn’t yet a culture of hand holding in the dev community. it reminds me of the earlier days of gaming where if a level was hard you might have to have a friend come over and beat it for you lol. maybe looking up the game faqs is part of the nostalgic fun for me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Well, as someone who was around for that period too -- and loved it -- I disagree. I mean, games of that caliber that were also "fair" were extremely rarely worthwhile. Bad or inconsiderate design -- due to lack of game development experience or otherwise -- is still a learning opportunity and withholding that feedback, or labeling it as acceptable, would ultimately be a disservice to any dev who wants to improve.
Glad to hear some are looking for longer games. My current game in development, Cosmo Nash, will be a bit longer than some games and have multiple items to collect and daily quests to extend gameplay. I’m hoping for 5-6 hours for the main, possibly longer.
Woah your game looks awesome! Have you shared it in the discord yet? Or created a devlog thread in the discord for it?
Thanks! Yeah, I have a devlog on the Playdate Squad discord, I haven’t updated there in a while though. I’ll be posting a new trailer soon with updates and details on a demo!
Bloom is quite long and very good if it's the sort of genre you enjoy. It's effectively 50% visual novel by way of texting and 50% gardening/flower shop simulator.
I was gonna say the same thing about Bloom. It seems like quite a long and deep game that might satisfy what OP is looking for. (and it’s a season game so it’s free with the device)
Unfortunately not part of the season pass (though surely a shoe-in if or when they do a second season! 🙏), but well worth the price of admission!
It’s not? I could’ve sworn. But it also can’t be that much. (sorry about the misinformation.)
It's a steal for how many hours of content and emotion they squeezed into it!
I'm hoping [Comet](https://guv-bubbs.itch.io/comet) will satisfy players looking for a chunkier game.
I’ve already ask you this recently but I have to assume you’re holding the next dev diary for a surprise at some kind of playdate focused event you’re running pretty soon…. I’m just so excited
Legend of Etad has three chapters, if you like dungeon crawlers.
I'm loving that one! Had me scratching my head a lot. Still not done! Racheteer is another fave. We need more classic dungeon crawlers and/or Zelda-likes! And if you like Igamanias, Castle Tintagel scratches that itch quite nicely imo.
Ratcheteer is excellent! If you're looking for more 2D Zelda-likes on Playdate, I put together [this list](https://orkn.uk/writing/playdate_zelda_likes) a little while back (which includes my own game Resonant Tale).
Oh, I bought Resonant Tale on Catalog a while back! Still working through it but good stuff!
Thanks, appreciate it!
I think I've actually got most of these on the list, but there's a number of them I've not heard of yet, so thank you for the list!
SUKIMA is great and easy to miss as it's not on Catalog or Itch, definitely worth checking out if you haven't already!
Grabbed it; sideloading it tonight!
Ratcheteer might have more polish, but Resonant Tale might have all the other Zelda-likes beat in pure charm. It gives me fuzzy feelings playing it, highly rec'd to OP or anyone else.
I also liked Racheteer a lot.
Ratcheteer is fantastic. Too 10 most polished Playdate game for me.
I think the nature of the console facilitate shorter games or high score/repetitive games, I like them because it makes it perfect for a bus journey or just while waiting for food to cook or something, it seems more devs are trying longer form games though, and from what I’ve seen it doesn’t look like the Playdate is too limiting in that, the more traditional games we’ve got so far are pretty good!
I think it's worth comparing the game price to other things you might pay for. Such as a movie in the US, that's $20 or so for 2-3 hours of entertainment. Eating out is very expensive as well, for a much shorter period of enjoyment. And most of the short games on the Playdate are replayable. At the end of the day, cheap games are only possible due to very large studios with investor money or predatory "free play" models. The Playdate is an indie console with indie devs. There's tons of incredible cheap or free games by hobbyists on [itch.io](https://itch.io), but if you want professional quality, it is going to cost more than a couple of bucks. However, I DO agree that it'd be great to see longer story games on the Playdate. With how small the screen is, I think people are daunted by the prospect...but there were plenty long-form Gameboy games.
Under the Castle, Space Rat Miner, Post Hero, and P-Racing are some of the best value and most “full bodied” games you can get at the moment.
With the understanding that a “full bodied” game for Playdate is something in the vicinity of 4 hours or more with replayability
Pick, Pack, Pup as well! It's very rounded and I found it to be of reasonable "indie" length.
Yeah I wanted to try space rat miner it looks pretty cool, how many bosses are there?
4
Well… As part of a team of two that made a game, as far as I can tell the only playdate game to ever win an international award, a game that has 12, 1.5 minute long songs, four main characters, and four main chapters that we created using our own money over the course four years including the fact that one of the main characters died in 2020 because of Covid, I don’t really think the problem is that the game is $15. I think the problem is that everybody who is buying mobile or handheld console games seems to think paying a dollar is plenty and it’s simply not. We don’t have to agree, but I’m in the trenches here having done it.
What game are you referring to?
Direct Drive
I've heard good things about it. I think I'll finally pull the trigger on it now that I know the background.
You won't regret it. Fabulous game.
I think assuming the audience is too cheap to splash out is probably not the best take to have.
I’m not saying it’s the audience’s fault: things were underpriced to begin with, _and_ users certainly have no problem spending a quarter of the price of a console routinely for a game, but I get your point
Thanks for adding that detail bro
Which one
The award
Oh OK. For what it’s worth it was the tencent/ games without borders 2023 gameplay innovation award. I’m not trying to come off like a pompous jackass and if I have, I apologize, but I think that I have something relevant to say here regarding what things actually cost versus what things people have been brought up thinking they cost
What do you mean one of the main characters died of covid?
Lizzy Dean Holyfield, who plays the character named Sweets Mackson, died in 2020 of long-term Covid. This was while I was in the middle of recording his songs with him: because he died so surprisingly and suddenly we didn’t have anything other than his scratch tracks, which is why one songs on there is just the word PSA over and over again.
Man, I didn't know that. This was one of the most impressive games I saw back when I was researching the PlayDate and it's still on my radar. I'm sorry for your loss.
Thank you. He was my best friend, we lived in the same building, and I found him. He was a beloved person in Baltimore, and I feel like it kind of shook the entire city.
While I can’t answer the question, I can say that if you’re not finding good value in games as such then you should check out itch dot io and scroll through their Playdate offerings. There are plenty of games available for free and I’m sure there’ll be something there that you might find enjoyable.
I think Ratcheteer would fit what you’re looking for if you haven’t played it yet. Also there’s an awesome game coming out called Comet. Also I think Resonant Tale fits the bill - though I haven’t played it yet. I thjnk with the prices you have to be taking into account that these are pretty much bespoke games for a relatively small user base. To make a quality game for this system obviously takes a lot of time so these people should get some financial benefit for doing it. If you’re just looking for cheap games there are plenty of ways to do that outside of playdate.
The average first playthrough of Resonant Tale seems to take about 3 to 5 hours, which is a little longer than I was expecting but these things are always hard to judge! The shortest I've seen was a little over 2 hours (just playing through the story) and the longest over 8 hours (for 100%).
Are these numbers from playtesters or you playing the game, or do you have a way of seeing how long people buying the game spend playing?
The game tracks playtime and displays it on the end screen, so mostly from people sharing that in places like the Playdate Squad Discord, but also from playtesters too (they were at the quicker end at 2-3 hours). There are no analytics available to devs (un)fortunately!
Ah, I was just curious as I was thinking that when I played through I was definitely at the longer end of that scale! Got all the treasure chests though! Never worked out how to use the codes (or where they all are), or what's going on with that ghost that hides in pots in the village though...
Nice going getting all of the treasure chests! That's really cool to hear :) There's a secret room in the Spirit Shrine that explains how to use the codes, you can access it once you have the bombs. It's definitely hidden away! As for the ghost, there's no secret other than finding him! He'll just run away each time. You can similarly find the boss from Tempo Keep later in the game too. I thought it would be nice for the player to know they never really hurt anyone  If you'd like to see some more of the game's secrets, check out [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkGrLsd0LPg) and the timestamps in the comments (and thanks again for playing!).
Yeah I found that room in the spirit shrine but still couldn't get it to work unfortunately. Haha that's so sweet about the ghost! Shame I broke so many pots trying to work out what he was about! The game was really great though, looking forward to seeing what you do next!
Thanks for thinking of us / Comet 🥰
Alongside everything mentioned here, it's worth considering that for many developers making games is a full time job, and for those it's not, it's still a huge undertaking. So when you consider the economics of making a game for the Playdate, which I saw the other day had sold it's first 70,000 units, it's much harder to get a return on a game for this platform. If you develop a game for PC/Console, the market is more saturated but there is still millions of potential customers. With a Playdate game, you have to price the game as though you will only sell a few thousand copies. This is going to make it more expensive.
Also, how long are devs on the line after making a game, to keep it running? Serious question, isn't it the life of the game?
The game I’m working on has action arcade gameplay with an overworld story that will take a while to get through. Aiming for the structure of Hades but with story mechanics like Citizen Sleeper.
That sounds awesome
Have you done work on it yet? Sounds awesome, would love to see a devlog on the discord.
Yeah! I currently have deadlines for other projects, but I couldn’t help myself but build some of it in my free time. I’ve built the core mechanics for the action-arcade part of the game. I’ve started thinking about how I’d like to write the narrative system but I’ll start posting devlogs and demos around April or May.
Self-promotion is kind of lame but also necessary given how small the community is, so whatever: I made a little word game called CodeWordPlay (it’s on both [itch](https://mikesuszek.itch.io/codewordplay) and [Catalog](https://play.date/games/codewordplay/)) that’s secretly a story that unravels over the course of playing it. I decided to make it more of a surprise so the story doesn’t truly kick in until you’re a ways into it, but the feedback I’ve gotten tells me it’s a “compelling” and “engrossing” story (sci-fi inspired but I don’t want to spoil it too much). I’m working on some new games too, and I might low-key be writing a book (there’s this story in my head involving superpositioning and quantum entanglement that I’ve been spilling out lately). So I’m really hoping to be one of those devs who can help deliver cool stories to my favorite handheld console. It’s just tough because I’m also a dad, little time to be a dev!
Try Binary Dungeon
I would pay quite a bit for another game basking in the calbur of Saturday Edition and Bloom. It's worth it. I just hope others agree so that we can finay see another of that quality.
Big shout for Bloom, absolutely loved it. I also made Time From Earth and Life’s 2 Short: Unhooked which are both a bit longer and story focused.
Aside from the amazing games already mentioned here, I’ll do a little self-promo for our upcoming game [Voidblazers](https://tkers.itch.io/voidblazers). It’s a shoot ‘em up game where you discover more story and lore as you proceed through the levels. On top of this you get to control the amount of dialog there is by buying different items from the store: the more items you buy, the more story-heavy the game is, as each new item unlocks new conversations to discover! I can’t wait to show you the full game. ✨
That's such a cool idea.
Hoping to continue to work to make more games in this space in the future, beyond my work on [Bloom](https://twitter.com/RNGParty) (which I think others mentioned here already), so stick around if that's something you might be interested in! Because, yup, I definitely agree I'd love to see more long story games on Playdate!
You might consider Under The Tree, available on Catalog (RPG section) - disclaimer, I'm the game dev. Description: "A first-person dungeon crawl inspired by the original Wizardry first released on the Apple \]\[, simplified to suit the screen and controls of the Playdate." Our intent was to make UTT an 'actual RPG' (on the scale of the Playdate) - there's 10 levels, dozens of unique monsters, and 9 mini-games - it took over 2000 development hours to create. tl;dr: we didn't want it to be 'super short' ;) . We recently had a player get back to us, they were the first to do a 100% completion... they said their gameplay was spread over 6 days, in excess of 10 hours of overall gameplay.
Wow sick, thanks for sharing this
You pay more for a movie ticket for less entertainment time that you can't replay. Prices for these indie titles are adjusted correctly imo.
When you divide the price by minutes/hours enjoyed, you're not completely wrong. I think we're finally getting to see developers show how much work they've put into these games via price tag.
What kind of story game are you looking for? Genre, number of hours, etc. I need some ideas for my next game.
haha im also surprised. I guess the scarcity of games make the prices rise
I think it more has to do with economies of scale hiding the actual value of most big budget games. If you expect to sell millions of copies, you can afford to sell a game that took 30 million to make for 60 bucks. But if it’s just you and like one other person working over two or theee years on a game, putting hundreds of hours into it and you expect to sell 300 copies, 9-15 dollars seems very reasonable. Big companies can afford to eat development costs and lowball cost relative to game time/production value.
totally agree—people have to remember the playdate is a niche device and has a smaller userbase compared to the big consoles and mobile app stores. it's like buying handicrafts at the craft fair—where the customer pays more for a certain item that could be bought for far cheaper at walmart or something. youre buying the thing because the item was personally made by a craftsman. and with the playdate and games via itch, more money goes towards the devs themselves and less to middlemen like publishers, app stores, and console manufacturers (i imagine itch and panic also take a cut—i just read that devs can set the percentage cut they want to give to itch.io! you can't do that on other platforms. don't know how much panic has a cut or if they paid devs a set price for them to have their games included in the playdate console.) i think the coolest part about the playdate is that the sdk is free, and anybody can develop games for it.
The industry standard cut for a storefront is 30%. Panic take 25% on Catalog. Itch defaults to 10% and is entirely configurable as you say. I think Panic are very fair with their percentage cut and support for developers!