Shadowgate PD launches today on Playdate as part of Season 2 and I wanted to write a few words about how the last two years have gone!

How it started:

Shadowgate was first released as part of the MacVenture series around May 1987, which funnily enough was the month I was born! It was destiny all along. You can read a lot about Shadowgate online but the elevator pitch is that it is one of the earliest point-and-click adventures and has had remakes and remasters on NES, Gameboy Colour and a bunch of other platforms. It’s a certified classic and is equal parts mysterious, difficult and wonderful. You’re going to have a lot of fun and a lot of challenge getting through Shadowgate PD!

Fast forward to May 2022 and a plucky, young Ollie Coe was dreaming of someone making Shadowgate for Playdate on the Playdate Squad Discord. For me, the Playdate has always been the perfect platform for Shadowgate in terms of the screen and form factor.

In July 2023, after releasing a bunch of games on Playdate, I asked the question “Why don’t I make Shadowgate?!” And summoned up the courage to ask Dave Marsh at Zojoi, expecting absolutely nothing back. Dave said that he liked the look of my Playdate games and we signed a contract for Pixel Ghost to start developing Shadowgate PD! I decided to use Pulp, the web-based development platform which is primarily designed to create top-down Zelda style games (As that was what I was used to). Over the course of this journey I have broken Pulp in so many ways and whilst it would have probably taken less time to learn SDK and Lua, this game, finished in Pulp is the result of fantastic collaboration, determination and plain stupid stubbornness.

After signing the contract, I set to work drawing a few of the rooms, taking influence from both the Mac and NES versions but trying to find a great middle ground where Shadowgate PD can live on its own and shine on the Playdate. I’m still very much an aspiring artist and whilst I’m very happy with the first few rooms (See if you can tell in the game when I hired an artist) I quickly realised that I needed help…

That help came when I gave a shout out on Fiverr for someone to draw the rooms for the game. I started chatting with Than away from Fiverr and made the working relationship more professional and briefed based on making the rooms somewhere between the two but creating something fresh that works on its own. Than’s work was fast and fantastic! I am really grateful to the collaboration with Than and think that without this collaboration, the game might have never been finished. I think it really looks amazing! (And honestly I believe some of the rooms look better than any of the inspirations from the past…just saying).

Another huge collaborator was Ben “Playfellow” Perry who had previously worked on Pixel Ghost games Life’s Too Short, Time From Earth & Life’s 2 Short: Unhooked. Ben’s brief was to take the NES music which is so iconic for so many fans and make something that feels inspired by this but live on its own. I think the result again elevates the game to such a high level and should be considered for all Playdate music awards in future Playdate Community Awards. I’m so happy with where it landed!

In October 23, we revealed Shadowgate PD in the Playdate Community Direct with a short teaser trailer, now it was public and locked in!:

How it developed:

As mentioned, Shadowgate PD is made in Pulp and I have written some other blogs about how the menu and inventory systems work. I am really grateful for the help from orkn and Scribe and the other legends in the Playdate Squad Discord. I am also really proud of the systems that have been developed for the game and can say that in the near future I will be releasing a foundational package for people to create their own first person point-and-click adventure style games using the code. More news soon…

On top of the great help from talented folks, this game took a lot of manual hard work…I did not have a nice script I could refer to (Aside from some manual scripts on GameFAQs which I’m very grateful for) but honestly a lot of the development involved me playing the NES game, typing up the script as I read it, trying to open/close/hit/speak/look at every object in each of the 40+ rooms. Some days the work was maddening…but each day I pushed myself to do at least 1-2 hours and over the weeks/months you start to see progress!

In May 2024, I was given the opportunity to pitch a game for Playdate’s Season 2. As with reaching out to Zojoi in the first place, I thought to myself “Why not?” And put together a little pitch deck, explaining what Shadowgate was and how we were making this remake. For me this is a great example for why you should always put yourself forward…you won’t always get a result but you never lose anything for trying! I am so proud to be part of Season 2.

How it finished:

As part of the Season 2 process, we got access to QA support from Plastic Fern. I did some testing early on with some folks from the community but normally QA involves me playing the game over and over and over again until I couldn’t think of anything worse and picking up the Playdate felt like a huge weight. But on this occasion, I would wake up to bug reports that had come across the Atlantic overnight and got to work! It was such a great experience and I’m hugely grateful to Plastic Fern for jumping into the trenches with me and helping get the game in a really nice place (Finding some bizarre errors and bugs along the way).

After delivering the final build, I did a bit of work on a Catalog submission for my game Treated (Which got accepted!) and thanks to orkn again this had crank functionality for the first time for me. I was then able to take these learnings to add crank functionality to Shadowgate PD (You can use the crank to jump to and from the inventory section and crank to change the inventory pages, it’s optional but works nicely). Arisa from Panic agreed to let me squeeze this in to the final release build so now it really is a unique way to play on Playdate (I just hope that doesn’t break anything!)

Season 2 has been wonderful so far. This is what the Playdate was made for…playing games with the community week on week like a book club style. It’s elevated a fantastic community to new heights and I’m again so happy to be a part of it.

Right now I’m feeling terrified that the game is broken or people don’t like it, relieved that it’s done and I can start working on something new and being creative again (Although right now a little lost of what to do next!) and really proud of what we have all achieved together to bring this 38 year old game to the Playdate. I’m also super grateful for all the collaborations so I will sign off with some thank yous:

• Panic: For helping make my dream come true as a real life game developer!
• Zojoi: For being so cool in the process (I'll never make an official remake again as it'll never be this positive and smooth!)
• Than: For elevating my artwork to Season 2 standards. The game looks wonderful!
• Ben: For bringing the nostalgia and newness with a killer soundtrack!
• Orkn, Scribe & the Playdate community: For teaching me a lot of what I know about making games!
• Plastic Fern: For helping fix our game!
• popagenda: For already getting coverage in some of the media I used to help PR!

It's been a pleasure, I hope you like it but also remember there are guides all over the internet and the game is veeeeery loyal. Good luck!

Much love,

PG