You can now make Playdate games directly in the browser.

Panic, the maker of the eccentric Playdate handheld, has released a public beta of the game generator in its Playdate Pulp browser. In its developer documentation, the company describes it as "a friendly tool for making small but visually and narrative-rich games for Playdate".

In the Pulp editor, you will be able to perform operations such as making pixel graphics, building levels, writing music, and even creating custom fonts. When developing a game, you can test it directly in a browser, and when you are ready, you can export the game to a .pdx file (cleverly referencing Panic's Portland root) to load it into a Playdate handheld. You don't need to write any code to make games in Pulp, but if you do want to try some coding, you can use the PulpScript scripting language.

I'm not a game developer, but within a few minutes of messing it up, Pulp seemed relatively easy to use. I have figured out how to turn the player wizard loaded by the default game Pulp into a big letter J, which is absolutely necessary for my future masterpiece. I really look forward to seeing what people will do with the tool after spending some time using it, and pray for some non-traditional, Undertale-style games.

The release of a public beta version of Pulp now may also mean that Playdate will offer a series of interesting games for people to try when the device is launched. So far, Panic has only announced a selected season with 24 games, and you will only win two new games a week. However, thanks to Pulp, you may have many other games to choose from, and you can side-load them to your device.

Panic said it expected to deliver the first Playdate in 2022. You can still order the device, although Panic warns on its Playdate store page that products ordered now will not be shipped until the end of the year.