One of the highest profile developers to work on the Playdate, Zipper comes from the mind of Bennett Foddy, the creator of QWOP and Getting Over It. In it, you play as a lone samurai infiltrating a castle, requiring you to cut down all enemies that lie before you. You do this my signaling where you want your character to move on an isometric 2D grid. The samurai can move anywhere in a straight line, and if he comes to rest in front of an enemy, or "zips" past them, they are cut down. Once you move though, the enemies get their turn, so you must ensure your player ends up in a position where they are not vulnerable to the remaining enemies' attacks. It's a great game visually, perhaps one of the best on the whole system, with an art style that really fits the monochrome screen of the Playdate. There are vivid background and great looking blood effects, which can even be utilized to blind your enemies under certain situations. Unfortunately, while I really wanted to like this game, it has a number of core faults that prevented me from enjoying it. Firstly is that the movement patterns of the enemies, even the simple ones, don't obey the same rules as you do. They are not limited to the single direction that your player is, and often surprised me with where they were able to reach. For a game that's entirely strategy, it makes the strategic elements somewhat futile when there's no way to predict where the enemy is going to end up. The game does have a way to combat this though. By turning the crank after positioning your character, the game will tell you if you're going to die by making that move. This may sound useful, but it actually swings the difficulty of the game the complete other way. Now, there's no strategy at all, you just need to keep guessing and checking positions without any risk of dying. With the only options being unclear enemy rules or a lack of difficulty, this game failed to really hold my interest. The other big issue is the death penalty. This is a Bennett Foddy game after all, a developer infamous for his... tedious game elements. In this case, when you die you have to start the game completely over. If you make a strategic mistake against an enemy, you'll have to replay the entire game up until that point to face them again. I know that's his style, but where that tediousness was a charming factor towards his previous titles, here it just adds to a conflicting gameplay style. It's a shame too, as I think the potential is here to make this one of the best games on the system, but in the end it falls into the middle of the pack.

Das Konzept ist ganz cool, aber dieses Spiel hat mich irgendwann auch frustriert. Das scheint aber wohl Bennett Foddys allgemeine Designphilosophie zu sein.

Man kommt nicht drum herum dieses Spiel auch mit Getting Over It zu vergleichen. Auch dieses Spiel ist frustrierend, aber im Vergleich zu Zipper haben die Fehlschläge auch eine gewisse Komik und man wird nicht immer wieder bis gaaanz an den Anfang zurückgeworfen.
Außerdem hat das Wiederholen der Anfangspassagen durchaus eine Relevanz, da das Spiel einen selbst in den frühen stages mechanisch ein wenig fordert. Zipper hingegen bietet eher Puzzle, die keinen mechanischen Skill erfordern. Wenn man von vorne startet muss man also immer wieder die selben Puzzle, die man irgendwann auswendig kennt, wiederholen. Das macht überhaupt keinen Spaß.

Der krönende Abschluss ist dann noch, dass das Spiel seine Regeln nicht so wirklich gut kommuniziert. klar, mit Hilfe der Kurbel kann man sich die Züge der Gegner im voraus anzeigen lassen, aber die regelmäßigkeit hinter der Bewegung mancher Gegner wird dadurch trotzdem nicht ersichtlich.

Insgesamt für mich eine Enttäuschung im Playdate Line Up