I think I found the most wholesome game in the Playdate Catalog

I didn’t set out to play  when I picked up my this weekend. I was actually looking for something else, but lazily searched only half of the correct title and found myself staring at jump rope STAR! at the top of the results instead. Curious — in part because “Hot Rope Jump” was one of my favorite minigames in Mario Party 2 back in the day — I clicked on it, and was greeted by pictures that look like something I’d tape to my refrigerator if given by a 5-year-old. It was kind of a “say no more” moment; I purchased it immediately.

As you’d expect from the title, jump rope STAR! is a jump rope game for Playdate. It offers a few different modes for solo and co-op play, the latter involving two players sharing one device. I haven’t run into many multiplayer games for Playdate, so that alone is pretty cool. The game was made by Chris Corciega (Soinksters Games), but the art was “designed by a talented 5-year old,” Maya. And it is adorable. As you try to set new high scores, you use the crank to control the swing of a jump rope held by a bipedal bunny and a… striped pig (?). Okay I’m not entirely sure what the second character is, but those two are swinging the rope, and the goal is to do so in time with the little stick-figure girl’s jumps so you don’t trip her up.

Her timing isn’t always consistent and she speeds up as you progress, so it starts to get pretty tricky after a minute or so. But, achieving perfect swings will earn you points in the Star Meter that’s on the side of the screen, and once it’s filled, you can use that power to temporarily slow down time and get more swings in while the girl is in the air. In the other modes, things get a little more complicated. Playing with a friend in the two-player catch mode, for example, one of you will have to press buttons to move the girl around so she can catch falling stars while the other person swings the rope. (Very hard to do on your own, I discovered).

It’s a simple but fun little game, made even better by the fact that you can involve someone else in the silliness. Both adults and children would be able to enjoy it, and there is a kid mode for a more forgiving style of play if you don’t want family game night to get too competitive. This strikes me as another one of those perfectly Playdate games — the kind that just seems like a natural fit for the device, and to try to get them to understand its charm.