Playdate showcase sees release date for Lucas Pope’s Mars After Midnight and more

• The showcase revealed a host of new games and further details on Mars After Midnight
• The new game from Lucas Pope is now slated to launch on March 12th
• The Playdate Store Catalog will also host its first sale around the same time

With the most recent showcase for the Playdate, we’ve got an official release date for Lucas Pope’s Mars After Midnight, as well as showcases of even more games coming to the Panic’s handheld. This includes titles like the arcade golf game Faraway Fairway, the top-down boat-racing game RowBot Rally, the side-scrolling beat ’em up Midnight Raider and more.

And if you’re unfamiliar and wondering why Lucas Pope’s newest title is such big news, it should be noted he’s the developer behind games like Return of the Obra Dinn and Papers, Please. Both games have won critical acclaim and been best-sellers due in part to their unique gameplay mechanics, so many are closely watching Mars After Midnight to see whether this latest title will further boost the device’s profile.

Set the date

Mars After Midnight will release on March 12th, and Panic have also announced that Catalog, their digital storefront for the Playdate device, will also host its first sale from March 17th to the 14th. The Playdate device showcase showed off around sixteen new games, many of which follow the same experimental and quirky style that Mars After Midnight – with its sci-fi, surrealist therapy premise – looks set to follow.

You can check out the whole showcase below!

Whether or not the Playdate proves to be a success outside of its niche celebration of gaming and its integrated development tools all depends on how developers take advantage of it and whether that translates to more consumer sales. We’ve seen plenty of great little games debut for it, but at a not insignificant $199 retail, will this slew of new games and a big-name developer be enough to push it into the territory of hit? Here’s hoping.

If you’re curious to know more about the Playdate, you can check out some of our previous coverage. Including news about another big exclusive with a port of the classic point-and-click adventure game Shadowgate coming to the device this year.