Have fun learning how to program games from scratch for Playdate!

Whether you've never coded a game before or have years of experience under your belt, you'll learn the fundamentals of how to make games for Playdate using the Lua programming language. Make Games for Playdate with Lua covers how to program with Lua and the essential Playdate APIs. You'll make a handful of games to get you kickstarted on making your dream game for Playdate.

Written in a fun and accessible style, Make Games for Playdate with Lua is a great way to get started learning game programming. The book is perfect for beginners. And if you've already made some games before, you'll feel right at home as you go through the chapters.

You'll code a bunch of small games from scratch to learn everything you need to bring your game ideas to reality.

One of the joys of making games for Playdate is how simple it is and how quickly you can test your game on your game console. Playdate's limitations in resolution, input, and color make it perfect for someone just getting started making games.

No worries if you don't have a Playdate yet! You can make games for Playdate without having the console on hand. The Playdate SDK is free and available to download for all major operating systems.

What you'll learn

Programming basics with Lua—variables, functions, tables, conditionals and more
Game programming concepts
Handling user input
How to build and test your Playdate game
The most essential Playdate APIs
How to publish your Playdate game online

Table of contents

Introduction — get yourself and your computer prepared for making Playdate games
Hello, Playdate! — display text and move it around the screen
Tennis — code a single-player Pong clone
Clock — make a simple clock using a custom font
Snake — learn about saving and loading data from Playdate, loops, and adding a menu option
Soaring — code scene switching and break up your source into multiple files
Sokoban — make small puzzles with tile-based movement
Dungeon Crawler — build a turn-based role-playing game

Bonus reference chapters are also included to quickly look up examples of how to use Lua and the Playdate SDK.

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