if you're wary about the playdate handheld, why not try making homebrew games? given the prevalence of emulation for many consoles that are not playdate, and the fact that flash carts (for those who do insist on the real hardware) are more abundant than playdate and equivalently priced or cheaper, your game will be significantly more accessible
plus, you won't be supporting brushed-aluminum techbro shenanigans :^)
@typhlosion I wanted to say "you could just get a Pocket CHIP instead if you really want a tiny computer that can play tons of games, PICO-8 gives tons of options" but... the company seems to have died?
@yaodema it seems next thing co. died but there's still a shop at https://shop.pocketchip.co that sells, uh, i guess a limited inventory of new pocketchips? either way, tragic
context for kas grumbling
@wolfcoder @coda @yaodema it's a small handheld console in development by a company called Panic, in collab with (in)famous music hardware developers Teenage Engineering; it costs $149, has a snazzy brushed aluminum exterior (and a crank??), will come with twelve games, and supposedly will support some kind of custom software development but is ultimately closed-architecture hardware