Publishing your game in Catalog
Any Playdate developer is welcome to submit their finished Playdate game to Catalog, our curated selection of games. If your game is accepted for inclusion in Catalog, here are some information on setting up your game on Catalog and tips for making sure it’s presented well to our players.
Table of Contents
List of materials that are necessary for release
Once your game has been approved, you will receive a separate email from us as “Playdate Catalog (via Airtable)” with information on onboarding and your release date. The following is a quick list you can reference on all the documents and materials that needed by the deadline (one week before release) in order to release your game on Catalog.
- Signed Catalog Sales Agreement and Exhibit 1 via Dropbox Sign / Hello Sign.
- Complete Stripe onboarding.
- Complete Tax Interview and tax info validated by our tax partner, Tax Identity.
- Complete the Catalog page asset checklist. We require at least one GIF to be uploaded on your page. See the Animated GIFs section below.
- Upload a build for release.
Editing your Catalog page
Once your play.date account has the necessary permissions, you’ll have access to the developer dashboard. From there, Your Games section will have links to the Catalog Assets page to edit the Catalog page for each game. If your play.date account doesn’t have access to this page, email us and we’ll be able to help!
Note that only one account can have access to edit the Catalog page.
Art Assets
The following graphic assets are needed for your Catalog listing:
| Asset | Used in | Format |
|---|---|---|
| Catalog, billboard size | Largest game card in Catalog layout | 380 × 180px, 1-bit PNG, no alpha |
| Catalog, wide size | Wide game card in Catalog layout | 380 × 90px, 1-bit PNG, no alpha |
| Catalog, small size | Small, half-a-screen wide card in Catalog layout | 185 × 90px, 1-bit PNG, no alpha |
| Catalog, header | Header of game page in Catalog app | 400 × 208px, 1-bit PNG, no alpha |
| Website, feature size | Header of your game’s webpage; also the largest size of promotional card on group webpages. You may include the game’s name in the image or not; the name or title will also be shown below your feature art. | 1600 × 960 px, PNG, alpha OK |
| Website, wide size | Wide, banner-like image for group webpages | 1600 × 480px, PNG, alpha OK |
| Website, small size | Half-a-column wide image | 800 × 480px PNG, alpha OK |
| Website, header | Wordmark or title treatment. Make sure the image is legible as this will replace the game’s name on the webpage. | 1200 × 400px PNG, alpha OK |
It’s up to you how you put together these assets, but here’s what we’ve found to work well:
Playdate Website Assets
- You can use full-color images on our website, and doing so might make your game stand out better. Think of these assets as “box art” for games; it’s ok for them to be fantastical or aspirational, rather than reflecting the actual look of your game on Playdate.
- It’s often a good idea to include your game’s name in the assets. If you think your game’s branding is strong enough, or you prefer a more mysterious mood, you can leave the title out—we will usually show it under your game’s art.
- We ask for several asset formats (large, small, wide) because we find that an interesting, varied layout for Catalog is more fun to browse. It’s best to provide all these formats, since we might change the layout and feature your game in a different way.
Catalog App Assets
The Catalog app will, for obvious reasons, show 1-bit art, just like your game.
- Double-check that your game’s art looks good on the Catalog app background. The template files we provide on the Catalog Assets form will help with this. For instance, some dither-pattern backgrounds will interact oddly with the app’s own background, so they should be avoided.
- In the smaller asset sizes here, you won’t have a lot of pixels to work with, so think about how to distill your game’s idea to its essence. Find an image that will be compelling and descriptive, even when tiny.
Screenshots
Static screenshots and animated GIFs are a great way to show off your game and for people to get a better idea on what the gameplay is like.
We require at least one static PNG/GIF file and one animated GIF screenshot uploaded for your page, but we recommend having around 4 screenshots total.
- Your game screenshots should be Playdate-native: 400 x 240 px, 1-bit, black and white.
- It’s best to capture these in the Playdate Simulator, with the Simulate Device Appearance option turned off. Having this option enabled would generate gray-colored screenshots and GIFs. If you already have gray-colored screenshots, please convert them to pure black and white before uploading.
Animated GIFs
- Try to keep these under ten seconds in length; larger files will take longer to download on Playdate.
- Playdate Mirror captures video, which is handy for sharing on social media. However, it’s not ideal for creating screenshots for your Catalog page; even if you convert these to GIF, it will be done lossily, with a noticeable drop in quality.
Links
You can include a number of external links on your game page. Here are some examples of things to consider linking to:
- The game’s official website somewhere else
- The developer’s website
- A devblog, behind-the-scenes, or post-mortem writeups of the game
- The official soundtrack
- Walkthroughs, playthroughs, tips and hints
- Project page for open-source games
- Notable press coverage of the game
Primary and Secondary Category
You will need to select a Primary category that most accurately describes your title, from the provided list of categories or genres. You may also choose an additional category. This information will be used as a way to categorize your title on Catalog and include it in one of the category/genre pages.
Colors
You can specify a few custom colors to match the page to your game’s branding. Please make sure that your color combinations are legible; especially the color of text on buttons, and the color of links against the page background.
Previewing Your Game
The Catalog Asset form will let you preview your game on our website. It’s a good idea to check that things look the way you expected them to.
Uploading build
You can upload the zipped copy of the release build in this Dropbox folder and email us to let us know you’ve uploaded the build.
When uploading the build to Dropbox, make sure to:
- Include a List View icon for the Launcher on device. See the SDK instructions and Pulp instructions.
- Update the buildNumber in the pdxinfo file as that’s how our backend knows there’s a new build.
- Update the version in the pdxinfo file if you’d like to show a new version to players that are downloading the new build.
- Upload a zipped file to this Dropbox Folder.
- Email us at catalog-dev@play.date to let us know you’ve uploaded a new build and any changes you made (if any).
Scoreboard API
Games in Catalog have access to the scoreboard feature, posting high scores to our server and fetching them from it. See the Scoreboard API help article on how to set up the scoreboard feature.