Jump the Crank
The developer of Jump the Crank had never made a game before. Learned to program just for the Playdate. Made a complete game from literally nothing in a year: the programming, the art, the music, the Itch page. These are the things that Playdate offers society. It’s a big reason I even made this site. Anyone with a computer and access to the internet can make a video game and send it out into the world. You don’t even need a Playdate! Amazing.
Jump the Crank is an arcade game where the crank controls a jump rope, and the buttons control your character. There’s no time limit; you just jump the rope as many times as you can before you miss a jump and fall over. There are ten different characters to unlock, each with their own gimmicks and handmade theme songs. It sounds simple, and it is, but it doesn’t stay that way.
Sure, the first character just jumps when you push up on the d-pad or the A button, and you crank the rope under him. But the second character, the rope rotates automatically, with a variable speed. Later, you’ll be playing a Pong clone in the corner while also trying to jump rope, or doing DDR-style rhythm games while jumping, or dodging incoming projectiles, or juggling. None of the characters have an instruction pop-up upon entering the level – it’s up to you to figure it out while also jumping the rope. It almost feels like a WarioWare or (one of my underrated favorites) Mom Hid My Game! You can’t be sure what you’re going to see next, and each character almost feels like a whole new game.
Each successful jump rewards you with one point, no matter what level you’re on. This is one thing that could be adjusted a little – you earn the same amount for an easy jump on level one as you do on a harder level where the jumps come much less frequently. So you can grind away on the easy levels to unlock the later characters (the final level takes 2,000 points to unlock), or you can try really hard on the juggling robot for less points. Maybe a combo system, where you get extra points for playing on higher levels or doing more jumps in a shorter amount of time? Of course, that might not be the point. Maybe we’re not supposed to rush to the end and unlock all ten characters right off the bat. Maybe the zen journey is the purpose.
Each level/character saves its own high score, and it’s fun to try and get each to a certain point before I move on. The farther you get into each level (except level 1), the more difficult the other activities become that are distracting you from the main goal of jumping the rope. It uses the Playdate’s special features like the gyroscope for some of the games, too, and again – there’s really no telling what will come up next.
For a first game, on a technically limited system, for someone that’s never made anything like this before? That uses the Playdate’s special features? And for any price you’d care to pay on Itch? Quite an achievement. I’m sure I’ve covered other people’s first games on here before, too, and they’re all amazing. And sometimes I want to give game dev a try, too… but until then, I’ll keep highlighting the inspiring work of those around me.
(Released May 3, 2025, on Itch.)