Fortress

Fortress is an adventure and exploration Pulp game for the Playdate made by Alan and Beth Cooke.

The game's catalog page can be found at: https://play.date/games/fortress/

The game's itch.io page can be found at: https://alancooke.itch.io/fortress

The itch page has a guide to the game that lists where everything is and is meant to help players who get stuck with certain quests or can't find everything and want to S-rank the game.

In the game you play a knight who is trapped in a fortress that has to escape while dodging traps, solving puzzles, and fighting monsters. The game has a hint system via one of the NPCs in one of the areas outside of the fortress. The game also has a ranking system that ranks how many deaths you had, how many gems you found, and how many rare treasures you found (S/A/B/C/D/F). Escaping the fortress is the main objective of the game. The Black Knight is the main antagonist of the adventure and is found in the throne room near the end of the game.

Interesting Facts: There's a grave in the graveyard that has a name on it (Pauline) that you can visit. The grave is the only grave that's marked in the entire graveyard. Pauline is a reference to Alan and Beth's grandmother, a key figure from their childhood who helped raise them.

Alan Cooke used a family member's birthday as the password for the trophy room/master sword puzzle quest.

Easter Eggs: There's an actual Playdate in the game that the thief NPC owns. The thief references a shipment of stolen Playdates which is a nod to a real life story about a pallet of Playdates that were stolen and later tracked down by Panic.

Stolen Playdates Podcast Link: https://podcast.play.date/episodes/s01e31/

Cut Content: The graveyard originally had marked graves that referenced members of the Playdate community and their "cause of death". This was meant to be a fun nod to the community, but was taken out since there were concerns the graves may be taken the wrong way.