The 2024 Playdate Community Awards

Community Awards 2024

Date:	Saturday, March 8th 2025
Time:	11 am PT / 2 pm EST
Hosts:	Paul Straw & Guv_Bubbs
Video:	Youtube

The 2024 Playdate Community Awards is an awards show run by the Playdate Squad Discord server.

The Awards

This year we have 20 awards to hand out to developers.

All games first released between December 1st 2023 & November 30th 2024 are eligible.

Badges

Winner
Nominee
Cranky
Game of the Year
Community Hero

Winners and nominees can display the relevant badges proudly alongside their games.

Community Heroes

Each year the community awards also celebrate heroes from across the Playdate community - people who make cool content and tools or who are helpful and encouraging to others. This year, rather than naming a set of notable people, we've chosen to present everyone equally.

Neven Mrgan, Rae, 8_bit_BEAR, Xania Lasagna, PossiblyAxolotl, NickNack, Nnnn, Kirkpad, Glenjamin, Pixel Ghost, Hello Playdate Podcast, Thunderring, Sphodromantis, Zel, mpp, 2DArray, Dr. Gabe, Bumbleborn, The Game Llama, Cadin Batrack, Tengu, Toad, michalakweb, Modem, Ledbetter, Franchovy, SquidGod, GreenMan, Orkn, choosh, AttackSlug, Lukas Büffel, Kaasiand, Amano dev team, Mac, Hekhound, jon.sim, Dimitri, Remco, Gurtt, Gamma, Fletch, Marquis Kurt, Pizzafuel, Debugchicken.

This list is community members who were mentioned on the voting as well as some extras the mods have selected.

You can read all the submitted comments here.

The Process

Filtering Process

The community nominates games for awards via the Community Nomination Form.
The judging groups can optionally choose to add extra games into the judging conversation. This is for games that may be missed or not be represented in a community popular vote.
We then take the the top 6 community games for each awards + all judge games to land at internal nominee list to be voted on by the judges.
At this time judges are free to squabble, debate, and pull each others hair to make a case for who they think should win. Then they vote.
In the case of tiebreaks the judges will need to hash it out until they can decide on one winner and three unranked nominees. The results are handed over to Paul.

The Judges

This year we will have 3 judging groups so we can have specialists for presentation & technical categories.

Category	Awards	Judges (Discord)
General Genre	Best Puzzle Game Best Action Game Best Adventure Game Best Arcade Game Best Sim/Strategy Game Best Narrative Game Best App or Nicknack Accomplishment in Accessibility The CRANKY Award Pulp Game of the Year 2024 Playdate Game of the Year	hekhound eduxardo negatron524 lildanzig parchmentengineer frog.father_ 8_bit_bear
Presentation	Best Soundtrack Best Sound Design Outstanding Visual Achievement in a Pulp Game Outstanding Visual Achievement in an SDK Game Best Launch Experience	OMGTopBoy lavender_juice jon.sim nexusnecromance Kirkpad
Technical	Outstanding Technical Achievement - Pulp Outstanding Technical Achievement - SDK	2darray the3dprintist strupf ninovanhoof orangerkn
Special	Most Anticipated Game* Best Playdate Game Trailer**	* chosen by the community (100% popular vote) ** chosen by GantProdux

FAQ

Which games are eligible?

All games first released between December 1st 2023 & November 30th 2024 are eligible. All Season One games and any Catalog games that previously released elsewhere before November 30th 2023 are not eligible. If you're unsure whether a game is eligible, check whether it was previously nominated in last year's awards.

Why doesn't the community vote on everything?

At first, we asked ourselves “Why can’t the community just vote on all the awards?” Well, after we thought about this, we realized that this would put some games and creators at a severe disadvantage and turn the awards show into more of a popularity/visibility contest if the community was able to decide everything. The community will still have a huge part in deciding the nominees, but we’ve created a diverse set of judges that will also offset any chance of games or creators winning due to their ability to market their game or obtain more visibility. Some developers simply do not have the resources other companies and games have, so it is possible that their game may not receive a popular vote. With our judging committee active, they will be able to bring these games and creators to the forefront that may be more deserving of the award than a game that could win due to high visibility or a popular vote.

Why didn't you do the process another way?

We feel the process above was the best way forward based on the time we and the judges have. We are open to feedback next year.

How did you decide on the award categories?

The awards were iterated on over a two week period with input from members in the Playdate Squad Discord server in 2022. Then updated this year. For the most part, our Genre Categories have been modeled off of The Game Awards, but were tweaked to fit the current Playdate catalog.