When it was unveiled a couple of years ago, Playdate looked like a breath of fresh air for the games industry, focussing not on graphical whizzbangs or brute-force processing, and instead scaling things back to simple graphics and emphasising the fun.

It's a really intriguing prospect, but after previously having been aimed at an early-2021 release date, it's been slipping further back in the release schedule without much word. Now its creators have surfaced once more to give a really sizeable update on the timeline we can expect.

For one thing, we now know that Playdate will be up for pre-order in July this year, finally letting people actually reserve it ahead of shipping. It's not clear yet when exactly that shipping process will begin, but the update confirmed we'll get a week's notice before pre-orders go live.

On top of that, a swathe of games were revealed, including loads of the 24 that will come pre-loaded on the console when it arrives, plus a few more that are in the pipeline. Most excitingly, Lucas Pope, the auteur behind masterpieces like Return of the Obra Dinn and Papers, Please, is working on a new title for the handheld.

We also got a look at a case cover for the console which will be available in a bundle to protect it from scratches when not in use, at $199 compared to the console's standalone price of $179. Also shown off was the fun Playdate Stereo Dock shown in our header image, which gives the console stereo sound while charging it and even has pen-holders, but doesn't yet have a fixed price or release date.