During a Playdate Update livestream Thursday, Panic announced plans for a second season of games for its stylish black and white portable console with a crank — and those include a new game from Subset Games, the team behind FTL: Faster than Light and Into the Breach. Fulcrum Defender is a single-screen defense game where you use the crank to protect yourself from incoming attacks, inspired by games like Vampire Survivors. “I wanted to make a replayable experience that starts out slow and relaxing, but gradually ramps up until it becomes frantic chaos,” said Subset Games’ Jay Ma in the livestream. “Originally I didn’t plan on finishing this game. I was making it as a form of self-therapy. I have been struggling with long COVID the past few years and I wanted to prove to myself that I can still make games in my current state.” Playdate Season 2 begins on May 29, with two games releasing every week over the course of six weeks, for $39. The season will also include platformer Taria & Como, adventure game Shadowgate PD, and digging game Dig Dig Dino!, along with “a must see surprise for all those who want something….a little different,” according to a press release. Playdate’s first season launched free with the console in 2022, though due to the slow rollout of hardware players didn’t all get to download each game together each week as originally planned. The season consisted of 24 games including Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure from Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi and Whitewater Wipeout from Chuhai Labs. Panic also announced earlier this week that it has sold more than 289,000 games through its Playdate Catalog store, totaling more than a million dollars paid to developers. And in late 2024, it posted a fascinating podcast about how it hired a private detective to track down a bunch of stolen consoles.