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Make Games for Playdate with Lua

A fun introduction to game programming with Lua and the Playdate SDK

Brett Chalupa

Whether you've never coded a game before or have years of experience under your belt, you'll learn the fundamentals of how to make games for Playdate using the Lua programming language. Make Games for Playdate with Lua covers how to program with Lua and the essential Playdate APIs. You'll make a handful of games to get you kickstarted on making your dream game for Playdate.

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About

About

About the Book

Have fun learning how to program games from scratch for Playdate!

Written in a fun and accessible style, Make Games for Playdate with Lua is a great way to get started learning game programming. The book is perfect for beginners. And if you've already made some games before, you'll feel right at home as you go through the chapters.

You'll code a bunch of small games from scratch to learn everything to need to bring your game ideas to reality.

One of the joys of making games for Playdate is how simple it is and how quickly you can test your game on your game console. Playdate's limitations in resolution, input, and color make it perfect for someone just getting started making games.

Make Games for Playdate with Lua is actively being written, with the first draft complete. The earlier you buy it, the cheaper it will be. As the content of the book expands, the price will increase. You'll get updates for the book as they're released.

No worries if you don't have a Playdate yet! You can make games for Playdate without having the console on hand. The Playdate SDK is free and available to download for all major operating systems.

What you'll learn

  • Programming basics with Lua—variables, functions, tables, conditionals and more
  • Game programming concepts
  • Handling user input
  • How to build and test your Playdate game
  • The most essential Playdate APIs
  • How to publish your Playdate game online

Table of contents

  • Introduction — get yourself and your computer prepared for for making games for Playdate
  • Hello, Playdate! — display text and move it around the screen
  • Tennis — code a single-player Pong clone
  • Clock — make a simple clock using a custom font
  • Snake — learn about saving and loading data from Playdate, loops, and adding a menu option
  • Soaring — code scene switching and break up your source into multiple files
  • Sokoban — make small puzzles with tile-based movement
  • Dungeon Crawler — build a turn-based role-playing game

Bonus reference chapters are also included to quickly look up examples of how to use Lua and the Playdate SDK.

Book Updates

First draft complete! Revising and improving what's been written.

A changelog and notes on how progress is going.

  • Apr 10, 2026 - added Dungeon Crawler - Part 2 chapter; first draft complete!
  • Nov 12, 2025 - added Dungeon Crawler - Part 1 chapter
  • Sep 7, 2025 - added Sokoban chapter
  • Feb 18, 2025 - added Playdate by Example chapter, started adding content to the cheatsheets, added a Style Guide chapter
  • Dec 16, 2024 - added Soaring chapter
  • Nov 24, 2024 - added Snake chapter
  • Nov 17, 2024 - initial Early Access launch 

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Author

About the Author

Brett Chalupa

Contents

Table of Contents

Introduction

  1. Early Access
  2. What to Expect
  3. Getting the Most Out of the Book
  4. Getting Started

Hello, Playdate!

  1. Counting Frames
  2. Moving the Text
  3. Player Input to Change Greeting
  4. A Gentle Introduction

Tennis

  1. Displaying the Paddle
  2. Moving the Paddle
  3. Displaying the Ball
  4. Refactoring playdate.graphics
  5. Moving the Ball
  6. Bounce Off the Wall
  7. Bounce Off the Paddle
  8. Refactor into Functions
  9. Angles
  10. Speeding Up the Ball
  11. Score
  12. Sound Effects
  13. Final Code
  14. Bonus Ideas
  15. What’s Next

Clock

  1. Drawing the Time
  2. Respecting Preferences
  3. Padding Zeroes
  4. Lowering the Framerate
  5. Showing Power Details
  6. Custom Font
  7. Finished Source Code
  8. Bonus Ideas
  9. What’s Next

Snake

  1. Moving on the Grid
  2. Control the Snake
  3. Spawning Apples
  4. Adding Snake Pieces
  5. Don’t Spawn an Apple on the Snake
  6. Game Over
  7. Restart the Game
  8. High-Score
  9. Reset High-Score
  10. Finished Source Code
  11. Bonus Ideas
  12. What’s Next

Soaring

  1. Controlling the Bird
  2. Spawning Trees
  3. Crank Indicator
  4. Scenes
  5. Refactoring Gameplay Reset
  6. Introducing a State Table
  7. Breaking Our Code Into Multiple Files
  8. Bonus Ideas
  9. What’s Next

Sokoban

  1. Moveable Player
  2. Pushing a Box
  3. Target Spot
  4. Counting Steps
  5. Preparing for Complexity
  6. Multiple Boxes
  7. Parsing Levels
  8. Level Select
  9. Bonus Ideas
  10. What’s Next

Dungeon Crawler - Part 1

  1. Drawing Player from a Tilemap
  2. Designing Levels with Tiled and Rendering Them
  3. Player Movement with Camera
  4. Map Collision Detection
  5. Talking to NPCs
  6. Bonus Ideas
  7. What’s Next

Dungeon Crawler - Part 2

  1. Organizing Our Code
  2. Multiple Maps with Stairs
  3. Random Encounters
  4. Combat
  5. Player Stats & Enemy Attacks Back
  6. Death
  7. Bonus Ideas
  8. What’s Next

Playdate by Example

  1. Text
  2. Audio
  3. Debugging
  4. Capturing Gameplay Footage
  5. Release Steps

Outro

  1. Start Small
  2. Releasing Your Playdate Games
  3. Continue to Learn
  4. Backing Up Your Games
  5. Beyond Playdate
  6. Game Development Tools
  7. Thanks & Credit

Playdate Cheatsheet

  1. System
  2. Display
  3. Draw Text
  4. Import Files
  5. Input Handling
  6. Sprites
  7. Graphics
  8. Images
  9. Timers
  10. Sound
  11. Save Data
  12. Animation
  13. System Menu
  14. Lifecycle Callbacks
  15. Coroutines in playdate.update()
  16. Common Patterns
  17. Quick Constants Reference

Lua Cheatsheet

  1. Variables
  2. Functions
  3. Tables
  4. Strings
  5. Operators
  6. Common Patterns
  7. Useful Built-in Functions
  8. Coroutines

Style Guide

  1. Lua Styles
  2. Project Structure

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