Frizzle
A downloadable game
Unravel the dark secret within Frizzle, a small but captivating virtual pet game for the Panic Playdate. While the pixelated world promises warmth and companionship, an unsettling undercurrent simmers beneath the surface. As you nurture your digital friend, a struggle for dominance unfolds, forcing you to question everything you thought you knew.
Will you follow the whim of a mysterious and desperate game developer, or succumb to the ever-growing influence of your virtual companion? The choice is yours, but beware – the line between love and control is easily blurred.
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Frizzle is a tiny narrative horror game wrapped in the presentation of a virtual pet sim. If that sounds up your alley, I'd love for you to give it a go. The game is designed to be a small experience: You can expect 30-60 minutes of gameplay/story, depending on how quickly you go through the dialogue. The horror is subtle and mostly psychological, you won't see jump scares, excessive gore, etc.
Huge thanks to everyone in the community who playtested for me while I was working on polishing the gameplay and story!
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When downloading the game from Itch, you will need to sideload it onto your Playdate.
To do so, visit https://play.date/account/sideload/ while logged into your Playdate account and follow the instructions to upload the zip file.
Once sideloaded, the game should appear on your Playdate under System > Games
Alternatively, you can play the game on the Playdate Simulator which is available with the Playdate SDK for your respective platform at https://play.date/dev/. That said, we recommend playing Frizzle on hardware when possible.
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Purchase on Catalog
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $1 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Development log
- v1.1.1 ReleaseSep 23, 2024
- v1.1.0 Release & Playdate CatalogAug 10, 2024
Comments
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Did this have actually have an ending/can it be beaten? I got stuck at a certain point with no apparent way to advance the plot
There are 2 official endings to the game, the credits will roll when the ending has been reached.
Where are you stuck at?
SPOILER ALERT!
I got to the point were I was kicked out of the game twice and told to start over, and I've also seen the frizzle clone at least twice. I'm just in a cycle of repeating everything at this point.
See below, if you've gotten that far, you should just need to hit play one more time from the main menu, and the ending/credits will be triggered.
If your experience doesn't match up, let me know and I will see if I can find a bug around where you are.
ENDGAME SPOILERS!
After the "new" Frizzle shows up, there should be some dialogue between Frizzle and the narrator, after which the narrator will tell you to crank and delete Frizzle. You can either crank, or not, and the game will "crash" and send you back to the title screen.
After this, hit play one more time to trigger an ending based on whether you deleted Frizzle or not, and the credits will roll shortly after.
I tried again, and saw the frizzle clone 2 or 3 times (not sure since I had it on standby for a few days), got kicked back to the start screen, and the playdate crashed when I tried to start the game again. Whenever I saw the frizzle clone, special dialogue didn't pop up. The last time I saw it, I got a prompt to play the simon says game, and it was gone after the minigame ended.
Thanks for continuing to play and sending me details. What you're reporting sounds like a bug, so I will have to see if I can reproduce the issue to troubleshoot.
I am thinking it may have something to do with going idle, and then returning to the game. I'll let you know if I am able to reproduce this on my end.
I have been testing but unfortunately, haven't been able to reproduce the behavior that you're seeing. I found a few specific actions that can sort of sequence-break the game, but they don't prevent forward progress. I'm sorry you haven't been able to get the intended experience, I will let you know if I do manage to track down and fix the root cause, but I won't be offended if you request a refund.
At this point, I think you've hit some kind of edge case that got your game saved in a broken state. If you haven't tried already, and you want to give it a fresh go, you can try deleting the data via the Playdate settings to start completely new. Settings > Games > Frizzle > Delete Game Data.
I did not expect this game to do to me what it did. Frizzle is... well I can't really say more but the Frizzle experience is well worth it!