The Playdate's hand crank was built for games, but it keeps luring developers to go weird. Ancient Loops, a free download from the two-person French team EVB Studio, isn't a game — it has "no levels, no chapters, no fail state, and no unlockable progression." You load eight cards into two slots and turn the crank, which "activates collisions and resonances between cards," building loops of sound and pattern you can capture in 30-second recordings.
The studio describes it as "somewhere between a minimal instrument, a ritual machine, and an interactive graphic object." Headphones are recommended — the audio is half the experience. An autoplay mode lets it run on its own, a little black-and-white machine cranking through its own compositions.
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