RowBot Rally - Great Playdate concept that made me want to rip the Crank off

Rowbot Rally, a new top down rowing game came out on the Playdate in late December, it was hyped up as the "and one last thing" in the Fall Playdate Update and... I did not like it at all.

The game is based on a premise that you are trying to correct a fault and do this through gimmicky controls. Whilst I'm all for gimmicky controls, it should not be the main star and wrestling against it for the entire duration of the game drove me even more insane. Because if you stop rowing, you turn around in a circle. If you hit a wall, it stops you dead and then you turn around in a circle.

It wouldn't sting so much if it wasn't for the price. At $15 this is almost double the second most expensive game released on the Playdate in 2024, and doesn't feel like it. Other games have previously released at $15, but they moved their price back, I hope it's the same with this because I simply cannot recommend this for the price, although more games are set to release at this price point in the future. Octodad was the same price, but Octodad was at least silly, it wasn't so stringent in its requirements, it allowed for experimentation which brought a bit of fun for the fundamentally broken controls. If you want a racing game with crank controls on Playdate, there are much better options out there which do not base themselves on correcting faults.

Demo: https://stuffbyrae.itch.io/rowbot-rally
Full Game: https://play.date/games/rowbot-rally/