Playdate games
The title screen: KUBB in cut wood letters, its last B knocked over by a baton, above THROWING WOOD.

In development

Kubb: Throwing Wood

A game of Kubb for the Playdate. The crank is the throwing arm.

What it is

Kubb is a lawn game played with wooden blocks. Each side throws batons at the other side’s kubbs, the kubbs knocked down are tossed back into play, and the side that clears every kubb and then topples the king wins.

Throwing Wood plays it on the Playdate’s 400 by 240 pixel black-and-white screen. The pitch is five meters by eight, drawn from behind the thrower. Batons, kubbs and the king are solid bodies in a physics simulation at their real sizes, so what falls is worked out, not chosen: a baton can tumble, skid, glance off a stake or knock one kubb into the next. A baton thrown side-on spins like a helicopter, and it does not count.

A match is two teams passing one Playdate, played to the U.S. National Kubb Championship rules with a 2-4-6 opening. Each finished match is written as a game file in Planet Kubb Notation.

Where it stands

Started November 13, 2026 and in development. It is not released, there is no download, and there is no release date.

Playable now

  • Pass and play: a whole match for two teams on one Playdate.
  • Practice: a pitch to throw on, with no match around it.

Not built yet

  • A computer opponent.
  • Sound.
  • A screen for looking back at saved games.

Throwing with the crank

Turn the crank back past the bottom of its turn to wind up. The longer the backswing, the more power, up to a full-power mark on the dial. Then flick it forward to throw; how hard and how smoothly the crank turns sets the throw. Turned forward slowly, the crank lets the wind-up down without a throw.

Before the throw
D-pad left and rightWalk along the throwing line
Hold B, turn the crankTurn left or right to aim
Hold A, turn the crankSet the loft, higher or lower
Crank back, then flickWind up and throw

The feel of the throw is tuned on a real Playdate as the game is built, so the controls may still change.

Screens

Captured from the game in the Playdate Simulator on November 13, 2026, at twice the Playdate’s size.

The title screen: KUBB in cut wood letters, THROWING WOOD, and a menu of PASS + PLAY and PRACTICE.
Simulator capture The title. The menu offers what works today: pass and play, and practice.
Five kubbs on the far baseline, a swing dial at the bottom, and the prompt: crank back past the bottom.
Simulator capture Aiming from the baseline, with the five kubbs on the far side and the dial waiting for the crank.
A baton in the air over the pitch, with the far baseline and its kubbs behind it.
Simulator capture A baton in flight. The camera leaves the thrower and follows it in.
A baton striking a kubb, which has started to tip, with its shadow on the ground.
Simulator capture The hit. The game slows down around it so it can be watched.
A low baton into three kubbs standing close together.
Simulator capture A low baton into three kubbs standing together. What falls is worked out by the physics.
A landing marker out on the pitch, the swing dial with its arm wound back into a band, and the prompt: in the band, flick.
Simulator capture Throwing a kubb back across the pitch at a landing marker.
A black card: pass the Playdate to Team A, what Team B just took, and what Team A throws next, beside a small map of the pitch.
Simulator capture The card between turns, when the Playdate changes hands.
A black card: Team A wins, toppled the king, five turns, baton hit rate, with a burst around a broken king.
Simulator capture The end of a match the game played against itself as a test.

The look: Woodcut

A design session on November 13, 2026 settled the look: three tones, hard shadows and a white pitch. White is wood still standing, grey is wood that is down, and black is outline, shadow and anything spent. These are design boards, not screenshots, and parts of them are not in the game yet.

Design board: aiming, with a black rail on top, the king on the centerline, the minimap bottom left and the swing gauge bottom right.
Design mock-up Aiming: a black rail on top, the minimap and the gauge at the bottom, and nothing in the middle.
Design board: a baton in the air, white with two black bands and speed lines behind it.
Design mock-up In flight: a white baton with two black bands and three speed lines.
Design board: a burst reading TOK! as a baton tips a kubb.
Design mock-up The hit, with a TOK! burst. Bursts are designed, not built yet.
Design board: a baton gone past the king, and a flag reading KING STANDS.
Design mock-up The king: four points on the crown, a black collar, a ring and one diamond.
Design board: the hand-off card, pass the Playdate to BIRCH, with a map of the pitch.
Design mock-up The hand-off card. ASH and BIRCH stand in for team names, which the game cannot take yet.
Design board: ASH WINS, with turns, minutes and hit rate, and a broken king in a burst.
Design mock-up The winner card.

How it is being built

Jamie began it on November 13, 2026. Claude writes the code, in Lua with the Playdate SDK, and Jamie plays each build on his own Playdate and says what is wrong with it.

The physics, the rules and the notation are plain Lua with tests that run on a computer. Scripted runs in the Playdate Simulator wind up and throw on their own and save frames along the way; the screens above come from those runs. Every game file the tests produce has to pass the Planet Kubb Notation parser.

The fuller record, with more screens, the design brief and the first match played on a Playdate, is on Things I’ve built.