Oh sorry I missed this message! That would be me! You can see a breakdown of roles in the "Team" heading near the bottom of the page content.
Dinosire
Creator of
Recent community posts
Thank you so much for playing the demo and leaving feedback, I really appreciate it! For the deletion issue, that’s really strange, I haven’t seen that from anyone else I saw playing the game, maybe try restarting your computer and retrying deleting, in case some process is using something in that folder still?
That’s really cool you and your friends enjoyed it, that means a lot! I definitely agree with the maps either being too big or the player being too slow, I have some ideas about how to handle that. As for the camera rotation, I’m actually planning on taking out being able to rotate it, but you can still zoom in and out. It’ll look more like paper Mario 64 distance wise. You can see some new scenes on my socials if you’re curious. As for the dragonflies, the full game will have an NPC you trade them for hats! For the demo, they’re just a collectible to get for some extra challenge / content.
Thanks again for taking the time to play and to give your feedback, it’s very appreciated!
That’s so awesome to hear, that means a lot!
Good idea for previewing the random upgrade, that makes a lot of sense, I should definitely do that.
Really interesting idea in adding a “skip weapon” option with the achievements. Maybe I could just let you skip by pressing B in that selection screen?
Thanks again for taking the time to give me your feedback, I super appreciate it!
Just wanted to follow up with this review now that version 1.1.0 released. It’s essentially a whole new game, you can see the changes here! Again, thanks for the feedback, it really helped make the 1.1 update awesome!
https://dinosire.itch.io/cranknight/devlog/981453/mega-upate-v110
Good point about the damage, I agree that it could be more obvious, as I don’t always notice when I’m playing either hahaha, I’ll see what I can do! As for the speed, I’ll play around with some control schemes, I’m concerned double tapping could lead to some accidental behaviour, but I’ll see what I can do. While I agree the crank can get faster, I hoped the buttons would be at least a fairly balanced speed.
Anyway, thanks for the continued feedback and support, I super appreciate it!
Thank you so much for the review! I’m really glad you enjoyed the game, great analysis! You brought up some good points that I thought I should clear up:
- I’ll work on a fix for the hammers bug you showed, thanks for pointing it out!
- Shields are intended to give space between you and enemies and block (most) projectiles. Upgrade shields can either reflect or do stuff after absorbing enough projectiles
- As for the crank direction, it’s a little tricky as the rotation is just additive (since some weapons have acceleration, like the axe), so weapons won’t always line up exactly with the crank IRL
- Oh and there’s actually secret combos with certain weapons. You can do critical hits with certain weapons if you hit enemies with specific conditions on them
Thanks again for the review, I really appreciate it!

Hello there! I'm super excited to announce my first game for the super cool Playdate handheld device, "CranKnight"!
Check it out here: https://dinosire.itch.io/cranknight
CranKnight (Crank-Knight) is a short but challenging, chaotic rogue-ish/survivour-ish hack-n-slash game where you fight waves of enemies while upgrading your weapons. Use the power of the Playdate crank to swing your weapons to fight and block!

It's a simple, chaotic, challenging, and replayable game that I made entirely by myself in two months.
A bit of backstory about this game: over a decade ago, I took an intro computer science class in university, and I soon tried to make my own game, without any idea what I was doing. I knew nothing about art, but managed to make a simple character in MS Paint and got them moving around on screen. Here's that character from way back in 2014:

My original project never went anywhere, and I always felt bad that I didn't do anything with my little knight character. Over a decade later, I received a Playdate as a gift, and immediately began digging into developing games for it. I quickly thought back to my first character, this little knight, and decided to make a small game centred around them that used the Playdate's unique crank feature, all on a really short timeline of two months. That's where I came up with the idea for CranKnight!
All this to say, I'm really happy I was able to resurrect my first attempt at making games and actually release something with my old original character in it. No effort is truly wasted!
If you got this far, thanks for reading my writeup, I really appreciate it! I hope you'll give CranKnight a try, and if you enjoy, let me know in the comments and share with your friends!

I'm happy to announce the demo for my first full game "Dino Cleanup"!
Toxic goop has spread across the dinosaur land! Suck up the mess with your trusty vacuum and save the dinosaurs trapped in the muck. Explore multiple levels full of physics-based fun in a 3D world with 2D pixel sprites!
Dino Cleanup is a clean-a-thon platformer with physics-elements and a retro aesthetic. The goal of the game is to reach the end of each level, but there are also hidden golden dragonflies to collect, and a reward for fully cleaning each level!
🦕Content
- Explore 7 levels by platforming and interacting with physics objects using your vacuum, and be rewarded for cleaning each level fully
- Discover 21 golden dragonflies hidden throughout the game (3 per level)
- Unlock 3 upgrades that expand how you play the game
If you enjoy this demo, please let me know, and share it with your friends!

Thanks for taking the time to check out our game! Sorry that it sounds like you didn’t have the best time with it. Like I said to another reviewer, difficulty was something we were a little worried about after developing it for so long, but we hoped the chill atmosphere and lack of definite fail state would allow players the mental freedom to experiment and find fun with the physics.
Our goal however was to make a goofy clumsy physics-based game where you pile a bunch of junk in a messy pile, so I think we achieved that goal and I’m really proud of what we’ve made in such a short time (even if it’s a little glitchy haha). Great idea about the ragdoll physics though, that would be awesome!
Thanks for the review! Yeah difficulty was something we were unsure about as we got better at playing it ourselves the more we worked on it. We hoped the chill vibes and lack of solid failure state would make people want to keep trying even if it was harder than we may have intended. Thanks again for taking a look!
WOW! Easy 10/10 game for me, this is incredible, best game of the jam I've played so far! Scaling the window as you explore and then shrinking it back again as you need to race back to the start is so genius! It's so well executed, and looks incredible. I looove the pixel art, the colour palette, the screen shake, everything, so amazing!










