Here’s a bit of a feel-good yarn for your Tuesday arvo. A local developer by the name of Aaron Nielsen, who works for Aussie outfit PlaySide Studios, has cooked up one of the sweetest marriage proposals we’ve seen since folks decided to tap Portal’s GLaDOS or Borderlands’ Claptrap to pop the question.
Aaron shared his efforts on social media in recent days, revealing that he created an actual game to propose to his partner, and not just any game but an adorable little letter-delivering game for the equally adorable and little Playdate handheld.
In a series of posts, Nielsen describes the game, titled Love Letter, and how he used it to deliver the proposal. “The player (my now fiancé!) would need to try and deliver the correct ‘letters’ to their desired letterbox before time ran out. Each correct letter delivered would increase the score multipliers and additional time bonuses etc.”
“But the timer and scoreboard were all a distraction… At the end of the game all the collected letters would spell “Will you marry me?” – that was my cue to drop to one knee.”
“Oh and don’t worry,” Nielsen adds. “If she had selected “no” it would have asked “are you sure” and looped around!”
The self-proclaimed ‘coding novice’ says he used Playdate’s Pulp editor, a beginner-friendly and browser-based development interface, to make the game. “It was a lot of fun working within tile constraints and thankfully any questions I had the playdate community was prepared to support me on my journey.”
Earlier this week I asked the love of my life to marry me and she said YES! ?? I wanted to do something special so I made a little game for the #playdate to help me propose. It's called Love Letter ? – her reaction was worth the months of #gamedev @playdate pic.twitter.com/E9TnPLAJCs
— Aaron (Pikaaroon) (@TheAaronLeigh) April 14, 2024
But the timer and scoreboard were all a distraction… At the end of the game all the collected letters would spell “Will you marry me?” – that was my cue to drop to one knee. Oh and don’t worry, if she had selected “no” it would have asked “are you sure” and looped around! haha pic.twitter.com/LF0kAeO4lg
— Aaron (Pikaaroon) (@TheAaronLeigh) April 14, 2024
Nielsen says he’s considering making the game available for the public to download after already receiving requests for it (and encouragement from his fiancé), albeit as a standalone arcade game, potentially with a “Proposal Mode” built in.
We praised the simple joy and ingenuity of the Playdate in our review back in 2022, saying, “The Playdate takes the wonder and excitement that we used to get with video games in the 90s and jams it into a tiny portable handheld that delivers at every turn. Its price point and non backlit display are the only things holding it back from being something that every gamer should own.”
