One thing was clear for me since the start: I wanted a gameplay 100% based on the crank. Such a neat controller. I was sold on this idea the moment I first read about the playdate back in... July 2019 in Edge. Felt like it was going to unlock a world of new exciting gameplays.

Small Wonder Edge, July 2019

When I finally got my hands on a Playdate, I realized that if I wanted to use the crank, I would have to go all-in and use the D-pad and B/A buttons as little as possible. I didn't want a gameplay where you have to constantly adjust the way you hold the console. 

Cross Section

I was inspired by those beautiful technical drawings, showing cross sections of complex mechanisms.

I wanted to get a sense of the physical action of the crank, the inner mechanism. I liked the idea of a cross section of the hardware precisely at the location of the crank. 

I drew and animated the inners, the cogwheels manually with Pixaki on iPad (fantastic app by the way) I swap those imagetables as the tension of the door and the score increase. 

1 — Start
2 — A few
3 — High Intensity
4 — Hot!

Crank Only?

At some point during the early stages, I had a version of the game entirely based on the crank, for the gameplay as well as for the screens navigation (home, score, etc) but it didn't feel very good. Not as comfortable and predictable as the good old A/B buttons.

But I kept the idea of being able to quickly restart the game without having to press A or B. You lose, you crank and instantly you are back in the game! I think this is especially useful for high-score chasing games like this one. You don't want to have to go through a complicated pattern of button manipulation every time you lose.

The A button has the natural connotation of “confirm,” “go,” or “primary action.” The B button tends to mean “cancel,” “go back,” or “secondary action.” 

https://help.play.date/developer/designing-for-playdate/#buttons

I also duplicated most of the functions when it felt "intuitive". 

For instance, if you hit Left on the D-pad it does the same as A. Or you can skip the intro with the Right button (I found myself naturally hitting the D-Pad to skip when I was testing)