We’ve officially made it to the end of Playdate Season Two, and what a season it’s been. Despite having half the number of titles as Season One, this latest round of weekly game releases has made a much stronger impression (on me, at least). If nothing else, it’s just been cool to experience the new games in real time with other Playdate owners all at once, which the staggered rollout of the console didn’t really allow for with the first season. In an email ahead of the final release, the team at Panic noted that Season Two has sold 12,000 units.

It ends on a high note with Taria & Como and Black Hole Havoc, the former an emotional physics-based platformer and the latter an action-puzzle game about blasting black holes with black holes. While the weekly game drops may be over, we still have several weeks left of new Blippo+ content to help fill the void (not to mention the reruns, once it all wraps up).

Taria & Como

Taria & Como would surely resonate no matter when it were released, but at a time in the US when families are being forcibly separated and access to adequate healthcare for millions of people is under threat — an issue that comes on top of the many existing flaws of the system — it hits particularly hard. The pace of this puzzle platformer is relatively chill, but the journey it takes you on is really moving.

You play as Taria, a girl whose parents have been kidnapped by the medtech company and apparent authoritarian overlord, Toxtum Inc. Taria uses a couple of mobility aids to get around, including a prosthetic leg that allows her to jump and a flying health robot, Kit, that has a tether so she can swing. But after a disaster one day, Taria wakes up in a Toxtum facility to find that her younger sister Como is gone, her prosthetic leg has been taken and replaced with one that cannot jump (the Toxtum-approved design), and her healthbot has been swapped with one that’s programmed to do everything in its power to restrict her freedom. The subsequent adventure is Taria’s quest to find her sister, no matter what it takes.

There is a lot to love about this game, but there’s one silly little thing at the beginning that needs a shoutout: an unexpected folder in Kit’s files labeled “Ferrets.” Inside that folder? Two pictures of ferrets wearing bonnets. As a longtime ferret owner, all I have to say is hell yeah. Anyway, the game. Taria & Como is a wonderful experience from start to finish. Each chapter is preceded by a beautifully illustrated crank-to-scroll comic that moves the story forward, and the game’s unique mechanics overall made this a really compelling play for me.

Since Taria can’t jump post-disaster, most of the game is spent swinging (and arguing with the new, not-cool healthbot). Moving around this way requires some planning, as the platforms Taria can stand on are often separated by walls and other obstacles, and some surfaces aren’t safe for landing. You use the crank to aim the bot at a grabbing point, and you can crank forward/backward to reel Taria in and out. Swinging left and right will give you momentum to launch yourself farther so you can cross bigger gaps, and you can kick off of walls. I had so much fun with this, and loved how the design of it all slowed me down and made me think a little harder.

As you progress, you’ll collect pieces from Como’s diary as well as Tuxtum files and codes to hijack the healthbot in your favor. The means by which you access these files is one of my favorite parts of the game. There are kiosks scattered throughout the map and they all contain a single minigame, which features a turtle wearing a top hat. Crank to make the turtle dance — and crank really fast, so he can’t keep up, and the whole thing will glitch out and bring you to the system files. I was perhaps too excited the first time I encountered that, and enjoyed it every time after that too.

Over the course of her adventure, Taria runs into other people who have also been failed by the system: someone who can no longer take the medication they need because it isn’t “company approved,” someone whose has been waiting in vain to be reunited with their wheelchair, etc. All the while, the healthbot talks down to Taria with the most painfully infantilizing rhetoric. The commentary here is pretty blatant, and I can’t say I didn’t appreciate it as someone who has been burned by the healthcare system many times over my lifetime of trying to manage chronic illnesses.

There were a few hiccups in my playthrough. The game seemed to lag a lot with every chapter change, briefly making me worry each time that it was going to crash. And my Playdate didn’t always respond properly to certain actions, like when you want to just look around to survey Taria’s environment. You need to dock the crank to do that, which in itself felt a little disruptive, and I often found myself just launching Taria into the unknown to find out what was down there the hard way instead. On several occasions when I did dock the crank, my Playdate didn’t register that I’d done so, especially toward the end of the game, so I had to repeatedly dock and undock it until it eventually worked.

These things ultimately didn’t detract much from my enjoyment of the game, though. Taria & Como is definitely one of my favorites from this season. It’s a beautiful story, and it couldn’t have come at a better time.

Black Hole Havoc

Years of playing the Neopets game Faerie Bubbles has prepared me for this moment.

The story behind Black Hole Havoc is pretty easy to glean from the title — black holes are popping up everywhere and threatening civilization, and you have to stop them. Thankfully, you and your pal are equipped with just the right equipment to generate black holes of your own, which you can fire from a cannon at the evil black holes to cancel them out. But they have to be the right size or they won’t effectively vanquish their targets. You aim using the D-pad and pump with the crank (or A/B) to adjust the size of your own black holes before shooting them out. Hit a black hole with another of the wrong size and you’ll take damage.

Initially, it all seems fairly easy. You’ll have aim assist for the first few levels, which provides a clear visual indicator of the path and size of your black holes. But after that, you’re on your own to line everything up right (you can turn aim assist back on in the settings, if need be). The further you get, the more obstacles are thrown your way. The black holes start growing in numbers; space tourists show up and get in the way of everything; the ceiling starts collapsing, pushing the black holes down onto you; blocks of ice will send black holes bouncing back your way if you hit them; weird giant bugs. It all goes from chill to extremely unchill pretty fast.

The Story Mode is great, with 80 levels and fun cutscenes (which are skippable if you’re impatient, but they really are worth watching) to introduce the new areas you’ll have to clear. That sounds like a lot of levels, but I was absolutely flying through them and was 40 levels deep before I knew what was happening. There have been a few games this season that I’ve found to be super addicting, but Black Hole Havoc kind of takes the cake for me in that category. It just ticks all the right boxes. There’s also an Arcade Mode if you want to just jump right in and chase after higher and higher scores.

From the art and animations to the music, developer Cosmic Bros really knocked it out of the park with this one. Not a bad way to finish a fantastic season.

Rolling out with the latest update, Spotify is getting a redesign on Android Auto and also adding support for “Jam” on the car’s display.

Announced back at Google I/O 2025 earlier this year, Spotify is now taking advantage of Android Auto’s newfound flexibility in media apps. An update available now brings additional functionality to Spotify’s Android Auto app, most notably including support for “Jam.”

The new Spotify app includes a handful of key changes. There’s now a more prominent “Downloaded” section in your Library, allowing you to only use music that’s available offline. That might be handy when driving on rural roads without stable signal. You’ll also now see an indicator on downloaded tracks while browsing albums or playlists.

There are also some minor UI changes throughout the app, as well as a new floating Search shortcut that opens a dedicated search page for Spotify. Previously, Google Assistant was the sole was to search for music and it would just start playing. Now, you can search for albums or tracks and see results in the app.

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Finally, the big addition is Spotify Jam. This feature, found on the “Now Playing” page, pulls up a QR code which other users can scan to start collaborating on the current music queue. The driver is the host, with guests able to add music which is then played through the car, which seems like a really useful feature for road trips. Once a guest has been added, the app will easily allow them to be removed by the driver.

This change appears to be attached to Spotify 9.0.58.596 for Android, available now via the Play Store.

Other media apps are likely to start getting similar updates in the months to come, with Google having confirmed Amazon Music and YouTube Music will both leverage the added flexibility in time.

More on Android Auto:

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A petition to preserve video game access recently achieved an important milestone of one million signatures, but it has two more challenges to overcome before reaching the final level. The “Stop Killing Games” movement reached a million votes earlier this month, meaning the European Union will have to consider adopting legislation addressing this issue. However, the petition first has to deal with the threat of potentially fake signatures and the resistance from major game studios and publishers.

The Stop Killing Games initiative, created by Ross Scott, aims to pass new laws to ensure that video games still run even when developer support ends. The petition was a direct response to when Ubisoft delisted The Crew from online stores, shut down the game’s servers in 2024, and revoked licenses from players who bought the game. Scott and other critics felt Ubisoft’s actions set a dangerous precedent for gamers who may lose access to their purchased games at a developer’s whim.

Even though there are enough signatures to move to the next step, Scott explained in a YouTube video that many of these may have been incorrectly filled out, while others could have been falsely submitted. The movement’s founder said, “This is not a change.org petition, this is a government process,” adding that “spoofing signatures on it is a crime.” To ensure enough legitimate signatures are collected, Scott said that there needs to be at least 10 percent more to cover the potentially invalid ones. As of July 6, the petition has earned more than 1.2 million signatures.

Beyond the signatures, a European advocacy group that includes major gaming studios and publishers like Electronic Arts, Microsoft and Nintendo released a statement opposing the movement.

“Private servers are not always a viable alternative option for players as the protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist and would leave rights holders liable,” the statement read. “In addition, many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create.”

In a longer report, the Video Games Europe group said that this initiative would “raise the costs and risks of developing such games,” create a “chilling effect on game design” and “act as a disincentive to making such games available in Europe.”

Nothing’s new Phone (3) is the company’s self-described first “true flagship,” a designation that, personally, I think is a mistake. But it also brings up the question, if the Nothing Phone (3) isn’t a “true flagship,” is Google’s Pixel?

This issue of 9to5Google Weekender is a part of 9to5Google’s rebooted newsletter that highlights the biggest Google stories with added commentary and other tidbits. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox early!

In my eyes, the Nothing Phone (3) is, in many ways, just another take on the formula Google has been using with the Pixel for the past few years. A high-end device that cares less about raw horsepower, and more about just delivering a focused and excellent experience. Google has had its missteps, certainly, but it’s working out pretty well.

Nothing Phone (3) feels as though it’s trying something similar.

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The Phone (3) isn’t as powerful as other high-end devices on paper, but it puts together a package that’s good at its job and more affordable than a lot of alternatives. Yet, I think Nothing has made a mistake here.

Nothing is marketing the Phone (3) as its first “true flagship.” That tagline has been used throughout teasers, the launch, and basically everywhere. Put simply, I don’t think that it’s quite true. Nothing is delivering, much like Pixel, a solid experience that puts the spec war aside, but it’s doing so in a way that takes away that “true” flagship title. Namely, the lower-resolution display and chipset are the main caveats here.

But, at the same time, Google also has a lesser chipset compared to the other flagships of the Android world. Pixel phones have been using Google’s custom Tensor chipset for the past few years, a chip that focuses on Google’s priorities over raw horsepower. Google’s approach, though, feels less compromising than Nothing’s to me, and it really just comes down to the marketing. Google is playing ball with high-end flagships, but it’s not demanding that title. Rather, Google quietly acknowledged for a long time that, no, it’s not trying to directly compete with the likes of “true” flagships by selling the Pixel series for a lower price. That cost has crept up in recent years as Google has closed that gap, though.

To me, I think of Pixels as flagship phones not because they have crazy specs, but because they’re the best Google has to offer, and are among the most capable smartphones you can buy. Flagships aren’t necessarily about what you’re getting on paper, but about the lack of compromise in the overall experience. If that weren’t the case, then you couldn’t call the base Galaxy S25 a flagship, for example.

Google’s formula for a flagship just happens to be a little different from Samsung, OnePlus, and some other Android brands.

Nothing, to its own right, can also do that. But demanding to be called a “true flagship” only invokes unnecessary expectations, and it has already done that before reviews even go live.

The “true flagship” schtick started before the chipset for Phone (3) was announced, leading almost everyone to think this device would be packing a Snapdragon 8 Elite. As soon as Nothing announced that the actual chip would be the considerably-less-powerful Snapdragon 8s Gen 4, a lot of that excitement immediately evaporated. Had Nothing never called this a “true flagship” and instead simply called it “our most powerful phone ever” or even recycled the tagline of Carl Pei’s previous venture, “flagship killer,” I think we’d see a lot more excitement out there. This feels like a “Never Settle” situation, where an overpromise is going to lead to Nothing’s own words coming back to bite them.

But what do you think? Is Nothing making a mistake with its branding? Are Google Pixel phones actually flagship devices? Let’s discuss!

This Week’s Top Stories

Nothing launch event

As mentioned, Nothing Phone (3) saw its official debut this week, alongside the new Nothing Headphone (1). See our coverage below:

Samsung leaks, get your Samsung leaks here!

As Samsung’s Unpacked event quickly approaches, the leaks keep on coming. There were a number of big, notable leaks this week, so see below for more:

Pixel 6a owners, you need to read this

Google has announced a new Pixel 6a update that will start rolling out on July 8. The update will include, for some users, a “battery management” feature that will have a major impact on battery life. See our coverage below for more information:

More Top Stories

From the rest of 9to5

9to5Mac: Apple is launching 15+ new products this fall, here’s what’s coming

9to5Toys: Nintendo Switch 2 Killswitch case is everything you can ask for, especially when the Joy-Cons stay attached

Electrek: Tesla launches Oasis Supercharger with solar farm and off-grid batteries

Follow Ben: Twitter/X, Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram

The bumper 2025 edition of Amazon’s Prime Day is fast approaching and the deals are starting to emerge. While we’ve seen this offer pop up several times in the past, it’s one that’s always worth highlighting. New Audible subscribers can get three months of access to the Premium Plus plan for $3. That’s a total of $42 off.

This is one of the best streaming deals around right now. It will be available until July 31, which is a few weeks after the Prime Day event ends (it could probably be called Prime Week this year since it’s running for four days). If you don’t cancel your Audible membership before the promotional period ends, it will automatically renew for $15 per month.

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You can get three audiobooks to keep forever for a dollar each, plus access to thousands of audiobooks, Audible Originals and podcasts while your subscription remains active.

$3 at Amazon

Through the Audible Premium Plus plan, you’ll receive one credit each month. You can use this to claim any audiobook you like on the platform, whether it’s a bestseller, new release or something else you’ve been meaning to get to. You’ll retain access to audiobooks you claim with credits even after your subscription expires. So, you’re effectively getting three audiobooks for your permanent collection for three bucks.

Audible members will be able to take advantage of exclusive discounts and sales too. They also get access to thousands of audiobooks, Audible Originals and podcasts as long as their subscription remains active.

Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip 7 looks to be a bigger surprise than initially expected, with the first hands-on leak confirming reports of a bigger cover display and thinner hardware, and it looks good.

A hands-on video of the Galaxy Z Flip 7 was posted on Twitter/X this weekend, showing off the device in plenty of detail. We can see the device, in black, with its side profile looking a fair bit thinner compared to prior generations. The open device is also seen with virtually no crease, suggesting this is probably a brand new device that just came out of the box, with the packaging directly behind it suggesting that’s the case.

That video, which was since been removed, also shows the cover display in action for the first time.

There’s a new widget panel that takes advantage of the larger display with four visible widgets at once. The screenshots captured by SamMobile, unfortunately, don’t show much more than that. Still, it’s great to see the screen lit up.

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We were able to obtain a copy of another video (thanks Yuval!) which only shows the hardware. Rumor has it the Flip 7 is a fair bit thinner than Samsung’s past few generations, a change that we’ve been waiting quite a while to see.

Samsung has reservations open now for the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Flip 7, with a $50 credit when you pre-order and up to $1,150+ in savings. Reservations are free, and there’s no obligation to actually buy a device if you sign up, but there’s no other time you can get that $50 credit (which can go towards Galaxy Watch 8), 3x reward points, and other perks.

More on Samsung:

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