I have a strange relationship with pure arcade games. I like playing a lot of them, but getting high scores isn't an incentive that works for me. Give me some skins to unlock, an achievement list, an upgrade shop, and I will dive hours and hours into an arcade game, but only getting a big number in the screen isn't enough to bring me back after some minutes. Why I'm saying all of this? It's because it has been an week that I'm coming back to play YOYOZO again and again, and that's because how smooth and good its gameplay are.

In this already-a-classic Playdate game from Matt Sephton, you control a "space yoyo", a ship that is attached to a big ball by a sci-fi elastic. Your goal is to use the ball to catch circles (called "stars") in the screen, BUT you can only move the ship, not the ball. So, most of YOYOZO lies in your ability to control this contraption and use its properties to rack up points. You don't use the crank in this title: all movement is done by the face buttons.

Like I said in the beginning, it's so good and fluid to play YOYOZO. Even if I'm not trying to get a better high scoring, moving the ball is a difficult and cool challenge to face, even though it never seems impossible. A game of YOYOZO (at least, my games) don't exceed two minutes, so it's also really easy to find a time to play it a little more. Yes, I would love more ways to "progress" in the title, but as its simple premise goes, it does really well.

BUT you are not me, right? (Maybe you are, hi, me!) Maybe you love getting even bigger high scores, proving your own mastery of controls and physics. In this case, YOYOZO is perfect to you. As shown in the game's manual PDF, your points are determined by three key factors — how long the elastic is stretched, how fast you are catching the stars and what's your current combo — and some secret elements, if you want to go deep one more layer in the "advanced technique lasagna" ready to be tasted.

Portables can give deep and long experiences, of course, but they are perfect for small bursts of fun. From all that's available now on the Playdate, I truly think YOYOZO is one of the best of its kind. You can start a match for the first time and get the concept in literal seconds, and you can also play for 10 hours and discover so many techniques that it becomes another game completely. I may not be the biggest fan of pure arcade games, but I really can see the space yo-yo becoming one of the permanent residents of my yellow little brick.