Safu · Press kit
One turn of the crank is one turn of the knob, with a tick on every detent. Turn slowly, listen for the K-CHIK!, feel the dial shake, reverse, and find the next sweet spot. Three spots, then pull the handle.
Last time it was one safe. Now it’s the whole bank: eight floors on one shared clock, a boss on every third safe, twenty perks, a cursed Lupin mode, and a wardrobe for Neko.
27 seconds · 1920×1080 · every shot is real gameplay captured from the game, and all music and sound effects are Safu’s own · trailer.mp4 · also on YouTube
Safu is a safe-cracking roguelike for Playdate where the crank is the safe dial. Turn slowly, listen for the click, pull the handle. Rob a whole 8-floor bank, with a boss on every third safe, 20 perks, a cursed Lupin mode and outfits for Neko. Available on Playdate.
Safu is a safe-cracking game for Playdate where the crank is the dial. One turn of the crank is one turn of the knob, with a tick on every detent. Turn slowly, listen for the K-CHIK!, feel the dial shake, reverse, and find the next sweet spot. Three spots, then pull the handle. Turn too fast and the tumblers fall back; pull too early and you start over.
The Heist Update turns it into a roguelike. Crack your way up an 8-floor bank on one shared clock. Every crack buys back a little time, and every safe rolls new modifiers that change how it is cracked: a room gone black, music loud enough to drown the clicks, a guard on patrol, a flask of nitro to keep level, a keypad, a gear, a jammed pin you blow the dust off.
Every third safe is a boss that bends the rules, and every boss hands you a pick of three perks: more time, wider sweet spots, a paw that finds a spot for you, a second life. In Lupin mode every perk is cursed, stronger but chained to a debuff for the rest of the run. Floor 8 is the vault; clear it, then keep going in endless mode, and post your floor to the Season 1 Most Wanted board.
Captured from the game running in the Playdate Simulator, shown at 2× in the Playdate screen’s own grey tones.
Floor 1The ClimbThe safe starts clean. Each latch switches on one more plaque.
Floor 2The StopwatchThe clock runs twice as fast, and cracking it pays double.
Floor 3The MimicTwo decoys trail the real spot as it wanders around the dial.
Floor 4OverflowThe flask fills with every latch. The waterline keeps rising.
Floor 5The GauntletEvery tumbler is locked behind a different mini-game.
Floor 6The SwitchboardLights and sound take turns, swapping every 20 seconds.
Floor 7The JudgeFour tumblers and one shot. Pull early and the run is over.
Floor 8The ChameleonEvery latch rerolls all three plaques. Nine debuffs in one safe.Past the vault, every boss is drawn at random from floors 5 to 8.
All 12 screenshots are in the press kit as screenshots/1x (native 400×240, pure black and white, exactly as the device draws them) and screenshots/4x (1600×960 in the Playdate screen’s grey tones).
The crank should feel indispensable, not like a substitute joystick. A safe dial is the one thing it already is: turn it, feel for the mechanism, find the sweet spot, reverse, repeat, pull the handle. Safu maps the crank to the dial one to one, so a full turn of the crank is a full turn of the knob, and a tick sounds on every detent. Slow cranking gives distinct clicks; a fast spin gives a rip, and resets the tumblers.
The handle came later. Pulling it is a decision, not a formality: was that third K-CHIK! real, or did you miscount? Every modifier is built on the same question, from the room gone dark to the decoy click that ends in a buzz.
Every screen is drawn for Playdate’s 1-bit display: a brushed-steel vault door, a dial with a shaded bezel, dithered shadows, and manga sound-effect lettering. The mascot is Neko, a white cat who listens at the vault, cheers on the vault floor and cries when the clock runs out.
The dial is played by six round-robin tick voices, pitched and louder the faster you crank, so the ticks never cut each other off. A real latch is a K-CHIK!; a decoy is the same click ending in a falling buzz. Each run has one music bed: the default track, a nightclub that drowns the clicks under TOO LOUD, a quiet night with footsteps under GUARD, a tense boss loop, and a swung lounge tune for the perk pick and the floor map.
Pixel art is 1× at heart. Scale it by whole numbers only (2×, 3×, 4×) with nearest-neighbour sampling, so every pixel stays square.