A downloadable game

Buy Now$2.00 USD or more

Looking to strengthen your cranking arm to tackle some of those tricky Playdate titles? Well, look no further! The Crank Gym is here - and it's going to work those arms out until you're a lean, mean, crankin' machine.

As the newest member of Cassius's gym you can run sprint sessions on the treadmill, test your endurance on the rowing machine or lift weights until you drop - all in the name of high score chasing.  With three save files available, challenge your friends and family to see who can smash the club record - with the prize on offer having your name as the holder in their trophy cabinet! If you're a lefty simply spin the Playdate 180 during any activity and use your strong arm to dominate the competition - crank forwards, backwards, whichever way you choose! 

We will be keeping a global leader board for each activity running on our Twitter account - follow us and post your high scores.

If competition isn't your thing you can enjoy the relaxing yoga session on offer or help Cassius and his regulars Rita, Arnold, Nick and Kimmy solve problems to enhance their gym experience and build up your membership status. We hear three star members get a little reward.

The perfect game to share with the family  - you could even hook it up to the TV for a little cranking competition! Pass the Playdate around and show people how brilliant this tiny yellow machine is.

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Designed for Playdate and made using Pulp, The Crank Gym has indefinite replay value and is designed to encourage people to share their Playdate with others. The game autosaves as you progress and tracks to your file, so any personal bests, club records or gym member problems you solve will still be there when you return - with the club record running across all files. 

We built TCG with the aim to push the art capabilities and mechanics of Pulp and would love to hear what you think. All comments and questions are welcome. And if you'd like to rate the game the button is on the top right of this page - we'd really appreciate it. Thanks!

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To find out how to sideload a game onto Playdate, head here.

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The Crank Gym is made by fatnose games - whose first title for Playdate 'Along Came a Spider'  was nominated for Outstanding Visual Achievement in a Pulp Game, Outstanding Technical Achievement in a Pulp Game, and Pulp Game of the Year in the inaugural Playdate Community Awards 2022. 

If action adventure games are more your thing you can find that title here.

You can also hear George Banks talk about the project on the excellent Hello Playdate Podcast right here.

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You can hear the soundtrack for The Crank Gym and many other games in our collection of Playdate Pulp music NOW That's What I Call Pulp! - a collection of over 60 songs. Download for free here.

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We've just released a sequel to our debut game! Along Came a Spider - Valley of the Hollow. A massively expanded game from the first sees Eric traversing a dangerous new world, gaining powerups, uncovering its secrets and wielding the crank in fun and exciting ways as he battles toward 1 of 4 endings to his tale. You can find it here.

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Or if you fancy four new titles all in one go, grab our entire collection of games as part of The fatnose games Bundle!



StatusReleased
Rating
Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars
(6 total ratings)
Authorfat nose games
TagsArcade, Family Friendly, High Score, Indie, Playdate

Purchase

Buy Now$2.00 USD or more

In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $2 USD. You will get access to the following files:

The-Crank-Gym.pdx.zip 293 kB

Development log

Comments

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(1 edit)

Cool game! But I'm stuck in the process of ToDo list. :( Do I need to beat cup records to pass through? I am very worried about the crank during the game xD I thought yoga made it easier to beat records, but I didn't notice the difference.

PS: Hurray! I've completed the entire list and best all the trophies records, but I only have 1 members star. How do I earn the remaining two?

Hello! So sorry for the slow reply. 

I believe you need to train on everything a certain number of times to show persistence, break records that exist and clear the to do list! What are your records at the moment? We've got the world records up on Twitter if you want to compare!

Thanks for the reply :) My progress is the same - I've completed the Todo list and beat all the trophies records, but I only have 1 members star.

Ah! Have you done a perfect round of yoga? Got 'great' on each pose?

Hmmm, I don't remember. I need to try it, thanks :)

Yes! I did the yoga perfectly and got a second star. And how do I get the last third?)))

I believe you just have to do each activity a total of five times?? Once for each day of the week basically. If that's not right I'll have to dig into the code!

(1 edit)

A quick question for you: I tried to purchase this through Playdate's catalog using my prepaid debit card and it and some games are not purchasable with this card. I've contacted Panic regarding this. (And I have been able to buy games with this card before).

Your game was one that was unaccepted by the debit card. The question I wanted ask was, do you, as a developer, choose how payments are received/taken? Or is this an issue exclusively on Panic's side of things? I could easily use my credit card to buy your game (an I definitely will), but I was mainly curious đŸ€”

Hi there, thanks for checking out the game! I don't think we have anything to do with payment on the catalog side of things? As far as I'm aware we just take our cut when we hit a certain total through sales. Please let me know if you get a response from Panic though - hate the thought of people missing out on our game!

(1 edit)

I actually never heard back from Panic since leaving this comment and I have yet to purchase the game by a catalog because I want to use your game as a test for resolving said issue. I did however learn that I am not the only one experiencing this and most people solutions has been just switching to a different card. My problem is although I have a credit card I don't want to sign my credit card up to a store front because "credit card ".

But you have my word I have every intention of buying your game :)

It looks great!

picked this up in the Playdate catalog, but just wanted to mention what a perfect little game it is to keep as a quick mental reset at work. The “exercises” are good simple fun but the art and personality are what really elevate it. Thanks!

Hi, thanks so much for picking it up and for your lovely comment! Really glad you're enjoying the game. Hope you manage to clear the to do list - let us know if you need any hints :)

Yep, I love classic point and click adventures so I really enjoyed the to-do list! Just gotta get that last star (I didn’t quit the game a few times between plays so I think that might’ve messed with what I think the requirement for it is, but could be wrong and no big deal either way)

I’m really a big fan of these kinds of small but really polished games that you can keep at your desk which deliver little bite-sized doses you can pick and play any time (which is what the gym games are great for here, but with the to-do list and exploration and character aspect to give it some additional depth and personality). Like instead of twirling a fidget spinner or something, I’m twirling the crank. Playdate’s basically become an essential office accessory for me. 

Oh, great job on the music too!

Thanks so much! Yeah, my PD never leaves my pocket. Hope you'll check out our other games. Working on a sequel to Along Came a Spider at the moment and if you enjoyed the music check out Now That's What I Call Pulp. A free download collection of pulp music tracks. 

Let us know your high scores! 

Already got both of those! The music collection will go nice with the eventual speaker. Along Came a Spider is really fun, still got a couple endings to get (man that last stage is tough). Very happy to hear a sequel is in the works. 

That's amazing to hear, thank you. Yeah, it was built with the speaker in mind! Want to update it but it's a lot of work. Will probably tackle it when the speaker comes out. 

Hope you've found those endings! If you need any hints just give us a shout. 

Rumbling along with the sequel. Head to 33:33 of the excellent community direct to catch a glimpse of the game:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU_6qfiDft4&t=262s

( 1)

Wow - what an awesome game - it uses the playdate star features like the crank and accelerometer to make this game a whole lot of fun and the graphics and storyline are amazing. Thanks to the team for an amazing game and for making the playdate simply the best gaming platform :) 

So glad you enjoyed it! We really wanted to push the art with this one and use the accelerometer too as not done that before. I hope you’ll keep pushing for those high scores and unlock three stars. We post records set to us on Twitter 😊

Will do ! :)