A few days ago I wrote about putting Legitsauce games on a keychain. It has a name now: the Saucelet. It's coming in spring 2029.
Why make it
I make Legitsauce games for short waits, like the coffee line or the five minutes before a meeting. A game that lasts a minute should start the second you want it, without digging out your phone and swiping past notifications. The Saucelet hangs off your keys and turns on the moment you press a button.
There are other tiny handhelds out there, but most of them are toys. I want this one to make real use of how far small chips have come.
Everyone else is racing to add more gigabytes of RAM and storage. So I asked myself the opposite question: what if we didn't have even a single gigabyte? Could we run really fun games on a device this small? The answer is a resounding yes, with some caveats.
Two models
- The Saucelet is the everyday one. It's built for NES-quality platformers at 60 FPS and goes a long time between charges.
- The Saucelet Extra is the bigger, more capable model. It adds a second processor built for heavy number crunching, which wakes up only when a game needs it. It runs more advanced games, and it's where 3D is headed. It aims for 60 FPS but may drop to 30 FPS in complex scenes, and it uses more battery while that extra chip is working.
Games are made in Godot, so one day anyone who can make a Godot game could make a Saucelet game too.
The Pantry
Games come in boxes, and the boxes live in the Pantry, the game shelf on your Saucelet. When you want to play, head to the Pantry and grab the box for Dirt Rush.
How it works
I wrote up the technical side in Under the hood of the Saucelet: the chips, the renderer, the Godot exporter and the research behind the 3D plan. It also spells out what works today and what's still on the roadmap.
When
Spring 2029. I'll keep sharing prototype photos and screens as it comes together.
If there's a Legitsauce game you'd want in your Pantry, tell me which one.