The makers of FTL and Into the Breach have cooked up yet another sharp, tightly tuned experience—and this time it leans hard into that classic arcade vibe.
Until now, Subset Games has released two games, and both stand out in their own way. While “perfection” isn’t something art can really promise, these titles are undeniably distinctive. FTL mixes humor and intensity as you steer a ship through the galaxy in short jumps, watching a range of ship stats—sometimes while accidentally throwing your crew out into the void—and battling robotic attackers that can, quite literally, punch through your hull. Into the Breach is a strategy title built around positioning, where you control three units in close, turn-based skirmishes that even smarter players than me have said don’t feel out of place in the games pages of a newspaper.
So when I heard Subset was working on something new, I assumed the heart of it would be part order and part chaos—but beyond that? I had no clear idea. At this point, I wasn’t sure what Subset could ultimately pull off. Then I learned their upcoming game would be a platform exclusive, tailored specifically for the Playdate. As Roy Orbison famously put it, mercy.
In any case, Subset’s new release is called Fulcrum Defender. It arrives with Playdate’s second season, when fresh games show up on your device about once a week, and anticipation is a big part of the fun. It makes sense that Subset is kicking things off here, since nearly everyone who’s played FTL and Into the Breach remembers them fondly. Still, Fulcrum Defender looks like a completely different kind of design. It delivers an arcade feel, and it leans into quick reactions.
The Playdate is the handheld with the crank, and Subset commits to that idea fully. Fulcrum Defender feels like a mash-up of Asteroids and Tempest. You’re positioned at the center of the screen while enemies converge from every direction, moving through 2D space as they try to line up with your location. The standout mechanic is aiming: you rotate the crank to direct your shots, then fire by either pressing up on the d-pad for a single shot or down for an entire clip.
From the start, Subset’s priorities are easy to see. Your first clips begin small and take a little while to recharge, so you have to keep channeling your aggressive instincts while managing your limited resources. You also have shields, tracked by a meter that uses one of Subset’s familiar, functional UI styles—giving you a finite buffer to let attackers slip through and affect you.
At first, though, it turns into a really odd sort of arcade experience, mainly because everything kicks off so slowly. For the first minute or so, opponents drift forward at a relaxed pace, and so do your projectiles. I caught myself falling into a rhythm: aim a shot at a distant threat, fire, then quickly adjust to take down another far-off enemy. That pattern reminded me of Paperboy. You place your shots in a similar way, like setting those folded newspapers just right, and then you have to trust they land where you intended—because by the time they do, you’ll already be dealing with something else.
One of the mid-game adversaries shrinks the play space.
The key shift is that Fulcrum Defender ramps up fast. Defeat enemies to earn levels and unlock new weapons or upgrades, and early on you’re often offered meaningful trade-offs—bigger clips, faster reloads, increased bullet speed, or combinations of those benefits. Enemies steadily grow more complicated, moving from empty squares that rush straight at you and can be stopped with a single hit to filled squares that require multiple shots, and to circular foes that can circle you, closing in as they force you to think about a very different kind of target.
This is just the start of both the upgrades and the variety of opponents, and the game expands its ideas while keeping the internal pacing balanced. Once you learn that a filled enemy takes more than one hit to bring down, you’ll often notice new threats aren’t totally unfamiliar—even when they appear for the first time. Differences in size and speed are straightforward to grasp, and you’ll quickly realize that even shots that don’t outright destroy an enemy can still shove them back, giving you a beat to plan.
Weapon upgrades add even more difficult decisions. (And yes, there’s an FTL nod.)
Then there’s the weapon lineup. Shotguns that can hit a wider range of foes. Shotgun-style options that scatter tiny mines as they go. A flail or a mini-turret—both operated through the crank. Add in the need to monitor your main weapon’s cooldown, and you’re left with plenty to juggle.
It’s also interesting to see Subset approach gameplay with different limitations and a fresh focus. For much of the time, it feels like the team is experimenting with how much variety players can absorb inside a fairly simple foundation—and that foundation scales impressively well. Whether you’re the kind of player who prefers mapping a careful, ideal path through upgrades, or someone who happily builds a messy mix of enhancements and weapons just to see how they interact, the game accommodates both. There’s structure, and there’s disorder—two of the driving forces behind Subset’s design philosophy.
Even better is the tightness and clarity that lets the most extreme unlocks and enemies really stand out. This whole space-brawl could almost be imagined playing out on a scientific calculator screen. The crank feels responsive right away, becoming second nature quickly, and the growing ring that shows how close you are to your next level-up gives the experience a pleasing newsprint sort of charm. There’s already a lot to enjoy here before you even dig into deeper plans and combo management.
One last thing: each run lasts ten minutes—unless you go down earlier. Make it to the ten-minute mark, and your session ends. That structure gives the waves you face a satisfying sense of accumulating weight, while also creating familiarity as you move past the two-minute point and then the five-minute point. If you’ve ever tried running—especially with the Couch to 5K app—you’ll recognize the mental scaffolding that a time limit can create. Hopefully, a future update might add a halfway warning and include some encouraging words from Sanjeev Kohli.
Oh, and one more note about the ten-minute limit. On my third attempt at Fulcrum Defender, I was defeated with the timer showing 9.59. If that doesn’t prove this is a Subset project, I don’t know what would.
A copy of Fulcrum Defender was provided for review by Playdate.