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# When the crank turns, Ancient Loops collides its cards
- URL: https://www.killscreen.com/when-the-crank-turns-ancient-loops-collides-its-cards/
- Published: 2026-08-26T22:39:30.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-26T22:39:29.000Z
- Description: Nicolas Tilly's Playdate sound toy drops levels and fail states for resonances, ritual, and a 30-second performance recorder.
- Author: Kill Screen Staff
- Tags: Playdate, Nicolas Tilly, Sound, music, itch.io, sound art, experimental

The Playdate's crank has spent four years as a punchline, a dare, and occasionally a fishing reel. *Ancient Loops* treats it as a bow. Nicolas Tilly's sound toy, published by EVB Studio and [out now on itch.io](https://evb-studio.itch.io/ancient-loops?ref=killscreen.com) for $4, asks almost nothing of you but rotation: browse a deck of graphic cards with the d-pad, seat them into slots with A and B, then crank to set off collisions and resonances between them.

0:00 

/0:15 

1× 

The release reel for **Ancient Loops*, via [EVB Studio’s Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/p/DZiHhbntLzA/?ref=killscreen.com). Sound on — sound is the point.

There are no levels, no chapters, no fail state, and no unlockable progression. The itch page situates the thing "between a minimal instrument, a ritual machine, and an interactive graphic object," which is a better genre taxonomy than most storefronts manage. A built-in recorder captures performances up to 30 seconds, which quietly reframes what you are doing — not playing a game, giving a recital. Tilly [announced the release](https://www.instagram.com/p/DZiHhbntLzA/?ref=killscreen.com) in June after several weeks of testing and optimization, and has been documenting the build on the [Playdate developer forum](https://devforum.play.date/t/ancient-loops-a-crank-based-sound-experience/25697?ref=killscreen.com).

The crank-as-musical-control category is quietly becoming one of the Playdate's most interesting exports. A hand crank is continuous where buttons are binary; it makes time itself the input, like a music box or a hurdy-gurdy, and it rewards a patience that standard controllers were built to punish. Killscreen has been partial to instruments that ask for no virtuosity since long before this hardware existed — see the [wild audiovisual instrument that requires no skill to play](https://www.killscreen.com/a-new-and-wild-audiovisual-instrument-requires-no-skill-to-play/), and more recently [Indira Ardolic turning game engines into instruments](https://www.killscreen.com/indira-ardolics-live-coding-performances-turn-game-engines-into-instruments/). *Ancient Loops* belongs on that shelf, next to the music boxes.

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