After turning 30, I decided to make a little app that helps me take a moment to reflect on the preciousness of time. So, let me introduce you to memento mori, a little Playdate app that helps you visualize your estimated life expectancy and the time you have left. The name "memento mori" is a Latin phrase that translates to "remember that you die".
This little app offers a gentle perspective on your estimated lifespan, using statistical data. After a quick initial setup, it displays:
- Your estimated life expectancy.
- The approximate time you might have remaining in years, months, weeks, and days.
- The percentage of your estimated life already lived.
It also has a neat "lockscreen" mode! ✨ In this mode, the screen update rate slows right down to 1 frame per second (FPS), and the Playdate's automatic screen lock is disabled. This lets the display stay on continuously while sipping minimal battery power 🔋
You can grab the compiled app from itch.io. If you enjoy tinkering with code, feel free to download the source code from this repository and compile it yourself using pdc 🧑💻
This project is just a simple Playdate app built using the official Playdate SDK. It's written in Lua and uses the Playdate's built-in graphics and input libraries. I've done my best to make the code readable, adding comments here and there to explain things. 📝 The code is separated into different files / folders to hopefully keep things organized. The main files / folders are:
main.lua: The main entry point of the application. It initializes the app and handles the main game loop.scenes: This folder contains the different scenes of the app, including the main scenegame.luaand the intro scenes for the setup process (seeintro).objects: This folder contains the different reusable bits used in the app, like the battery indicator, the button layout, the clock, and the overview object.
If you find this little app or its source code helpful, maybe consider supporting my work? 😊 You can find me on Ko-fi or leave a small donation via itch.io. Any support truly helps me keep tinkering and hopefully improving things! Thank you! 🙏
- LuaCATS: Types for the Playdate SDK API.
- WHO Data: The life expectancy data comes courtesy of the World Health Organization. I did some minor tidying and put it into a Lua table (check the
datafolder!). Unfortunately, I can't seem to find the original source link anymore, sorry about that! - UI Sounds: The lovely UI sounds are from Pixabay. I did some minor editing to make them fit just right. You can find the sounds in the
source/assets/soundsfolder. Apologies, but I downloaded several sounds before picking the final ones, so I don't have the specific links handy anymore. - ADPCM: Used the ADPCM encoder tool from Matt Sephton. Thanks, matt! 🙏