Comment by sotix
Under $1000: A Playdate[0] for $200! It got me to finally make a game[1], which is the entire reason I got into programming yet kept putting off. The restrictions of actual hardware with a slow processor, 1 bit graphics, and 16MB of RAM forced me to scale down the decisions that gave me paralysis previously and prevented me from making anything substantial.
Plus other people’s games are downright fun to play, and it’s probably the most fun I’ve had since the Nintendo DS.
[0]: https://play.date/
Nice game. I've built a somewhat similar one (https://github.com/agentcooper/kolya-vs-babushkas), but yours is more advanced and has better graphics!