That’s actually what I was doing.
What I was doing differently that is SLIGHTLY different is I’m doing it in iOS. Downloaded to my cloud drive then went to the Playdate side load site and when I try to select it it just won’t accept it. I’ve done this same thing with several other Playdate games with no problem.
The only difference I see is when I DL other games they tend to be a .PDX.zip file and this one just comes down as a .pdx
Weird….