There’s been a big meshing of digital and physical board games over the last decade.

Many physical board games have taken on digital form and can be a blast to play with friends at a distance. And other physical board games have incorporated a digital element that we love for extending the gameplay — such as the cooperative games Star Wars: Imperial Assault, Descent: Journeys in the Dark 2nd Edition, and Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition that we love using the app to play the bad side.

Well, today we’ve got something quite different from anything we’ve reviewed in the past.

It’s actually a digitally-driven complete game system called Blinks!

But it doesn’t use any computers, mobile devices, or apps. All the game data and rules are stored in the hex game pieces themselves!

It’s quite an amazing system and we’re excited to tell you all about it.

 

How to play Blinks

There isn’t a singular objective for Blinks because it’s a system of a wide variety of games. Every game you play has its own objectives.

The cool thing is that each hex game piece (Blink) stores the information/rules of one game. And that Blink “teaches” the other Blinks the rules of the game and then they’re all in!

To begin, you turn on all the Blinks by placing them face down and pressing the squishy center on the back. Then you take the Blink of the game you want to play and press and hold the back until it starts flashing in a blue circular pattern.

Then you place that Blink next to all the others and it will send the information to all the other connected Blinks to know what game you’re going to play. They’ll all show circling blue lights while they learn the game.

All the Blinks are magnetic on the sides, so they snap together very easily. You can tell the other Blinks are learning the game because of their rotating lights. Once all the Blinks have learned the game to be played, you’re ready to go.

Depending on the game, you’ll typically start by single- or double-pressing one Blink then the game begins.

The base set comes with 6 games and the expansion set adds 6 more.

Base Set Games:

Mortals – A 2-player game where the hexes are divided by color. Players take turns removing a “Mortal” (hex) from the cluster and placing it in a new location. Once removed from the cluster it goes into “attack” mode and steals 5 seconds of life from the adjoining Mortals. Each Mortal has 60 seconds of life and displays that by how it’s lit up. Once a Mortal dies, it becomes a zombie that accelerates the death of surrounding tiles. The player with the last living Motal is the winner.

Berry – A 2-player game where players try to be the first to score 10 points by making all the Blinks one color on their turn. Players take turns first adding Blinks to a central cluster. Once all Blinks are in the cluster, on their turns players move a Blink to a different location. After placing a Blink, the player clicks each adjacent Blink – advancing it to the next color (Blue, Red, Yellow). Players get points each round by making certain patterns of the same color.

Bomb Brigade – A 1 to 10-player game requiring quick reflexes. Just don’t blow up! All Blinks start connected and after the start-up lights, double-click a Blink to turn it into a Bomb. All neighboring Blinks become shields. Players take turns “sparking” the Bomb by pressing it once. With more sparks, the Bomb lights spin faster. If you click when it’s facing a shield, you’re safe. If you don’t time it with a shield, you “blow up” and are out. The last remaining player wins.

Wham – It’s a game like Whack-a-Mole for 1 or more players. Arrange the Blinks however you’d like and double-click one to begin. Red moles will pop up on the Blinks randomly. The player must click that Blink before the red disappears. Waves of moles will appear and disappear faster as the game progresses. If a mole completely gets underground or the player gets 3 strikes, they lose. If they last for 30 rounds, the garden flashes white and the player wins.

Puzzle 101 – Also for 1 or more players. Blinks being in a cluster and the player double-clicks the sparkling Blink. It will generate a puzzle by all the Blinks having different colored lighting patterns on them. The player must assemble the Blinks in a way that connects all the like-colored sides. A side without a light will have no neighboring piece. When correctly connected, the lights will pulse whereas unsolved sides will remain fully lit.

Fracture – Is a territory-control game for 2 to 6 players. Each player chooses a team color and sets their Blinks to that color by double-clicking until they get to their chosen color. The object is to make your Blinks “happy”. To do so, it must be a) touching at least 2 other Blinks and b) not touching a Blink of its own color. On a turn, the player makes a fracture by separating the cluster into 2 smaller clusters by sliding the smaller clusters apart. Then they reconnect (by sliding) the clusters back together in any way they’d like. The game ends when a player has made all of their own color Blinks happy.

 

Expansion Set Games:

Speed Racer – A game for 1 or more players where a “car” will travel along the “road” of Blinks and the player must keep extending the road for the car to travel on. They extend the road by connecting loose Blinks at the endpoint indicated by the red light. The car goes faster as the game progresses and players try to see how long they can last.

Astro – For 2 to 4 players who try to fill their cargo hold with “ore” before their opponents. Blinks begin all separated and placed around the table to create an “asteroid field”. Each player gets one Blink to be their “ship” and long presses it until it flashes with their first mission color. All players play simultaneously sliding their ship around the attach to asteroids that match their color. Once touched, ore will move from the asteroid to a player’s ship. Then the player can disconnect from that asteroid and keep going. After a ship fills with ore, the Blink celebrates with color. Then the player double-clicks their ship to get a new mission. The first player to complete 6 missions wins.

Flic Flop – Is like shuffleboard for 2 to 3 players. Players take turns sliding their “flickers” towards a “flopper”. If it attaches, it will score for the team color displayed. The first player to 11 points wins.

Honey – Is a game for 1 or more players to create the optimum “hive” for the bees. Each Blink comes in four ranked varieties a Flower, Worker, Brood, or Queen and produces a different type of resource to be used by the hive. Blinks begin as Flowers and will get promoted up during the game based on how they’re placed (first by getting pollen, then converting it to honey, then to jelly, and finally to strength).

Zen Flow – Is a game for 1 or more players to create mesmerizing patterns of color. Single-clicks, double-clicks, and long-clicks all spread colors out in different ways. By clicking Blinks in different ways, various behaviors of color emerge.

Widgets – With this, Blinks become game accessories as well as a variety of mini-games. You can use Widgets to have Blinks become a Dice Roller (six-side dice rolling), a Spinner, a Coin flip, or a Timer. The mini-games are Takeaway Dice, Flip Bet, and Spinomino.

 

Watch Blinks in Action

Still photos and summarize game instructions are hard to get the full sense of how Blinks operate and play. You can see much more clearly how the games play through the videos on the publisher’s website (Move38).

This page has tutorial videos of each game on the page: Blinks Games

As an example, check out this video of:

 

Can the whole family enjoy Blinks?

Blinks is an amazing game system that players of all ages can enjoy playing!

We’re continuously amazed at the “intelligence” of these Blink hex pieces. And we love the tactile experience of pressing the Blinks to get them to respond and connecting them together in different ways.

The variety of games is also impressive. Each game truly is a whole different experience.

Some are race games, some are strategy games, and others are puzzles to solve and optimize.

The tricky part of having such a variety of games is learning each of them. That being said, the instructions book is very easy to understand and the videos on the website are super helpful as well.

When we first got Blinks as a review copy from Move38 we had a little trouble getting them to respond properly. But with how cool they are, we weren’t deterred because they’re fun to play with.

Once we got them up and going in our first game, we were good to go.

With so many games at our fingertips, it’s hard to pick favorites.

Another great thing about Blinks is that there are games for different player counts. This means there are fun puzzle games to play by myself, games to go head-to-head with another player, or games for a whole group.

Blinks are also very portable. They come with a “sushi roll” wrapper — making it easy to hold 6 Blinks in a nice stack to take along with you.

Because they’re an amazing piece of technology, they are a bit pricey. Plus, each Blink comes powered by a single, replaceable battery. They use a Cr2032 coin cell battery, the kind you find in a wristwatch or key fobs.

One of the Blinks in the core set we received arrived with a dead battery. And one other Blink has had a battery run out. Which means there’s also a replacement cost for batteries to consider.

 

How does Blinks score on our “Let’s Play Again” game meter?

As you can see, Blinks is quite an amazing game system that scores well on our “let’s play again” game meter because of how many unique games there are to play within the system. Plus, most games are very quick games — leading to easily playing them over and over.

There’s a bit of a learning curve to each game, but that’s easily remedied by playing again and again.

Move38 is also releasing a new Blinks Epic Adventure expansion set with 6 new games on Kickstarter starting October 20th.

We’d like to thank Move38 for a review copy of Blinks.