More of an experiment than a legitimate game… I wanted to see if I could port Anna Anthropy’s simple but brilliant game Chicanery to Blinks. I’m still fine tuning things, but at least the basic game is there on the Master branch.
The goal is simple - be the last player to keep your blink alive by any means necessary.
Better played with 3 or more friends, but you can still play with 2.
On a side note: Mods, should we create new threads like this when we want to share a new game? I was originally just using the Games in active development thread.
Looks cool, I’ll try to play this later today. As for you question of new threads vs the group thread, I think it’s best to do new threads. If anything, we may consider making a new category for this later.
I’ll let you know when I get a chance to try this game out!
Thanks! Let me know how it goes. I finished putting this together after I moved to a new state, so I haven’t had much opportunity to play test it with larger groups yet…
It’s really awesome to see how this game developed from it’s original concept to eventually become the new summer pack game Dynamo. Congratulations @jrcwest on expanding on your original vision to create such a cool and open ended game! Looking forward to picking up a copy and playing it with the family!
@TheGoodSire Thank you so much for the kind words! I do apologize, the link in the original post is out-dated. I can’t update the link there, so I’ll do it in this reply!
Here is my updated repo that has the old prototype and rulebook:
However, most of the recent work is now being done on the official Move38 repo with @danking222 . This codebase includes fancier graphics and overall better polish:
Thanks again for the support, I really hope everyone enjoys the final product, and maybe even creates some of their own games to play with Dynamo
Thanks for the updated links! I always really enjoy looking through the game code since I’m still pretty new to programming myself. I’m definitely impressed by how concise, but elegant the code is! You and @danking222 did a phenominal job of making a big impact with a smaller amount of code!
@TheGoodSire Thanks again for the complements Something I really want to start trying is modding some of the other games - after all, the code is out there for everyone to play with! If you want to get some coding practice in, feel free to make mods for Dynamo! The simplistic code and concept I think would make a great template for additional mechanics.
I definitely agree! Modding does seem like it would be a lot of fun! I feel like with most board games that we play in my family we always find ourselves adapting or tweaking the rules a bit to create our own house rules. I think that one of the awesome things about blinks is the open source nature of the code and that you can tweak and modify games easily to fit your particular preferences. One modding idea that I would have for Dynamo would be a mode that does the exact opposite. To keep the blink alive you have to keep it from being pressed or connected to. This could allow for some interesting keep away style games or something where one person moves around a blink in the center of a table and everyone else tries to slide their blinks at it to make a connection and kill it.
For fun I thought of some games you could play with the modified “anti-dynamode” described above:
Firing squad - One player holds their finger on top of a blink in the middle of the table. They can move it, but only gently enough to not activate a button press. All other players slide blinks from the edge of the table trying to kill the center blink. Whoever lands the killing blow takes the new place in the center.
Ninja - Players hold a blink between two fingers in one hand and place it flat on the table with the top button easily accessable to be pressed. Turns go clockwise around the table. On their turn, players can either reposition their blink on the table, or use their other hand to lung at another players button. Lunges must be in one motion and not change direction. A player being attacked can try to dodge, but only after the attacking player is closer than half the distance from where they started. Once a player lunges they are frozen at the end of their lung until their next turn. The next player can then take their turn immediately after so game play is super fast. Players are eliminated when their blink is pressed.
Minefield - One player close their eyes while the other player arranges all blinks on the table in any configuration they want. The blind player must the quickly press anywhere on the table and hope that they don’t hit a mine. Players alternate roles until someone hits a mine and loses.
Blink roulette - Place blinks in a line one inch apart and try to tap your finger back and forth between them as fast as you possibly can until you trigger a blink. (Think those crazy/stupid finger knife videos on YouTube)
I’d love to see the core function of Dynamo subverted like that. And the idea of preventing a Blink from being pressed or touch sounds like it could have a lot of implications for games. Makes me think a bit of this video that was being passed around recently…
Some other things I had toyed with with things like a “revival” mechanic that brought a dead blink back to life if it stayed connected to a live one long enough, or a feature where you can hold down the button to set the length of the timer before starting the “heartbeat phase”. I might try to still share builds of the game with features like those and just list them as mods to try out.
As I was writing this I just saw the game examples you listed, and they’re all brilliant! I’d love to try some of these out!
@TheGoodSire an additional side note, I just tested out the “roulette” idea, it works pretty well with 4 blinks connected in a “Y” shape The term I know for that style of game is “5 finger fillet”, but I think there are other name variations you could go off of for blinks
It’s pretty cool/interesting to think how such seemingly small changes to game mechanics can open the door to so many new ways to play!
I really like your additional ideas for mods. The idea of blinks coming back to life after connecting to live blinks makes me think of trying something like a remix version of mortals where the game switches back and forth between the standard mode where blinks steal life after each connection and a mode where the game reverses and new connections revive or add life to surrounding blinks.
It would definitely be cool to allow players the option to change the intervals between heartbeats so that they can customize their games a bit. I know that lots of blinks owners have dev kits and can make these changes at the code level if they want, but it would be nice for non-dev kit players to be able to change the mechanic if they want as well. It would also be nice to be able to do it on the go without the hassle of reconnecting your blink and reuploading the code.
I’m glad to hear that the “roulette” idea works reasonably well. I’d heard both the name finger roulette and 5 finger fillet to describe this style of game before. I’ll definitely have to try it out when my blinks get in!
@jrcwest I only have the 2020 Sumer Games Blinks right now (waiting on the 2020 Kickstarter shipment), but I wanted to share this short video of my family playing with Dynamo. We tried passing two, but it was too hectic for the little ones. So much fun to be had with just one Blink - crazy!
@Freddicus thanks so much for sharing that, and glad you’re all having fun with it! Tuning the rules for Electron Drift was a bit tricky for two players, but I’m glad to see it scaled up and plays so well with a family like yours I’d suggest the next time you play to try having everyone hold one hand behind their back and sliding the Dynamo across the table, my wife and I had a lot of fun playing that way!
Hey everyone! I know this thread has gone a year without an update, but over the weekend I finally got the play-test session I had hoped for since the pandemic hit. The game was just as fun as I had hoped it would be with a large (vaccinated) group of friends
That being said, I did find a couple of small things that I wanted to try changing for the sake of a smoother play experience. I forked the official Move38 repo and pushed a few of them here:
CHANGES MADE:
Changed transition to “PLAY” state to occur whenever button is down, rather than wait for a full single click: This helps avoid instances where players immediately start button mashing and the game refuses to leave “READY”.
Moved color change function into “DEAD” state: This was kind of necessary if the above change was going to take place. I’m unsure if I like this change or not, since Dynamo currently boots into the “READY” state.
Long press replaced double click to transition to “READY” state: This one felt kind of necessary, as we would occasionally run into scenarios where players would end up double clicking and resetting their dynamo without realizing they had even died. The long press is a more deliberate action.
The term I know for that style of game is “5 finger fillet”, but I think there are other name variations you could go off of for blinks
So much fun to be had with just one Blink - crazy!