Single player games:
1. Wham!: As a more experienced player, I can win fairly consistently with 10 blinks, and very rarely with the full 12. For my own entertainment, this means that Wham is perfectly suited for the 12-blink limitation, since I am not losing any experience by not having more blinks available to me. On the other hand, when showing the game to other people who might be new to the Blinks Game System, or with some (but little) experience, the absolute flexibility of Blink numbers and board setup is ideal to suit the interest level and difficulty desires of a more novice player. The gameplay goal is straight-forward, the player input is simple, the strategy level is low—all of these make the game very approachable for the timid, but also potentially challenging for the bold. The game is engaging and emotionally stimulating even when dead-sober, but also has the potential to become even more boisterous and memorable if sobriety slips during the course of a get-together. Overall, I can agree with sentiments I’ve heard on livestreams that Wham is pretty much the perfect ice-breaker for new players to get introduced to the idea of what blinks are, but at the same time it is still very satisfying for repeat-play for an experienced player when alone.
2. Puzzle 101: In contrast to Wham, Puzzle 101 is a perfect introduction game to new players who might want a more slow, thoughtful experience rather than something high-energy and intense. While the introduction process might be slightly more involved than with the gameplay of Wham, the barrier to entry is still quite low, and the gameplay loop is relatively short. I think this game is a perfect way to get the Blinks Game System’s hooks into new people who are a bit more reserved and less prone to playing competitive experiences. On the other hand, by having exactly 12 blinks, one can run 2 simultaneous games of Puzzle 101, either as a competitive endeavor to see who solves their puzzle first, or as a way to engage 2 new players at once to avoid the boredom of taking turns one at a time to play. Finally, as a long-time player, I can still have a lot of fun playing Puzzle 101 on my own, even if it doesn’t hold my attention for as long as some of the other single-player games I’ve chosen.
3. Dispel: In my mind, I consider this game to be a sort of “Puzzle 202” as far as where it fits in my game library. Whereas Puzzle 101 has a very rigid setup of exactly 6 blinks, Dispel allows a single-player puzzle experience with a flexible difficulty setting, which I really appreciate for trying to introduce the game to people with different levels of interest and desire for intellectual challenge. This game is not something I would lead the way with when introducing a new player, but is a good “next step” game for somebody who has already shown interest in what the system has to offer. Best of all, this is one of the few games in the entire library that regularly challenges me at its hardest difficulty, yet doesn’t feel “unfair” like a 40-blink game of Wham would.
4. The Cloud Game: This is a very new introduction to my library of games, and honestly I didn’t think much of it when I watched the tutorial video, but after playing it… my views have changed. The idea and interface are both very simple, which makes it easy to introduce to a new player—it is a bit simple and whimsical, with pleasing visual appeal like some of the open-ended games such as Zen Flow or Honey, yet it has a specific victory-goal for a sense of purpose. The fact that the game doesn’t care about the number of blinks used nor the formation of those blinks allows a lot of creative replayability as well, and overall I think this game has a lot of potential to capture the imagination of a player who is neither competitive nor overly strategic, but still wants to have a good time. When playing the game myself, I’ve found that I have about a 50/50 split of mindset in trying to find the optimal solution for a shape in as few clicks as possible versus just following a whimsical instinct of clicking seemingly random blinks towards the goal of eventually ending up at a solution practically by mistake!
5. Thalassophobia: Oh my… what a game! I don’t know if I’ve ever been sold on a game idea faster than when watching the tutorial for Thalassophobia. This game is a great example of how a bit of imagination can combine with a simple “abstract” game design to both tell a story and provide an interesting and fun game experience. The simple green and blue LED coloration is very visually pleasing, easy to read/understand, and the gameplay is so simple that it is easy to hook a new player on their first game. This is the game that convinced my wife to get into Blinks, and has consistently been a favorite among people I’ve introduced the system to. Interestingly, after playing around with different blink #s and game board shapes, I’ve come to the conclusion that the game actually becomes too easy if you add too many blinks, since there are more open tiles to explore at any given time if you get blocked off by an unlucky wall of seaweed. In fact, I feel that the game is a bit too lenient in difficulty with its time-limit in general since it is a factor that isn’t directly alterable in-game, so I have to use an outside timer (or widget) to give myself a more restrictive time limit to keep things interesting when playing for myself. On the other hand, the generally lax difficulty level is a boon when introducing the game to new players, so I still think it is a good fit for this 12-blink limit exercise. In fact, I feel that 12 blinks is pretty much exactly the best number for keeping the game ever so slightly challenging, yet impressively “big” enough to hit-home the idea of “more blinks means more possibilities” for a newly introduced player. Finally, compared to many other games in this list, I feel that Thalassophobia is a unique inclusion because each individual game can last several minutes, yet it is still very immediately repayable, which gives this game a somewhat unique role to play when rounding out the overall experience set of this 12-blink restriction exercise.