Board games with pieces that respond to your touch, react to one another, and think for themselves. They won't take over the world, but they might try :)
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Shipping Update, PAX Unplugged, and a Gift
over 4 years ago
– Wed, Dec 04, 2019 at 01:16:52 AM
Hi Kickerstarter Backers,
Move38’s been non-stop since our last update and we hope you are getting ready for the holiday season. A couple of weeks ago, we were thrilled to see 90% of you fill out your surveys. Within 2 hours of sending out the survey, we had an additional 200 orders of Blinks and it kept going from there. For the 10% of you that haven’t be sure to check your inbox or fill out the survey here. Alright, let’s get to the update
Shipping
The news you are all waiting for! First of all, the news that we got all of these extra orders of Blinks is great, but it also presented us with a dilemma. We were presented with two options for fulfillment. We could wait and ship all Blinks together in the new year – or, we could get the first batch of Blinks on a plane and start fulfilling in the order you’ve backed our campaign, keeping fingers crossed, making deliveries for the holidays. We decided that we should do rolling shipping and get them out the door as fast as we can.
We know that the holidays are a special time and that having Blinks for the holidays would be a game changer (sorry, not the time to be punning). Additionally, we know some of you might not mind if Blinks are a gift in the new year. We’ll fulfill in the order that Blinks were backed, but if you would like to give your spot in line to one of our other patient Backers, we’ll reward you for your generosity. Those who volunteer to wait for their fulfillment until the second batch will get a Limited Edition Blinks Ikura (EE•koo•rah) Orange Sushi Roll Case 🍣🍊😲.
(Volunteer yourself in the comments below)
PAX Unplugged + Playmats
We are excited to be attending PAX Unplugged in Philadelphia this week to show everyone how far this has come. We’re setting up a Blinks Arcade featuring 6 of the 12 games that arrive at launch. If you happen to be in attendance, come say hello and play some games at Booth #3837
We also designed Blinks Playmats for some of our games. If you think they’re as great as we do and want to have your own Blinks arena, we’ll make them available from Inked Gaming (our lovely PAX neighbors).
Again we couldn’t have done this without you and are so so ready to have Blinks in your hands. You’ll hear from us again in the next 2 weeks with shipping updates, as we begin bring Blinks to your doorsteps.
We hope you have a truly wonderful holiday season.
Jon and the Move38 Team.
Discount for Developers, Limited Supply
over 4 years ago
– Sun, Nov 03, 2019 at 09:56:00 AM
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
Big News – Video Update
over 4 years ago
– Mon, Oct 28, 2019 at 02:49:31 AM
Hey Backers,
Wanted to deliver this news with a video... enjoy!
Production Update, New Games + Instructions, Paying it forward
over 4 years ago
– Thu, Oct 03, 2019 at 01:59:43 AM
Hey Backers,
It’s October and time for the latest update on the long journey to bring you your Blinks. In our last update we mentioned a ship date of November, which is right around the corner. We are working around the clock to make Blinks arrive for these holidays, as everyone has been incredibly supportive of our dedication to delivering a reliable, quality product.
🏖🦶🚑
In fact, this weekend when I decided to take time off the clock to bring our dog to the beach, I ended up in the hospital getting 12 stitches in my foot in the process of protecting our dog from a dog fight. Note to self, rushing in to save someone/something you love from a dangerous situation is, in itself, a dangerous situation.
Hardware is Hard
I’ve shared glimpses of the rigor that we have put Blinks through, and even that glimmer surely has you understanding that hardware is, in fact, hard. We ran 12,000 PCBs at the end of last year to make our delivery date on time, and once we received the first 600 units, we realized that something had gone awry. The communications in our final engineering prototypes (nearly 100 units) all worked with a level of communication that was not met since. It has been a methodical hunt to create tools and procedures to quickly and accurately find and replace all bad parts that were placed (this is a grueling amount of work. work that should only be done once). The most frustrating part about this process is that the single non interchangeable component in our electronics is the one that is not being delivered to spec. We’ve found that the assembly is great but that the quality of a single part is not. If you are curious to know more about the technical nitty gritty, check out the following dev-kit backer update.
A single PCB running custom firmware with 6 surrounding Blinks to test the communications
Game Instructions
Last update, we shared 4 of our illustrated instructions and received some very helpful feedback from you all. It was all positive feedback and some critical eyes that helped us shorten texts and offer clearer diagrams for games with ambiguities. To complete this step, here are the additional 10 games created. Yes, I said 10… In the process of figuring out the communications solutions, Dan, our lead game designer created some more games and 3 of which are playable with the Widgets Blink that comes in the Social Pack (12 Blinks). Take a look at the instructions here:
We welcome and value your feedback on them, as they are the last item to go to print.
Indie Custom Hardware: The Do’s, The Don’ts, and the Fun
In the spirit of paying it forward, a week from tomorrow, Thursday, October 10th, I’ll be at Indiecade in LA moderating a panel on how to build a new hardware gaming platform with an incredible group of founders and game inventors. If you are in LA, you should join, and be sure to come up and introduce yourself as one of our Kickstarter Backers. It means so much to us when we get to meet in person, and it is a perfect opportunity to see just how far everything has come since we started. Get your tickets today!
Throwback to the first games of Fracture being played at IndieCade
We'll have news and updates after IndieCade. Thanks for rooting us on.
Playfully yours,
Jonathan + the Move38 team
Production Updates, Game Instructions, and IndieCade Details
over 4 years ago
– Wed, Sep 11, 2019 at 09:17:07 PM
Hey Backers,
Lots to share and we’re looking for some feedback from this update as well. In this update, I’ll cover the progress on production, new creations making their way into your Blinks sets (you betta’ believe, we’ve been refining the product while in parallel solving the technical hurdles), and lastly the next events you can find us at. Read on👇
Production Update
In our last update, we shared the communication issue we found during the pilot production, and we’ve been hard at work to get this resolved on the entire batch of Blinks, 12,000 units. Catching the issue before shipping was a huge sigh of relief, but the hard work of fixing the issue continues. We’ve built a number of custom jigs, test firmware, including parameters for visual inspection under a microscope. Each of these has stepped us closer to a reliable way to ensure quality production of Blinks; however, the process of making these tests and validating them has been arduous to say the least. The ship time from factory to the US is 2 weeks and another week for customs, with additional transportation to our warehouse, sorting and shipping, puts this process closer to 6 weeks. We have a timeline to have Blinks arriving the first week of November and are working hard to meet that deadline.
Game Instructions
While we’ve been refining games also took the opportunity to write and illustrate clear instructions for all games. Due to delays, we’ve had a chance to iterate on the instructions a lot and will include them in the box. We’d like your input on our instructions before they go to print. While these games are all quick and easy to pickup, we want to make sure anyone can open a box of Blinks and know how to play out of the box.
Keeping a consistent visual language for all 12 games
Here are are the first 4 PDFs, Mortals, Fracture, Berry, Bomb Brigade. They are hosted on Dropbox and if you sign in, you can even comment on the files for us to respond or fix a specific gaff in our instruction making. We even illustrated instructions for WHAM! (aka Whack-A-Mole) which arguably needs no instruction at all 😁
WHAM! in Action
What started as one of our simplest games, has become a play tester favorite and we added quite a bit of nuance to really make this one, dare I say, addictively fun. An aspect of Blinks that we love so much is that even a simple game can be played in so many ways. The different arrangements of Blinks creates a game of different difficulties. The way that moles are programmed to appear based on neighboring Blinks makes unique maps for Whack-A-Mole a fun way to see how good you really are. Note: the 2 year olds really love the 3 Blink version of WHAM 👶
IndieCade 2019
Blinks got their first push at IndieCade in 2016, when they were essentially in the larval state of development. Fracture was an IndieCade Finalist. We were honored to be among some incredibly innovative and beautiful independent games and game designers. The community has seen Move38 form, grow, and even co-host a game jam where Berry and Bomb Brigade were brought to life. This year I agreed to host a panel. I couldn’t be more excited for around the creation of new hardware platforms, specifically in the game space. If you haven’t gathered from our updates, hardware isn’t easy, and I want to help others follow in our footsteps, avoid some of the traps, there are many, and get excited about the possibilities that lie ahead for this new medium for play.
If you are in Los Angeles, grab tickets quick before they sell out. The panel will be featuring Yuting Su (Founder of Thinker-Tinker), Em Lazer-Walker (Microsoft & Alt Ctrl Wizard), and Jérôme Scholler (Co-Founder of Osmo). Lastly, don’t miss us on the Friday night of IndieCade as Blinks will be part of Night Games (this is before the embargo lifts, so for your ears only!)
