Zen Flow is a relaxing way to enjoy your Blinks. Calming waves of color will sweep your Blinks in eye-catching patterns. Arrange them anyway you like and find your zen. As Ashton of Shelfsiders put it, "Sit back and enjoy the lightshow with the chillest Blink of all!"

We caught up with Lead Game Designer, Dan King to discuss the history of Zen Flow.

Describe your game/gameplay/why people would enjoy this game?

Zen Flow isn't a game in the sense of end goals, objectives, winners and losers. It's an experience and its just very calming watching the colors dance across the Blinks in a meditative wave.

2. What is the Origin Story of Zen Flow?

When we first had to ship the original developer kits, I was an intern in summer 2018.

We needed test code to ship with, just a demo of the basic Blinks Functions and what you'd call an Attract Mode for the Blinks. It needed to react to all types of interaction: single, double, triple, long press and show the colors and effects.

We were packing materials for the developer kits and I was able to avoid packing to work on the code. Even Jon jumped in with amazing ideas for animations and improvements. We slowed down the communication between Blinks to create the effect of calm waves and added sparkles. What we ended up is this simple yet complex beautiful thing.

It remains one of the most popular Blinks experiences and is something that many people return to regularly. We felt like we had to include it in the new Blinks Game Systems. I think Zen Flow really captures the magic of Blinks. Remarkable, Emotional, and Intuitive. Reviewers too are drawn to it—it's been called the "Chillest Blink" of all.

Fun Facts:

Fun Fact 1:

I think it's interesting to understand how necessity leads to creation, and intentional or not, hit games come from this process. Not sure if you know but Wii Sports was invented first as an internal suite of tools to test and demo the new motion controller. It became the game that absolutely everyone wanted a Wii for. Even non-gamers were enthralled by the simplicity of using the controllers for basic games like Bowling and Tennis.

I'll say it at the risk of sounding silly, Zen Flow is the Wii Sports of Blinks.

Fun Fact 2: Since it was original just a demo it was Unnamed. Through working with Jon on it, he suggested Zen Flow and so in searching for the right label art we were enamored with this Japanese Wave Pattern. It's known as Seigaiha and has been used in art and textiles for centuries.