The Game
Reactor is an intense and competitive contest where each player must react to the alarms of the reactor core before their opponents. Played with Blinks, the world's first smart tabletop game system, Reactor is a high-speed battle that takes advantage of the distributed intelligence of Blinks pieces to create a constantly shifting gameboard and dynamic difficulty levels. Originally created at the Global Game Jam 2020, Reactor takes inspiration from competitive fighting games, and distills them down to an intense contest of reflexes and concentration.
Read More about Reactor by Move38 Game Designer, Dan King
The Designers
Reactor is the first Blinks game by Spencer Kee, a senior software engineer, and Aaron Santiago, a freelance game designer and developer. The game was prototyped at the Global Game Jam 2020, and was initially an adaptation of a simple card game. But both Spencer and Aaron, as fighting game enthusiasts, pushed the design more into the realm of competitive gaming. For Spencer, this is his first completed software project in the gaming space, and benefits from of years of jamming and development experience. Aaron has a history as a game designer, developer, and prototyper, but Reactor is his first foray into tabletop. Both Spencer and Aaron were drawn to the challenge of developing for smart tabletop at the jam, and their game shows how developers can apply simple mechanics to the complex Blinks system to create unique gameplay experiences.