Flappy Bird may be gone, but Blinky Fish promises to offer just as much quality and depth of gameplay. Emboldened by their monetization efforts in Dungeon Keeper and Plants vs. Zombies 2, Electronic Arts believes that Blinky Fish will be their next tentpole franchise. Although the game is still early in development, EA was kind enough to share a fully playable build with our audience.
Instructions for Blinky Fish build 1.0:
1. Tap or click the game screen directly below these instructions to start playing.
2. Tap or click Blinky (the fish) when he blinks - and ONLY when he blinks - to increase your total score by one point.
3. Tapping or clicking at any other time will reset your points to zero.
Patch Notes for the upcoming Blinky Fish 1.1 release:
- Implemented a visual representation of the user's score.
- The amount of time between each blink is roughly 24 hours. We believe in empowering our customers, however. If users want to shorten this interval they can buy and spend Blinky Bux from the EA microtransaction store to do so. Five Blinky Bux (ten actual dollars) will supercharge the experience and make sure that the next blink happens within one hour.
- Added sound and animation.
- Added an iTunes voting system. When a user attempts to give Blinky Fish a vote for anything lower than a 5/5, their device will discharge a wildly unsafe electrical shock then self-destruct.
- Switched the game from the .png file format to one that can actually be executed to run code and whatnot.
- For three Blinky Bux, players can now enable a Death Threat button which allows them to send a death threat directly to the creator of the game. After a single use, the button disappears. It can be purchased as many times as the user wishes.
- Fixed an error that made it possible to hear Blinky Fish's looping inner monologue about that unbroken six-minute tracking shot at the end of this week's True Detective.
- Released an unbelievably transparent and terrible PR statement chalking up all player complaints about Blinky Fish to disgruntled fans of Flappy Bird. We never addressed the real issues that customers brought up such as our intrusive and clunky implementation of in-game purchases, but we did claim that some people cling to the past and would probably gripe about anything different. Added some bullshit about being very proud of remaining true to the spirit of the original game and bringing the core experience to new audiences.
- Added a reminder that this game's sprites in no way resemble anything you've seen before, and that you should feel bad if the thought had even crossed your mind.
- Since Blinky Fish is published under our Indie Division Corporate Initiative, the in-game news updates will now express a concern over how truly "indie" the game might be. If enough users buy Indie Points each week to prove that it is an indie game, the title will not be deleted.
- Replaced all graphical elements with buttons that urge players to "Unlock This For Just 2 Blinky Bux!"
– Dennis "Corin Tucker's Stalker" Farrell (@DennisFarrell)