Factsheet

Developer:
kunabi brother
Based in Vienna, Austria

Founding date:
2013

Website:
blekgame.com/

Press / Business Contact:
contact@kunabi-brother.com

Social:
twitter.com/KunabiBrother

Releases:
December 3, 2013

Price:
$4.99

Address:
Museumsplatz 1/1/2
1070 Vienna, Austria

Description

We are two brothers. Under the moniker “kunabi brother” we work together to make things fun and worthwhile.

After we both got a degree in computer programming, we focused on different things. My brother Davor is largely interested in sound. He creates software algorithms for composition and sound transformation. His music is published by Crónica media-label. Along with my programming work, I have written short stories for various anthologies and literary magazines. My novel “Emil” was published in 2002. Besides, I know how to build and true a bicycle wheel.

First time we considered making games together was in the fall of 2012. After a few ideas and prototypes, we met in a Greek restaurant in March 2013. My brother seemed pretty calm on that day. While I was ordering, he just looked out the window and smiled. I knew he was really into calligraphy and haikus at that time, “maybe a bit too much”, I pondered to myself. And then after a while my brother placed his iPad on the table between us. All it showed was a white background and a small blue circle on it. As soon as I drew my first line, I smiled too.

"Blek" is our first game.

Blek

Blek redefines boundaries of gesture creation on a touch screen and uses elegant and unique puzzles to unify the two hemispheres of the player's brain in a tricky quest. Every drawn gesture keeps repeating itself and in doing so it moves around looking for solutions.

Blek is an open-ended experience with deep, bauhaus-informed design; it offers a space where logics and creativity as well as personal style and temper get to play with each other.

A simple goal, to shape a line that collects all colored circles avoiding black holes on its route, can be a challenging one, but through minimalistic, beautiful design Blek reminds you that all you need to do is to play [with] it. There are no specific moves that you need to master. To every level countless solutions exist, from delightfully simple to exceptionally deep and complex, yet always elegant.

Blek contains voice sounds by the composer and vocalist Erin Gee.

Videos

Blek Trailer YouTube, .mp4

Images

download all screenshots & photos as .zip (8MB)
Blek-Level_2.png
Blek-Level_3.png
Blek-Level_4.png
Blek-Level_5.png
Blek-New-1.png
Blek-New-2.png
Blek-Screen-02.png
Blek-Screen-03.png
Blek-Screen-04.png
Blek-X-Architecture.jpg
Blek-X-Cafe.jpg
Blek-X-Denis-Mikan.jpg
Blek-zDevelopment-screen-unity.png

There are far more images available for "Blek", but these are the ones we felt would be most useful to you. If you have specific requests, please do contact us!

Awards & Recognition

  • "2014 Winner" - Apple Design Award
  • "Winner: Best Mobile Game" - Indie Prize, Casual Connect Europe, Amsterdam 2014
  • "Winner: Best Game" - Content Award Vienna 2013
  • "Winner: Excellence in Innovation" - International Mobile Gaming Awards 2014
  • "The Best, Most Elegant iPhone Games 2013" - The New Yorker
  • "The 12 Best Games for the iPad" - Kotaku
  • "10 Must-Play Video Games Of 2013" - Fast Company

Selected Articles

  • "The game looks like modern art and plays extraordinarily well. Beautiful on so many levels but so uncomplicated and uncluttered, Blek is a perfect representation of touch-screen play. It’s one of the year’s best iPad games."
    - The New York Times, nytimes.com
  • "The genius of Blek's design is that it channels that weird sense of freedom you get from helping a doodle unfold - the freedom that comes of kicking yourself loose from life's formal structures"
    - Christian Donlan, eurogamer.net
  • "One of the greatest joys of Blek is experimenting with your approach."
    - Kyle VanHemert, WIRED.com
  • "Blek is the soul of touch screen gaming, a perfect representation of what this sort of play is all about."
    - Mike Fahey, kotaku.com
  • "Playing Blek is pure intuition, not a puzzler so much as an act of freeform creation. That’s quite a feat within a genre which can feel so stiff and prescribed. Blek understands that reaching a puzzle’s solution isn’t the only joy – that the journey to a Eureka moment is entertainment in and of itself."
    - Edge, Edge-Online.com
  • "More than any game I encountered this year, Blek captures the spirit of play. It’s the sort of game you’d want to put on a space probe: when the aliens play it, they’ll take a liking to us right away."
    - Joshua Rothman, The New Yorker
  • "Blek ist ein minimalistisches Kunstwerk [...] Fesselnd und faszinierend wie lange kein Tablet-Titel mehr."
    - Carsten Görig, SPIEGEL ONLINE
  • "Das genialste iPad-Spiel 2013 kommt aus Österreich [...] Erwarten Sie also nicht nur gefordert, sondern auch fasziniert zu werden."
    - Zsolt Wilhelm, derStandard.at
  • "Une petite merveille"
    - Denis Talbot, Le Journal de Montréal
  • "Stroke of genius [...] The magic of Blek is not only the logic behind solving the puzzles; it's in watching my creativity come to life with precision."
    - John Polson, IndieGames.com
  • "... it's a wonderful experience. It's free-flowing and smooth, and exactly the sort of game you could use to introduce someone who's never picked up an iPad to the joys of touchscreen gaming."
    - Harry Slater, pocketgamer.co.uk
  • "Blek is a beautfiul minimalist puzzle game"
    - Carter Dotson , 148apps.com
  • "It’s such a simple game, but utterly, utterly brilliant. [...] You feel like an artist while playing."
    - Chris Priestman, Indiestatik.com

Team & Repeating
Collaborators

Denis Mikan
Production, Business

Davor Mikan
Game Design, Development

Philipp Papapostolu
App Store Screenshots, Print

presskit() by Rami Ismail (Vlambeer) - also thanks to these fine folks