page_title: Blek
section_title: Reception
hierarchical_section_title: Blek / Reception
caption_attribution_description: English: Asset from Hundreds video game
context_page_description: Blek is a 2013 puzzle video game for iOS and Android by Kunabi Brother, a team of brothers Denis and Davor Mikan. The player draws a snakelike black line that recurs in pattern and velocity across the screen to remove colored dots and avoid black dots. It is minimalist in design, features excerpts of Erin Gee, and takes inspiration from Golan Levin, the Bauhaus, and Japanese calligraphy. The brothers designed the game as a touchscreen adaptation to classic game Snake and worked on the game for over six months. It was released in December 2013 for iPad, and was later released for other iOS devices and Android.
  The game received positive reviews, and critics praised the game's degree of unrestricted play. The game reached the top of the Apple App Store charts several months after its release. It received a 2014 Apple Design Award, and has sold over one million copies.
context_section_description: Blek received "generally favorable reviews", according to video game review score aggregator Metacritic. Though the game first released in December 2013 to little fanfare, critics "widely praised" the game, and it became popular in April 2014. It appeared in the top ten paid App Store games chart in April, reached the top by May, and was listed into June. Blek received a 2014 Apple Design Award and was featured in their Indie Game Showcase. While it had sold 30,000 copies by February 2014, upon being featured in the App Store, it sold 500,000 copies by May, and over a million copies by June. Edge compared its aesthetic to iOS puzzle game Hundreds. Reviewers praised the game for the amount of freedom it affords its players.
   
  Edge called Blek "a thing of elegant, intuitive beauty". They compared it to a "modernist, freeform, touchscreen" Snake, albeit much calmer, and described Blek as less a puzzle game than "pure intuition" and "an act of freeform creation" that privileged the process of experimentation over the goal of solving puzzles. The magazine wrote that the trial and error, muddling process of refining one's stroke led to delightful discoveries that turned "maddening" complex prospects into "natural" solutions. In a piece for Polygon, Rod Green compared Blek to Tetris and Threes! as a "simple premise, beautifully executed" that lends towards imitation, and added that the game would be harder to "clone" than the others due to its handmade levels. Kotaku's Mike Fahey called it "the most brilliant iPad game" he played in 2013.
  Christian Donlan of Eurogamer wrote that the game is personal. He compared its core mechanics to handwriting and doodling, noting that the recurring stroke also captures the player's "speed and hesitancy". Donlan wrote that the game is "lots of kinds of puzzle games" as the player may read negative spacing or try to predict the motion of a reflected stroke, and compared the later stages to mazes or minefields. Shaun Musgrave of TouchArcade noted that the game's difficulty increases around level 20, where player precision is required, and considered this part a low point. He felt that the small margin of error in later levels lent towards frustration. Jared Nelson of the same website wrote that the game was uniquely suited for the touchscreen.
caption: Edge compared the game's aesthetic to Hundreds, another iOS puzzle game
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