Mirrors & Lasers: From Pen And Paper To A Space Strategy Video Game

Mirrors and Lasers is an indie 2d strategy game developed by Mickaël Bergeron Néron and Milan Andjelkovic. Set in space in the future, two or more players must, turn by turn, use mirrors, items, and augmentations to direct lasers and hit the enemy ships.

I still remember 25 years ago giving a presentation in first grade of elementary school. In this presentation, I said I wanted to make games as an adult. 25 years later and that's what I'm doing.

There's this game my brother and I used to play with pens and paper. We'd call it “Mirrors and Lasers”. You can watch the video below for a visual explanation of the game, or you can keep reading.

If you didn't watch the video, here's how the game plays: Two players each have a laser-shooting spaceship on a grid. The ships are facing either up, left, down, or right. Turn by turn, we'd place one diagonal mirror anywhere on the grid. The goal: to place mirrors in a way such that a laser starting from our own ship hits the other ship (you can imagine that the lasers can bounce off the mirrors).

Mirrors and Lasers started as a simple pen and paper game!

We'd play this together, or each with our own group of friends at school during recess. It was fun, challenging, and we had some variations with bombs, walls, and being able to move our ships to some degree, but it remained a simple, very limited, pens and paper game.

Then, a few years ago, a friend and I teamed up to make a video game version of it. We added a ton of elements, added augmentations (single-use powers), items, and special abilities, made a single-player campaign mode as well as a multiplayer skirmish mode, and much more (if you haven't already, you can watch the video above for a trailer of the current state of the game).

A lot of features were added for the video game version of Mirrors and Lasers. This includes adding single-use powers, items, special abilities, a single-player campaign mode featuring 45 unique missions as well as a multiplayer skirmish mode, and much more.

Although we're very happy with the progress so far, we're now looking for some funding to help finance the final stage of the project. That's why we're launching a Kickstarter from August 13th to September 11th. The money collected will help hire freelancers for sounds, music, translation to four additional languages, and marketing, in addition to paying for our own efforts considering we're now both working part-time to finish this game.

Ultimately, if we reach our final milestone of C$ 75000, we'll develop a mobile version of the game in addition to adding content to the current version of the game such as new achievements and maps, an aiming system (a system to help visualize the path a laser will take), and even organizing online tournaments.

If we reach our final milestone of C$ 75000, we'll build a mobile version of the game in addition to adding content to the current version of the game such as new achievements and maps, an aiming system, and much more.

If you are interested in this project, you can pledge from as little as 5$ for minimal rewards, or up to 250$ for maximal rewards, which include naming of the 10 ships in the game, becoming a beta tester of the game, receiving a signed Mirrors and Lasers poster, and more. If you want to pledge, please follow our Kickstarter here, or if you don't want to pledge but still want to follow the development of the game, you can join our Discord server here. If you are interested in this project, please also share abundantly, as this will greatly help us reach our funding goals.

Ultimately, this is a project I hold close to heart, having played it with pens and paper with my brother and my friends during childhood, and I'm incredibly happy to have reached a point where the game will soon be ready for the world to enjoy.

You may follow our Kickstarter or watch the video above to see more game elements.

Thank you for reading, and we hope to see you in Mirrors and Lasers.