Reflix: a laser duel with mirrors

Reflix is a duel with a laser. Each side has an emitter, a target and a small fortress around it — plus three movable mirrors in the zone between you. Whoever hits the other target first wins.

The board

Seven columns (A–G) and nine rows. Rows 1–3 are the opponent's fortress, 7–9 are yours, and 4–6 in between are the ricochet zone. Both emitters sit on the middle column, right on the edges of the zone: yours between rows 6 and 7, firing upwards; his between rows 3 and 4, firing down.

⚠️ An emitter is not a square itself. The beam starts on the first zone square beyond it — D6 for you, D4 for him. Looking for it one row further in is looking in the wrong place.

How the laser travels

A mirror turns it by exactly 90 degrees — never 180. A beam therefore never runs back into itself.
A wall stops it. The shot is over.
A shield lets it through without bending it — but remembers that it passed.
The board edge does not reflect. Running off it is a miss.
If the beam ever closes a loop, the shot ends by itself. No game can hang.

Your fortress

Before the game you place eight objects in your three rows: one target, two walls, three shields and two fixed mirrors. The target may not stand in the row right against the zone.

⚠️ A fortress that no laser could ever enter is rejected. That is not pedantry: without the rule the best strategy would be to wall yourself in completely, and both sides would sit behind their walls until round ten. What is checked is whether the opponent could get through at all with at most three mirrors — how many shields he would have to graze does not matter.

Your move

You pick one of your three movable mirrors and do exactly one thing: you turn it where it stands, or you slide it in a straight line as far as you like — like a rook in chess, without jumping over anything, and never out of the zone.

You may not touch the opponent's mirrors. Your laser may use them. That is the heart of the game: every move is attack and defence at once, because both beams run over the same six mirrors.

After every confirmed move your emitter fires automatically. There is no separate fire button — and therefore no preview of the laser's path before you confirm.

One game, step by step

Four moves from the starting position, with two identical fortresses. Under each board is the path of the laser that has just fired — and that is always the laser of the player who has just moved. Two of the boards are therefore the opponent's.

Move 1The opponent clears the middle column — He slides his mirror out of column D — and fires straight away, because the emitter fires by itself after every move. His beam runs downwards, meets your mirror and is carried off the board sideways. The laser runs off the board.

Move 2Turning is a move as well — You turn your mirror instead of sliding it. Your beam now goes right instead of left — it is never let through. A mirror always turns by exactly 90 degrees. The laser runs off the board.

Move 3A mirror belongs to both beams — The opponent pulls his mirror into the middle of the zone. His beam now takes the other branch — because you turned yours. On the way it passes through your own shield: shields do not bend a beam, they only remember that one went through. The laser runs off the board.

Move 4The open column — Now you slide your mirror aside. Column D is clear all the way up, and the beam runs straight through one of the opponent's shields into his target. The laser reaches the target.

Opposing shields touched: 1

Who wins

A hit is final: you cannot improve it afterwards. If only one side scores, that side wins — even with three contacts against none. If both score in the same round, the smaller contact count wins. If nobody scores in ten rounds it is a draw; there is no scoring by "closeness to the target".

That is where the real decision comes from: do you take the hit that is there now — or spend two more moves on a cleaner one, and risk the opponent finishing first?

⚠️ And that is what the setup phase is for. Two identical fortresses are mirror images: every path you open you open for him as well, and all that decides is whose turn it is. Only a fortress built differently from his turns the mirror into a position.

Play it yourself

Reflix plays against a bot at a fixed search depth, so "medium" is always the same strength. On a phone you tap rather than drag: seven columns leave every square enough room for a thumb.