Even when it’s just team deathmatch in a dark, smelly room inside the local roller rink, laser tag is awesome. So imagine how cool it would be if you could liberate it, and play an open-source version wherever you want with game-types you made up. It would be like a video game in real life! Or paintball without the pain!
That’s the dream Skirmos is trying to bring to life with its Kickstarter for a completely programmable laser-tag platform. Round up a half-dozen of these and some friends and the possibilities are endless. You can play Capture the Flag in your buddy’s backyard with power-ups the change the colour of your gun, or play King of the Hill in the middle of town; an idea that’s equal parts bad and rad.
Of course, there are like a bajillion caveats. The first is that this is (currently) an unfunded Kickstarter, so this may never actually exist. And, even if it does, an early adopter pack with one gun (i.e. half a useful set) goes for $US100, so you’ll be hard-pressed to round-up a decent team. Not to mention the real potential here is programming your own games which involves, well, programming your own games.
If you can hop over all those hurdles though, Skirmos is every laser-taggin’ kid’s wildest dreams brought to life, and that’s awesome if they can pull it off. So start thinking up your custom game types now. Or just stick to video games. I mean, who needs to move anyway. [Kickstarter via Reddit]