LaserLand: the laser-tag park that never switched off

Seven lands around the Main Gate

You start at the Main Gate, the one safe place in the park, under a giant Ferris wheel. Around it lie seven lands: the Tangle (jungle), the Freeze (ice), the Cinders (lava), Riptide (shipwreck beach), Sparkstrike (neon city), Starfall (under the stars) and the Midway (the fairground). Each has its own places to find, its own drones and its own big one to beat.

Every park is built from its park code. The same code makes the same park on every computer, so two friends with the same code are standing in the same world, and “the volcano is north-east of the gate” is something one kid can tell another.

Keystones: every colour is a key

Your tagger always has its white beam, so you can never be left without a laser. Every place in the park has a crate, and the crates hold keystones — new colours for your beam, and each one opens something.

🟡 Jolt powers dead machinery: one shot at the grey cabinet under a tram station and the monorail runs. 🟣 Kick fired at the ground throws you into the air. 🔴 Blaze burns away the thorns grown over a crate. 🔵 Chill freezes a lava pool solid so you can walk to the prize in the middle. 🟢 Bloom wakes a dead planter into a climbing vine.

🔑Nothing is ever locked for good: a locked crate is one crate among about forty, and the keystones themselves come out of open ones.

The monorail

A loop of elevated track about three kilometres long runs through every land, with fourteen tram stations on it. Switch it on with a Jolt keystone and the train runs for good: ride it from station to station, or climb a station's spiral up to the track and walk the loop above the treetops, where you can see everything.

Portals into the live arena

Rings of light stand in every land, and a pair flank the Main Gate. Step through any of them and you are in whichever LaserTag arena is live right now, together with everybody else who walked through a portal in the same five minutes.

People, drones and friendly battles

The park is full of people with names over their heads, and some of them are other players. Walk up to anybody and press S: you can say hello, ask about the park (you always get a true, useful hint), give 10 coins, ask them to follow you, or challenge them to a battle.

A battle lasts a minute, in one of two places. In the Range targets pop up on a wall and the quickest eye wins — nobody shoots anybody. In the Pit you shoot and hide behind cover, and every hit is a point. If it is level at the end, the next hit wins. The Caretaker pays the winner 25 coins, the loser pays a 5-coin reboot fee, and nothing ever passes from one player to the other.

Coins, companions and the Workshop

The park's drones — Sprouts, Snowpuffs, Bubblefish, Plushies and more, a different crew in every land — hop and lunge, then pop and reboot when you tag them, and every pop pays coins. Some of them run away; catch one and it becomes your companion, trotting along behind you. Spend coins at the Workshop to dye your companions' collars.

The passport

Your passport is a book of empty slots: places you have never seen, lands you have not visited, keystones, keepsakes hidden in the park's houses, arenas you have not played. It tells you what is still out there, and it stays yours in every park. Fill the whole book and the park gives you something you cannot find, buy or win anywhere else.

Five tips for your first walk

1. Crack open the first crate you find: it always has a keystone in it.
2. Take the yellow keystone to a tram station's grey cabinet and switch the monorail on.
3. Lost? Ask anybody about the park — the hint is always true, and it points at what you have not done yet.
4. Fire Kick at the floor to reach ledges you could never jump to.
5. Press H to go home to the Main Gate from anywhere.

For parents

LaserLand is made for children, and it is a laser-tag park: everything you shoot is the park's own drones and targets, which pop and reboot, and there is no blood. The park is shared, so other players can be in it — but nobody can type to your child. People talk only through a short menu of fixed, friendly phrases, and the park has no voice chat. A battle only starts when the other player says yes.

Playing needs no account and no real name. What your child finds in a park is saved in the browser on your own computer. As in any of our games, a player may choose to keep their name by confirming a link sent to an email address — a grown-up's is fine — and nobody has to. The privacy page has the details.