Mirror

Games have been with me from the start. I was four when Go | 围棋 first took hold. At an age when I didn't yet understand war, I spent endless hours learning how to survive, how to expand, how to predict an opponent's next three moves from a model of their patterns, and how to finally win. A game of Go ends in one side's victory, a pile of after-the-battle lessons, and a run of wild emotional swings (even though the players all look completely expressionless) — though really, you play it just for fun. At Ohio State I minored in Game Studies, and started turning over a question that sits somewhere between perception and reasoning: what makes a game so convincing, so hard to shake? Why do we feel real consequences in a world that has none? Why can a game bend the laws of physics and still feel true? Games also taught me to explore out of pure curiosity — and to never, ever skip a save. A few I love: What Remains of Edith Finch (Giant Sparrow), Undertale (Toby Fox), The Stillness of the Wind (Lambic Studios).

Mirror started in 2022, my own attempt to sit with a question my friends and I are still working out: who am I, and who will I become? It's still a work in progress. Welcome to this world — I hope you enjoy it.

Story Overview

Logline

A person is defined by the mirror they look into most — and the moment you look into someone else's, you become them.

Core Mechanic

In Mirror, identity is something you reflect into being. The mirror a person looks into most — a gilded dressing mirror, a cracked one in a toolshed, a puddle by the road — is what makes them who they are. Look into someone else's and you switch into their life: their body, their days, their place in the city. Every mirror is a door into another identity.

Synopsis

The Gala

It opens on a wide white nothing, with a single point of light in the middle. You walk up to it and find a mirror. The moment you look in, there's a rabbit in a sharp suit looking back — clearly old money. Light jazz starts up. A knock at the door; you start to move, and realize you're standing in a washroom. You open it, and a rabbit in an evening gown looks at you, worried: “Kenny, are you okay? You've been in there a while.” You're at a gala. You step out, settle into the role fast, and spend the night among clinking glasses.
The First Switch

As the gala winds down, you and your date step out of the house into a clear night. You feel like walking the city and getting to know it, so you send her home with the driver first. You follow the wall around the house and come across a workers' shed with a light on inside. You go closer — there's a mirror here too. You look, and it isn't you: it's a frog in a grubby tank top and jeans! In that instant you get what the game is really about: the mirror a person looks into most defines who they are, and by looking into someone else's, you can turn into them.
Locked Out

It's fun, at first. You try out the frog's life — but it's all heavy lifting, and it gets boring fast. So you set out to find other people's mirrors and try on other lives, except the chance never comes: you're dressed in rags, and every door gets shut in your face. Then one day you're hauling fresh fish from the docks up to the house, rain drizzling down, and you slip and fall. There's a puddle in front of you. The moment you pick yourself up, you look into it — the puddle is a mirror too, and in the reflection you see a butterfly.
The House With No Mirror

You're free. Out of the heavy labor, out of that life stretching endlessly ahead — just like that, you're free. You fly all over the city, thrilled, until the boredom creeps back in. You land at a small estate on the outskirts. A young couple lives there, their days quiet and sweet. You want a taste of their life, so you fly inside — but there's no mirror. Because the people who already know who they are don't need one.

Theme

Mirror is about identity, and about looking for it — how easily we borrow a “self” from whatever we look into most, and what it means, in the end, to stop needing the mirror at all.