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Air hockey, kraken tentacles, and laser rhythm: Inside new virtual-reality entertainment venue Mirra

by Thomas Wilde, GeekWire

Attendees dodge kraken tentacles in VR while playing Laser Room, one of the original VR games available at Mirra, a new entertainment complex in Bellevue. (GeekWire Photo / Thomas Wilde)

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I attended a preview event on Wednesday for Mirra, a new virtual reality entertainment center opening later this month in Bellevue, Wash.

Based on my earlier coverage, I figured there were two ways this could go: full arcade, or full cyberpunk. Instead, Mirra looks more like an upscale gastropub, with a full bar near the entrance and booths lining the walls.

It’s impossible to mistake it for anything other than a VR venue, however, as the focus is squarely on Mirra’s central screen from the moment you walk in. It takes up most of the back wall, and when games aren’t in session, displays a broad assortment of peaceful vistas.

That screen is the centerpiece of what Mirra calls an “immersive party game experience.” The center of the venue is a single large boundary zone for virtual reality gaming, where teams of players can compete in 2-by-2 rounds of casual challenges. As they play, their actions are rebroadcast to the central screen, so teammates and other attendees can watch the action unfold.

Mirra offers a rotating assortment of its own original virtual reality games that are designed to be played by up to 32 people in four teams of 2 to 8.

The four games on offer for Mirra’s preview event were Hyper Rhythm, Bubble Boom, Laser Room, and Hockey Smash, all of which were built in Unreal Engine. Other games from Mirra include Jackpot in Pairs, a memory-matching card game, and Treasure Dash, where players compete to race past a virtual dragon.

My team tied for first place at Mirra’s preview event, thanks to a strong last-minute round of Hockey Smash. I’m the sad taco. (GeekWire Photo/Thomas Wilde)

During the preview event, we played a random round of four games, where each team nominated two players to represent them in each round. Once they registered for the game, via tablets that are kept at each table, each player was equipped by Mirra staffers with a Meta Quest 3 headset.

If you’ve never played anything on a Meta Quest, Mirra makes it simple. As long as you’re standing in the right place, motion trackers built into the center of the venue do the rest. Mirra’s systems can track your hand and body motions, so all you need is the headset.

For each individual game, competitors were awarded points based upon their final ranking, with the 1st-place contender getting 10 points. At the end of the night, whoever had the most points would be the first champion at Mirra.

Both Hyper Rhythm and Laser Room were themed around avoiding incoming obstacles in VR by moving out of their way in real space, while Hockey Smash is a virtual air hockey table, redesigned for a high-speed 2-on-2 match.

Players dodge in real life to avoid a wave of oncoming saw blades in VR in Mirra’s Hyper Rhythm. Successfully avoiding hazards in time to the soundtrack’s beat scores more points for each player. (GeekWire Photo/Thomas Wilde)

I volunteered to play Bubble Boom on my team’s behalf, a game in which you use virtual balls to break colored bubbles. It’s a lot like the arcade classic Bust A Move, where you need to match your ball’s color to the bubbles to successfully knock them off the board.

You can get a massive score multiplier if you break a chain of identically-colored bubbles at once, which my teammate and I picked up on before our opponents did. I wasn’t above feeling a little smug when my teammate and I scored nearly 2,000 points in the first 30 seconds of the match, at a point when our closest competitor had just over 100.

They caught on quickly, however, and we only came in second for Bubble Boom. The competition was fierce from that point forward, and it all eventually came down to a round of Hockey Smash. At this point, one of my teammates revealed a previously-concealed gift for air hockey. By the time the clock ran out, she’d managed to double the other team’s score.

That put us in first place for Hockey Smash, which got us enough points in the overall competition to tie for first place for the night. Sam Wang, Mirra’s founder and owner, proceeded to apologize, as they hadn’t anticipated the first-ever competition in Mirra to end in a draw, so they’d only brought one trophy.

(Also, we didn’t get to keep the trophy, but it was full of truffle fries when Wang brought it out. Call it a draw.)

Mirra co-founder Sam Wang addresses the crowd at Mirra’s preview event. No, that’s not real brick behind him — it’s Mirra’s giant screen. (GeekWire Photo/Thomas Wilde)

Wang is an entrepreneur with a background in the Chinese film industry, as the former general manager at the Beijing-based visual effects studio Phenom Films. He also co-founded the VR startup Skylimit Entertainment Group.

“I’ve tried a lot of different things,” Wang said, in a speech addressing the preview event attendees. “Me, personally, I’ve worked in the film industry, and was involved with VR 10 years ago. Now it’s VR, AR, XR… the world’s changing a lot. Now we can use all this knowledge to do something I always wanted to do.”

That something is Mirra, which Wang calls “the most immersive VR ever created.”

In passing, Wang told me that Mirra’s first location is in Bellevue due to his co-founders being local to the area, as well as Wang liking Washington state when he’d had the chance to stop by. As a result, Bellevue beat out Mirra’s other candidates, such as Los Angeles and San Francisco.

A shareable fusion platter from Mirra’s preview event, with a tray of sliders to the right. (GeekWire Photo/Thomas Wilde)

After our VR tournament, Mirra’s team brought out a representative assortment of the sorts of dishes it plans to offer for the venue’s full launch. The idea behind the menu, according to events organizer Chanelle Christenhausen, is that Mirra can theoretically let you be anywhere. Therefore, the menu is a mixture of fusion cuisine from around the world.

For the preview event, this included beef sliders, vegetarian flatbread pizza, and a mixed platter of corn on the cob, jumbo shrimp, steamed chicken dumplings, lamb skewers, and pita bread. The final version of the menu will feature more vegetarian, gluten-free, and vegan options.

The overall cost of a night at Mirra had yet to be determined at the preview event, according to organizers. They did emphasize that Mirra is meant to be a group activity, so pricing is built around that expectation. Update: Typical pricing is $50 per person, for one hour of gameplay.

Christenhausen told me that there’s already been interest in booking the venue for multimedia presentations or conferences, as well as a potential event where attendees use tablet computers with the central screen for interactive art. For now, the venue’s focus is still squarely on VR gaming, with Christenhausen describing the central “game show” as Mirra’s “child.”