Update, Jul 2025: From Godot to the Next Era

We've announced more details about our new Mirror Engine, a TypeScript game engine. Sign up for the alpha here.

Update, Nov 2024: Transitioning from Godot

We've made the extremely difficult decision to transition from Godot but we have exciting things in store. Check out our "Thank You & Technical Reflections" below.

Our V2 announcement will first be on Discord: https://mirrorengine.io/discord

After the V2 announcement, this existing code based will be moved to /mirror-classic in this repo and "Mirror Classic" will refer to the Godot code. Mirror Classic will remain permissively MIT-licensed and parts of the V2 are planned to be open-core.

Mirror Classic: Get Started

The easiest way is via our compiled Mirror Official app: Get Started

Docs

The docs site (/mirror-docs) is our primary source of truth for documentation, not this README. We intend to keep this README slim since documentation is and will continue to be extensive.

Features

• (Real) Real-Time Game Development: Like Inception, the aim is to build worlds in real-time with friends, colleagues, and players. Read more about our approach on our blog here.
• All-in-one game development: The Mirror is both the editor and the game, providing everything you need out-of-the-box to quickly create and play games, digital experiences, virtual worlds, and more.
• Editor: Built-in and networked: A lightweight, real-time, multiplayer editor to build in real-time.
• Physics via Jolt, a AAA physics engine used by Horizon Zero Dawn.
• Advanced networking: Keep your game in sync and rewind when things get out of sync.
• Visual scripting: Even if you don't know how to code, you can implement game logic quickly and easily.
• Traditional coding: GDScript in-world editor so you can live edit your game code. If you're new to GDScript, it's like Python, super newbie-friendly, and is easy to learn.
• Material editor: No need to exit the editor to make changes to your materials: Everything is in real-time
• Shader editing: Real-time shader editing with text will be available in the future
• Asset management: Assets are automatically stored in the cloud or via local storage (self-hosted) so you can simplify your workflows in real-time without needing to restart the editor. Much less hassle and easy collaboration with team members.
• Open asset system: Built around GLTF, The Mirror supports seats, lights, equipables, and custom physics shapes, all direct from Blender.
• Mirror UI elements, including a table class which can easily map any data to UI elements without duplicating state in a performant way.
• Collision shape generation: Convex and concave supported
• Audio: Easily add audio to your game in real-time without opening a separate editor; no need to recompile
• Player controllers: Out-of-the-box FPS (first-person shooter), TPS (third-person shooter), and VR (virtual reality) supported.
• VR-ready: Just put on the tethered headset when playing! We test with Meta Quest 2 and 3.
• Intentional architecture: (Space)Objects are a simple game object abstraction with the aim of supporting any type of Godot node in the future.
• Bidirectionality with Godot: Start in The Mirror and end in Godot, or start in Godt and end in The Mirror. Our aim is to make it easy to transition between the two or develop side-by-side: your choice.
• Godot plugin: Coming soon

Join the Community

1. Join our Discord

2. Read our docs: Site, monorepo /mirror-docs

3. Check out our open-source announcement post

4. Subscribe on Youtube.

What is The Mirror and why?

The Mirror is a Roblox & UEFN alternative, an all-in-one game engine built on Godot.

The goal is to be both the editor and the game, like Inception: build a world with friends in real-time. This saves you a plethora of work: Enjoy not having to worry about infrastructure, backend HTTP routes, websockets, asset management, authentication, netsync, and various systems from scratch.

This repo is The Mirror's source code: the Godot app (client/server), the web server, and the docs in one place. We've included everything we can provide to help you build your games as fast as possible.

Build the Open-Source Code

1. Git clone the repository (you do not need to clone with submodules; they are optional)
2. Build a precompiled Mirror fork of Godot engine: https://github.com/mirror-engine/godot
3. Open the Godot editor (The Mirror fork), click import, and choose the project.godot from the /mirror-godot-app folder. Note that if you see this popup, you can safely ignore it and proceed.

1. Close the Godot editor and open it again, to ensure that everything loads correctly, now that all files have been imported.
2. Hit play in the Godot editor!
3. Create a new Space, and you will automatically join it. Or, join an existing Space.

Godot Fork

The Mirror is built on a custom fork of Godot and required to use The Mirror's code. The fork is open source and can be found here.

Analytics Disclaimer: We use Posthog and Mixpanel and it automatically collects analytics in the open source repo. You can disable this manually by commenting out the mirror-godot-app/scripts/autoload/analytics/analytics.gd file methods. We are transitioning from Posthog to Mixpanel and Posthog will be removed in a future release. We will make this easier in the future to disable. The Mirror Megaverse Inc., a US Delaware C Corp, is the data controller of the Posthog and Mixpanel instances. You are free to disable the analytics and even plug in your own Posthog or Mixpanel API keys to capture the analytics yourself for your games!