MILWAUKEE — Put your sword fighting skills to the test with this foam sword battle game in Milwaukee.
It's called MagneTag, and you can play it at Bounce Milwaukee at 2801 S. 5th Ct. It's like a mix between laser tag, fencing, and Game of Thrones.
Here's how you play. You put on your armor and grab your sword. It's stiff, but still soft enough so it won't hurt. Then get ready to battle your friends. The goal is to hit the opposing players armor. Both the sword and armor are magnetized, and you will be alerted to when the armor is hit. An electronic score keeping system tracks the number of lives you have left.
It's seriously fun.
"It's impossible to frown while you’re playing this game. Absolutely impossible," Adam Cohen, the inventor of the game, said.
Cohen, who lives in Wauwatosa, came up with the idea as a way to keep his friends honest. They played lots of paintball, but were having trouble keeping track of who was and who wasn't hit. The honor system wasn't working.
So Cohen came up with Magnetag and has been working on it for about 10 years.
“We obviously want to be something that people know about and play and are super excited to play all over the country and the world. That’s the grand vision.”
The installation at Bounce Milwaukee will hopefully serve as a way to advertise to other entertainment centers which might want to add Magnetag to the business.
"It's clearly going to succeed because it's pretty amazing," Cohen said about his game.
The company already has licensed its technology to a large toy manufacturer. You can buy that game in stores like Target, but it's not the same Cohen said. It doesn't have the same responsiveness, digital display, arena, or quality of gear that you can use at Bounce Milwaukee.
