Licensing Beamzag
Beamzag is a logic puzzle where you place an exact number of mirrors on a grid so a laser lights every gem and ends in the socket. It has run as a free daily on this site since October 13, 2026, and every board has exactly one solution.
I license it to newspapers, puzzle publishers, syndicates and game sites. The boards come from my own generator, so I can make as many as you need, at the size and difficulty you want, and none of them has to be a board anyone has seen before.
The one-page sample, as it would go to a paper. Greyscale, Letter size, 300 dpi: the rules in four lines, three boards from easy to hard, and their solutions. Readers pencil in the mirrors and trace the beam.
What I can send you
- Print pages
- A press-ready PDF in greyscale at 300 dpi, set one or two columns wide, with the solution on the same page or held back for the next issue. Boards run from 5×5 to 10×10 with two to seven mirrors, from gentle to expert. A weekly board reaches you a week before it runs.
- Image and data files
- Each board as a PNG in colour or greyscale, and as the small JSON file this site plays from (under 250 bytes a board), each with its solution. Daily or weekly, sent ahead of time, for your own page or app.
- An HTML5 player
- The game from this site as a folder of plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript, about 190 KB zipped, that you host yourself. It has no ads, no share buttons, no outside links and no accounts, and it loads nothing from any other server. It plays by touch, mouse or keyboard on screens from 320 px wide.
- Exclusive runs
- Boards made for you alone, from their own seed. They never appear on beamzag.app, in its practice mode or in anyone else's run.
The week
The daily on this site follows this shape. A licensed run can follow it, stay at one level all week, or use the larger sizes the site never shows.
| Day | Board | Mirrors | Level |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | 5×5 | 2 | Gentle |
| Tuesday | 6×6 | 3 | Easy |
| Wednesday | 6×6 | 4 | Medium |
| Thursday | 7×7 | 4 | Medium |
| Friday | 7×7 | 5 | Hard |
| Saturday | 8×8 | 6 | Expert |
| Sunday | 8×8 Twin | 5 shared | Hard |
Sunday is Twin day: two lasers share one set of mirrors. In print the lasers and sockets are marked A and B, and beam A has to end in socket A.
How each board ends up with one answer
The generator starts by drawing a path for the beam with the right number of turns, then puts the gems along that path and the walls off it. A solver then tries every way the mirrors could go. If it finds a second arrangement that works, the generator puts a wall where only that second arrangement needed a mirror, and the solver runs again. A board is kept only when exactly one arrangement works and nothing with fewer mirrors does.
Before anything ships, a second checker goes over every board again. It takes none of the first solver's shortcuts, so a mistake in one has nowhere to hide in the other. The same seed always gives the same boards, so a run can be remade, checked again or extended later. For your readers, that means every board can be finished and the printed solution is the only one there is.
Rates
| Weekly print column: one board and its solution each week, as a press-ready PDF | From $95 a month per title, and less for several titles in one group |
| Daily series, image and data feeds, the HTML5 player, syndication and exclusive runs | Worked out with you. I'm happy to start from your usual terms. |
Licences are non-exclusive and month to month unless we agree otherwise. Canadian papers are billed in Canadian dollars.
Samples
- One page, three boards with their solutions: an easy 6×6, a medium 7×7 and a hard 8×8.
- A week, seven boards, Monday to Sunday, with a solutions page.
- Two weeks, fourteen boards with their solutions.
- A solved 7×7 in colour, the way it looks on screen.
None of the sample boards has appeared on the site. Screenshots, logos and descriptions are in the press kit.
Who makes it
I'm Jonathon Wager, an independent game developer in Cambridge, Ontario, working as Plaug Studios. Beamzag is my daily puzzle, and my other project is Avoria, a game coming to Steam. I own all rights to Beamzag and I'm not under contract with any syndicate or publisher. It went live in October 2026, so I don't have audience numbers to show yet.
Email hello@beamzag.app with the title, how often it would run and your column width, and I'll send a few boards set to fit.
Email about licensing