Ambitious Toys to Life Game Lightseekers Hits Kickstarter!
Look out, there’s a newcomer in the Toys to Life ring! PlayFusion have launched a Kickstarter for their upcoming mobile game, Lightseekers. Lightseekers is an action RPG developed for mobile and tablet devices, and looks to be an ambitious entry into the Toys to Life space. It’ll combine interactive figurines, trading cards, augmented reality and more, into one very exciting-sounding package.
The game’s figures are the big focus – they’re 7″ tall and fully articulated, and will be made and distributed by TOMY. The aim is for them to offer a number of two-way interactions as you’re playing the game. For example, if your character is in danger the figurine will audibly tell you so. On a more deeper level, each character will develop its own personality and set of abilities that will be stored onto the figurine. These interactions will work the other way around as well – you’ll be able to attach additional toys like weapons and pets onto your figurine and see the upgrades appear in-game as well. There’s also a fully playable trading card game that will tie-in with Lightseekers, which can be played on its own in the real world and will also provide new abilities in the game. If you scan a physical card it will open up an augmented reality experience and also add additional abilities to your in-game character. It sounds like an incredibly ambitious game with a lot going on!
“After eighteen grueling months of working in complete stealth mode, we’re ready to take the world by storm. Our team is pumped to finally unveil Lightseekers and clearly demonstrate how this is a game-changer for many industries,” states Mark Gerhard, CEO and Co-Founder of PlayFusion. That name might be familiar to you – he was the CEO of Jagex, the company behind Runescape. “Lightseekers takes everything the world currently thinks about toys-to-life, turns it on its head and makes it a massively more connected experience–more integrated, more intelligent, more mobile, more interactive, more engaging, and more magical than ever before, for gamers of all ages.”
The Kickstarter campaign has revealed a lot of new details about Lightseekers, including the game’s customisation and social features. The team plan to enable customisation of many aspects of the game, including the ability to build your own houses and farms that will overlap with other aspects of the game. The trading cards can be used to create your own dungeons, populating them with creatures and effects from the cards.
The game’s social features aren’t a direct multiplayer mode, but provide other avenues of interacting with your friends. Their characters will appear in the game for you to hire as mercenaries, and you’ll be able to set personal challenges and quests for your friends to take on. Guilds will feature in the game, with collaborative challenges for you all to contribute to in order to boost your rank.
There’s a number of pledge tiers, allowing you to focus on either the TCG or the action figures. The cheapest TCG-focused tier is USD$15 + USD$5 shipping, while the cheapest figure-focused tier is USD$60 + USD$10 (or an early bird discount of USD$50 + shipping). If the physical toys don’t interest you then there’s tiers to accommodate you as well. It sure sounds like an incredibly ambitious game and we wish the team the best of luck. Lightseekers is planned to launch in March 2017 on iOS and Android devices.
