If you visited PAX Aus this year, it’s likely you caught sight of some colourful little cubes dangling off wristbands and lanyards over the convention. These little collectables were ÆRTHLINGS – a new blind box figure from Moose Toys that can be scanned into a mobile game via NFC. Developed by Modern Games, who’ve previously worked on Beasts Of Balance, a connected stacking game that links to your mobile or tablet for a digital play experience.
ÆRTHLINGS sees players collecting figures that can then be scanned into the app and added to a roster of characters that can then be used to explore and unlock more of the world in-game. The first series, Genesis features 24 unique ÆRTHLINGS, each as colourful as the next that feature unique playstyles within the game from varying attacks to sizes and other characteristics – there’s even a dragon one!
Toys to life might have had its gold rush back in the 2010s with the likes of Skylanders, Disney Infinity and Lego Dimensions all pushing for the attention and wallets of players. Yet now only Nintendo’s Amiibo figures seem to have persisted, so how does ÆRTHLINGS fit into the trend?
Put simply, it doesn’t and that’s not a bad thing actually. ÆRTHLINGS feels at its centre more akin to a trading card game in a lot of ways, but the emphasis on rewarding players for not just collecting but swaping figures modernizes the experience. Players are actively encouraged to trade through the game and doing so creates a sort of family tree style lineage that further rewards each player upon another trade of the figure.
At PAX Aus, ÆRTHLINGS made it’s debut and many lucky players got to go hands-on with the toys and mobile game thanks to a special free seed series given away over the weekend. The official booth even ended up selling out before the weekend was over and become somewhat of a hive for players trading ÆRTHLINGS.
Playing with ÆRTHLINGS
While they aren’t quite a Labubu, each ÆRTHLING comes with a wrist strap allowing you to attach them much like a keyring or bracelet. Once scanned into the ÆRTHLINGS app, players hatch a unique variant of the particular character that they can then play. There you can explore and battle enemies as you unlock larger chunks of the world as you level them up.
Having spent some time playing ÆRTHLINGS I was instantly fascinated. The format of collecting here is still the same, yet not only does trading play a larger role but is actually rewarded! While parting with your favourites might be hard, in-game your scanned creations receive a mutation point. This currency allows you to upgrade them in-game. So while your physical ÆRTHLING gets traded by more and more players you still get some rewards. The downside of this however is that those rewards only happen if players keep the chain going.
The gameplay sees you summoning an ÆRTHLING from your collection and gradually collecting resources and even fighting enemies as you unlock more of the world. As you progress you can build structures and even customise the world. It does feel fairly grindy playing the game but as you gradually unlock more the world objectives keep you pointed in a direction at least. The developer has also teased a multiplayer update that would allow players to be invited to other players’ worlds, so there are even more opportunities to play together.
When you aren’t playing the game there is also the prospect of swapping ÆRTHLINGS with others. It’s definitely a change to the usual trading system of collectables, where once you’ve traded it away, it’s no longer yours. While you do have to give someone the physical figure you do still retain the digital version
I was able to trade, and it’s an interesting negotiation. While I had traded away an ÆRTHLING I liked, when a friend offered me another of the same one I was excited to see what variant of it I’d receive in-game. While I do find the prospect of ÆRTHLINGS rarities exciting to collect, I feel like this can break the focus on trading for many people like myself. I know that if I was to collect a Legendary or even just a style of one I liked – that’s not leaving my grubby mits!
I am really interested to see what’s in store for ÆRTHLINGS, given how strong a start it’s had here in Australia. The prospect of these becoming an event staple still might be a ways away but meeting other players with a handful, trading back and forth for fun variants or even that one character you love feels like a unique part of the experience that’s equally rewarded in the app.
Interview with Justin Kifer, CEO of Modern Games
Who are you and what do you do?
I’m Justin Kifer, co-founder of ÆRTHLINGS. My wife, Amanda, and I co-founded Modern Games together about five, almost six years ago. We have made a game and collectible toy line called ÆRTHLINGS.
What are ÆRTHLINGS?
It’s a mystery box collectible toy that is NFC-enabled. Each one of the figs has an NFC tag embedded in the bottom of it that is serialised. You scan that using your iPhone or Android phone and that hatches a unique version of that character species into your collection in the game. And each one of the characters that you hatch is procedurally generated to be genetically unique. So it will look different. If you get another one of that same character, it will look different than the next one and the next one.
We’ve also got the game itself, which is playable on iOS and Android. As a player, your job is to rebuild the ÆRTHLINGS’ home planet, ÆRTH, not to be confused with Earth, which is where we live. Their world was destroyed when the moon crashed into it.
There’s also a 10-episode animated series on YouTube that is live. I think we’ve had over a million views on it at this point. It tells the story of Lenny and his friends as they try to thwart the Moonlings’ plan to inadvertently destroy the planet by crashing their moon into it. And obviously, Lenny is not quite successful, though he does save the ÆRTHLINGS by teaching them how to “cuberinate”, which is why we have these figures. So it’s toys, a game, an animated series, comics, all of that. And the figs themselves are tradable from player to player, which is a really important part of the ÆRTHLINGS experience.
Where did the idea for ÆRTHLINGS come from?
Most of us on the team have been building physical digital connected playthings for a decade plus. We’ve all done different things, some of us together at times and not. Our team’s passion and obsession is that place where physical digital connected play merge and come together. We have games like Beasts of Balance. It’s a tabletop stacking game that has a bunch of artifacts that are NFC-enabled, scannable on a plinth, stackable, and then that’s all connected up to a digital experience and brings us this world and these creatures to life.
That we knew was super magical, but it’s a tabletop game, and it’s not very portable, [you] can’t really take it out into the world with you, requires you to be gathered around the kitchen or the dining room table at home. It’s expensive because there’s a bunch of pieces to it. About four plus years ago we decided that we wanted to take what was really magical about Beast and turn it into something that was portable, something you take with you, very tradable.
That was also a really key ingredient with ÆRTHLINGS. Then we just started working on it. The form factor of the figs came together after we had nailed down this voxel art aesthetic that we fell in love with for the world and the characters. Everything was born out of the notion that, these are going to be mystery box collectible figs that you’re going to trade with other players. The trading component of that was really, really important. We just wanted to make sure that it was super easy to trade that there was a lot of incentive to do that by expanding your collection, by getting other downstream benefits from lineages and mutation points that you earn as a result of your trades, but also subsequent trades afterwards. And it just came together over a period of several years. And we finally launched it this year in Australia.
And you launched ÆRTHLINGS in Australia first?
We did! We launched in Australia first. So many people that I’ve talked to, both at PAX as well as elsewhere, they’re like, Oh, my gosh, I can’t believe you guys launched here. We’re always the last place to get anything. And so there’s a lot of people who’ve been really excited that Australia is the first place in the world that they got ÆRTHLINGS. We’re in retail, as you noticed, Target, Big W, EB Games, Amart, Toy World. So a bunch of retailers all over Australia are carrying ÆRTHLINGS now. That’s, of course, the result of our great toy partner, Moose Toys, which is Melbourne-based, top 10 global toy company. And then we’re also live in New Zealand for the game. We opened up the game to the New Zealand app stores at PAX because we assumed that, and rightfully so, that there would be some folks that would come over from New Zealand for PAX, and we wanted to be able to install the game and participate in it as well. We will have ÆRTHLINGS toys in retail in PAX later this month. I’m sorry, in retail in New Zealand later this month. Yeah, but then the rest of the world, they got to wait their turn. Based on the results of PAX and the overwhelmingly positive response, I think we’ll generally try to release in different countries around big gaming, collectible conventions, but especially gaming.
How does it feel seeing ÆRTHLINGS out in the world now?
Two of us, Joe and I, went over to Australia for the launch. Throughout, we were on stage at the Q Hall at PAX, unveiling ÆRTHLINGS to 4,000 plus people that were gathered in a queue hall each morning. There were a lot of moments that were just surreal. It had been our goal, our dream, our vision to launch it at PAX Aus from the beginning of ÆRTHLINGS. We knew that we wanted to do the Seed series, which are a special collection that are only available through different events and channels that we make them available. And these are free, right? So it’s four specific characters that the only way you could get them was to have been at PAX or to have gone to an EB games when they had them in stock and they were handing them out or wherever else did they happen to drop. But that PAX and Comicon and some events like that, but especially PAX, were always the place that we wanted to launch and start. We didn’t anticipate that it was going to be PAX Australia, because back when we first started building ÆRTHLINGS, we didn’t know that Australia was going to be the first market, though over the past year or so, that was fairly clear to us.
So how does the trading element work with ÆRTHLINGS?
It’s fairly simple, but also it’s a bit of a departure from what people might be used to. We’ve done some things that are fairly unique. Let’s say I get this Lenosaur. I go to target, I pick up an ÆRTHLINGSmystery box, I open it up, I pull the Lenosaur out. I’m going to scan that in game, and then that’s going to hatch this procedually generated, unique version of the character, add it to my collection. It’s a playable character that I can then run around the world as. Each character has their own unique attacks and abilities, so playing every species of character is like playing a different character, which is really cool. Then, let’s say I’ve got a friend who has an ÆRTHLINGS, maybe they’ve got a Treep, or, yeah, let’s go with a Treep. And so we decide that we’re going to trade. So I’m going to go into the game, and I’m going to scan my Lenosaur again. That then is going to say, “Hey, this is already yours”.
Do you want to trade it? And I’m going to say, Yep, unlock for trading. At this point, we take the serial number and the unique data from the NFC tag that’s already been locked to my account, and we open it up, we unlock it. And so now I can actually exchange this fig with my friend, and then they can do the same thing with theirs. And so we say I do that. I’ve got a Treep here in a Lenosaur, so now we’ve traded. Now I’ve got the tree, and I’m going to go ahead and scan the Treep in. They do the same thing with my Lenosaur. We then confirm the trade, and then that completes it. At that point, I’m going to keep the Treep fig, and my friend is going to keep the Lenosaur fig. So that’s the trade. The trade is of the physical figs themselves. Digitally, what happens in the game, though, this is where things get fairly unique to what we’re doing with ÆRTHLINGS. Any digital ÆRTHLINGS that I have in my collection never leave my collection.
So my Lenosaur that I got from scanning this out of the box, I keep that Lenosaur in game – keep leveling them up. Because I traded this away, I got a mutation point for my Lenosaur that I can then spend to unlock a new skill in his mutation tree. I’m actually evolving and improving the character by trading this away. Then every subsequent time that this gets traded again, I and everybody else in that lineage get rewards. From those trades and from other things that those players are doing with their Lenosaur’s that are attached to this fig. Then the second thing that happens is when we completed a trade and I scanned in this Treep, I get a Treep added to my collection. Again, procedurally generated, genetically unique. So mine looks different than my friend’s. It’s got its own stats and all of that. And I’m now part of the lineage of this particular fig. And then I can trade it on again and get another one in exchange, expand my collection again. And then everybody in the lineage is going to get some rewards as a result of that happening. So trading in these lineages are a way for us as players to help each other expand our collections and to enhance our ÆRTHLINGS and level them up and improve them and make them better versions of themselves.
What was it like working with Moose Toys?
I can obviously only speak for our experience with ÆRTHLINGS and Moose, specifically. What I can say is that Moose has been the best possible partner that we could have ever wanted for ÆRTHLINGS. They loved what we were doing already. They loved it so much that they ran with. We designed the figs. They’re all cube-shaped, and we had figured out how to do the silicone application, the printing, making the characters look the way that they look. We had even figured out the packaging design and stuff like that. They rolled with it, and they thought what we were doing was the right approach, and they’ve enhanced it for sure. We’ve partnered and worked together to dial everything up and make it even better than we were doing. But they have been just a fantastic partner across every facet of what we’ve collaborated on to this point. And they’re totally bought into ÆRTHLINGS.
We couldn’t have done PAX Aus without them. I said this from stage at the Queue Hall every day. It’s like we literally could not have pulled off PAX Australia if Moose had not been there helping us drive it in every way. We had two of us for Modern Games over there for that. They had, I don’t know the total number, 10, 15 people over the course of the weekend coming out, helping in various capacities throughout. And we literally wouldn’t have been able to do it without them. I think the partnership has been absolutely fantastic.
They’re big believers in ÆRTHLINGS and what we’re building and doing together. And they’ve gone out of their way in every imaginable way to make it real. I think it’s really nice that we wound up launching in Australia, which is their home market. They don’t typically launch new lines just in Australia anymore because they’re a big global toy company. But we had wanted to do a geo beta just given the complexities of physical, digital, connected things, we had wanted to do that, and they agreed to go along with it and do it in a different way than they would typically bring something to market today and hold off on the global launch until next year. It’s been fantastic.
What surprises can we expect for ÆRTHLINGS Series 2?
We’ve designed over 100 characters at this point for ÆRTHLINGS. Obviously, we’ve got the 24 in the Genesis collection. We have another four that came out in the Seed Series collection. I can say that before we see the next series of figs, we’re going to see a digital ÆRTHLING or two. They’re going to pop up in games. We’ll tease that a little bit. That should be coming out fairly soon. And then next year, we can anticipate that there’ll be some new stuff coming. As far as the game is concerned, we have the multiplayer version of the game. Right now, the game, you can play on your own chunk of the world that you’re rebuilding – the ÆRTHLINGS home planet. But pretty soon, you’ll be able to invite your friends to your world, and they can invite you to theirs. And be able to play within each other’s worlds and online, multi-player, battle Moonlings’ together, and rebuild together.
ÆRTHLINGS Series 1 is out now.
The PR sent a product kit including four ÆRTHLINGS blind boxes for the purposes of this interview.
