A Cambridge start-up has partnered with the Japanese toy giant TOMY to develop augmented reality products linked toys and games.
Play Fusion’s Lightseekers aims to allow toys to be aware of one another and even interact through two-way communication.
The project has launched on Kickstarter with the goal of raising $200,000, which will help fund the final production of the game itself. At the time of writing, it had raised $129,000.
“After 18 grueling months of working in complete stealth mode, we’re ready to take the world by storm,” said Mark Gerhard, CEO and co-founder of PlayFusion.
“Our team is pumped to finally unveil Lightseekers and clearly demonstrate how this is a game-changer for many creative industries.
“With the support of our Kickstarter backers, we will be able to fully develop Lightseekers, taking everything the world currently thinks about toys-to-life, turn it on its head and make 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.”
Play Fusion, which was founded by the leadership and key talent behind the massively popular video game RuneScape, has grown to 50 people over the last 18 months and is fast approaching launch.
Lightseekers is described as a “fusion of fantasy and reality, integrating video games, smart action figures with artificial intelligence, augmented reality, interactive trading cards and more, creating the most ambitious transmedia entertainment platform ever envisioned”.
The action and fantasy adventure role-playing game is being built for mobile and tablet and will be entirely free to download, with no in-app purchases, in 2017.
It is aiming to take on the mega-popular Skylanders from Activision.