The toys-to-life genre hasn't been having the best time as of late - Ubisoft's Starlink: Battle for Atlas didn't perform nearly as well as the company would have hoped, and even Nintendo's own amiibo line seems to be slowing down rather dramatically - but this independent team is having a good go at restoring its former glory.
Bulgarian developer, Morogami, has launched a Kickstarter campaign for a project called Stickernauts Paintwars, a couch co-op paintball shooter which makes use of NFC-enabled avatars. What sets this game apart from others, however, is the fact that you can actually design these avatars yourself.
Using an online editor, you can design your very own character which can then be 3D-printed by the development team and its partners. It'll be shipped out to you wherever you are in the world, ready to be used as a character in-game. If you prefer, you can even opt to receive an NFC-enabled sticker instead, allowing you to transform any object at home - say, a Pokémon card - into a readable NFC object.
The game itself is essentially a large game of paintball where you're invisible until you shoot your weapon. There are a variety of stages, weapons, and more to discover, and your avatars can actually be levelled up and taught new skills.
The team is aiming to raise just over $50,000 to get the project on Switch and other platforms, and has 28 days to do just that. If you want to learn more - including more about the process of ordering your avatars - make sure to check out the Kickstarter campaign here. It's had quite a lengthy development time and at one stage was planned to release on 3DS under the name 'Inchvilles'.
What do you think? Will you be backing the project? Do you think it'll be a success? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.
Comments 18
Sounds interesting, might have to look more into it
The gameplay design is clever. The toys to life aspect will probably hold this back.
No thanks, in general toys to life games seem to be doomed to fail
I don't know, I love toys to life and have most of the games, but I don't think an online paintball game works well with toys, as that could easily enter pay to win territory
Did they never learn anything? Battle for Atlas is there as a proof that, does not matter how interesting and fun the game is, toys to life will kill it and give the publisher loss.
Interesting, but I don't think having to pay for shipping will help this in the long run.
Starlink is great, if you ignore the toys. But even then the price for the digital bundle was WAY too high.
I don't know why everyone is hating on Starlink's physicals. They had digital option anyway, maybe they should have released that later down the line so more people got the toys. I ignored Skylanders and Disney Infinity but Starlink appealed to me so I got them, especially with Arwing and Fox. So it's annoying they didn't do well enough to release season 2. They had a bunch of the pilots made but they got thrown away. >_>
No, don't, stop, come back..... (rolls eyes).
Seriously, this time has passed. And given the current world problems, I don't think making plastics for things that should have been included in the game in the first place is a good idea.
Very cool idea but neither the figures or the gameplay looked that great.
Read the room, toys-to-life are r-i-p.
You can pick up Starlink Atlas - cool Starfox toy edition - at Best Buy in the US for $5. (sorry no link, haven't had coffee yet, but you can Google it)
I wish the best of luck to these guys. I enjoyed Starlink as it had some cool physicals while also being a solid game. I think there's more to be had with T.T.L. games but consumers think otherwise.
On a side note, wasn't this idea for T.T.L. used for Skylanders Imaginators?
The toys to life idea is clever if it’s done right, amiibo work across multiple games so tend to keep the interest going, I think if Starlink was just the standalone game and used the fox Amiibo to use the Starfox stuff it probably would have done a lot better
This is all over the place, the game is pixel art, some characters are voxels which does make sense, but then some are these cartoons and a whole bunch are like tabletop RPG minis?
And its meant to be a customise your own figure but the stretch goals unlock things like hairstyles and different shirts? It's very confusing as a product.
Amiibo is the only toys to life concept that actually seems to work.
I miss Skylanders and I'm not remotely sorry.
Wish they would re-release all those games digitally. Particularly Disney Infinity.
@netwomble I thought the toys were great but the game sucked (my opinion) . I kept the toy but sold the game.
The gameplay seems to be a top-down version of ScreenCheat. To further elaborate, both have all players invisible. The differences apart from genre is that in SC, you have to look at other players' screens to get good, but in this one, you become visible when you shoot.
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