(Pocket-lint) - Lego is to release a new range of sets in the coming months that embrace augmented reality. It has shown them for the first time publicly at the New York Toy Fair. After months of various AR demos, including on stage at Apple events, the toy company confirmed that it will launch eight sets within a new range called Lego Hidden Side. Pocket-lint was told that the line-up will be expanded over time and centres around two characters, Jack and Parker, as they explore their hometown of Newbury. Where it differs to normal Lego builds is players can use their mobile phones to see and solve paranormal mysteries beneath the surface of different environments. Kids, young and old, will be tasked with using their phones to catch ghosts in a range of sets. They include a laboratory, graveyard, American yellow school bus and an epic haunted house - all of which strongly influenced by American teen horror movies and TV shows, such as Stranger Things. The physical sets will range in price from £17.99 to £109.99, with the haunted house flagship set also sporting a nasty secret - it turns into a monster. In two separate preview events, we got to check out all eight and they are great. And there is plenty of physical interaction - as Lego builds - for them to stand on their own, even without the additional augmented element. We especially love the overall look of the yellow school bus and haunted house. Pocket-lint "Activating the bespoke AR app developed together with the theme brings the models to life, revealing a hidden world of interactive mysteries and challenges to solve. When combined, the two worlds make each other even more compelling and fun," Lego explained. As we discovered, they really come to life when viewed through an iOS or Android device. They have a "hidden side", hence the name. The idea is that users use one hand to hold an handset to search for specific things hidden in the set, and the other hand to interact with the set they've built. It's this successful merging of the physical and virtual worlds of play that works so well. It's an experience that doesn't feel bolted on as an afterthought, but as an excellent additional feature. You don't get ghost mini-figures in the box, for example, although included characters can be "possessed" by replacing their heads. Instead, the ghosts are supplied through AR and it feels as if the phone is the portal into a different world. Clever. However, there is a caveat. By forcing players to use a phone to get the most from the sets, they are restricted by what handset they can use. The nature of the software means that it requires fairly powerful handsets to work. To get interoperability with both Android and iPhone, Lego uses Qualcomm's Vuforia AR tech rather than Apple's ARKit or Google's ARCore code specifically. That means the app, while free, requires an iPhone 6S or above or an equivalent Android smartphone to run. These aren't the sort of phones many 7-10 years olds have constant access to - and that's the age group the set is aimed at. In addition, although the app is available for both mobile and table, the experience is designed firmly with a one-handed phone in mind. That's because Lego wants kids to play with the set with the other, so both hands are needed - one for the virtual and one for the physical. 10 best Lego sets 2021: Our favourite Star Wars, Technic, City, Frozen II sets and more By Dan Grabham · 27 May 2021 Anyone can still play using a tablet, but the size of the device may pose some challenges for kids who have difficulty holding a tablet in just one hand. They'll only get half the experience. Technological barriers aside, Lego's app focuses around two types of gameplay. There is action play, plus an ever-changing discovery experience to encourage repeat play. "The ghosts won't be in the same place every time," we were told by Roberto Marchesi, a senior design manager at Lego. Once you've found the ghosts hiding in the sets you'll be tasked with capturing them, which is where the action element comes into it. Lego also told Pocket-lint that the experience will continue to expand with the addition of new ghosts, new game challenges and randomisation of gameplay. It also hinted that, in future you'll be able to add any Lego minifig to the set to interact, be it from a Lego City set or Lego Star Wars. For the moment though, the interaction will be restricted to those figures in the Hidden Sides range. Lego Hidden Side will be available globally in late summer 2019. Physical sets will range in price from £17.99 to £109.99 with the app available for free via the Apple Store and Google Play. Writing by Stuart Miles.<doc-sep>Scott Stein/CNET I'm looking at a Lego brick construction sitting on our office table and I don't know what to make of it. It's an old mansionlike building that feels Harry Potter-esque. The building's sides bend down, windows flip open and now it's a snarling beast. I'm handed a phone, and I aim an app at the bricks. I see virtual ghosts start to appear, blending with the physical bricks. This now fits the synopsis Lego handed me: "Jack and Parker are teenage bloggers who attend Newbury High School. Through an app on their mobile phones, they can see the unseen -- and in this case, Newbury is overrun with ghosts!" Scott Stein/CNET Lego: Hidden Side isn't the first augmented-reality-enabled construction set Lego's made, but it's the first line designed to work with AR from the ground up. The sets tell a tale about a haunted world where ghosts lurk, and it's a self-contained story world such as Ninjago or Nexo Knights. The sets will cost between $20 and $130 when they arrive later this summer (Roughly £15-£100 or AU$30-AU$180 converted.) An AR-equipped phone app finds the ghosts in the set and sucks them up, collecting them like Pokemon. The kits feel like little movie sets, where the game plays out via augmented-reality characters that appear on the tiny stages. You don't technically need to use the phone app to put Hidden Side sets together, but the extra gameplay and missions are a big part of the package. Lego promises a number of unfolding puzzle challenges in each set, and a possibility of new events that unfold over time. Now playing: Watch this: Lego Hidden Side feels like an augmented reality haunted... I was immediately reminded of Nintendo's ghost-hunting Luigi's Mansion game, but in this case there are actual physical Lego bricks. That, and of course, Ghostbusters, plus a bit of Pokemon Go. Lego's previous AR apps for specific Lego kits were built off Apple's ARKit. Lego: Hidden Side's inspiration started further back, with the success of app-enabled kits like Lego Nexo Knights. Lego's AR app for Hidden Side was custom-built to work with both iPhones and AR-ready Android phones, but that also means no multiplayer (a feature that's possible in Lego Playgrounds, which allows more than one person to see the blend of Lego bricks and virtual AR objects with multiple phones/tablets). Once the different sets are assembled, little hidden puzzles lurk inside that trigger events. Maybe a moving panel, or a treasure chest where a ghost is hidden. Color-changing panels also sync up with different "ghost lens" spectrums in the phone game: Red, blue and yellow lenses shift worlds and help find more spirits. Scott Stein/CNET The overlap of real pieces and virtual effects and AR objects seen in-phone looked pretty good, maybe even a step up from the Playgrounds app. A Lego tree suddenly turned into a haunted, animated object, and other parts of the set seemed to come alive. But, yeah, you have to hold a phone in your hand. The Lego: Hidden Side sets are meant to stay constructed so you can play the game, so if your kids are like mine and start mashing up sets and breaking down stuff as soon as they've made it, this probably isn't for you. Also, the whole experience is designed, again, to be used while holding a phone in one hand (the AR app isn't optimized for tablets), which may not be perfect for a lot of kids who don't have phones (or if you, like me, don't want your kids to be screen-immersed all the time and borrowing your phone). But there's something about the nearly escape-room-like puzzle solving in the Hidden Side sets that feels intriguing. What if Lego made larger kits that involved more abstract puzzles, or had AR challenges that unlocked depending on what configuration you assembled the bricks in? What if the little brick worlds could be theater sets where all sorts of AR stories could unfold, like the tiny AR storybook worlds of apps like Wonderscope? I also expected that, maybe, the AR app could finally help me reconstruct Lego sets or build new ones from scratch, like an augmented-reality version of Nintendo's Labo cardboard kits. What about using AR to help scan and analyze bricks and guide construction without consulting those easy-to-lose paper manuals? No such luck yet, but it sounds like Lego may be working on it. I hope so, because I have a buckets of loose bricks at home in the kids' playroom, and we could use the virtual help. First published Feb. 14, 2019 at 6 a.m. PT. Update Feb. 16 at 8:42 a.m. PT: Updated for Toy Fair 2019 weekend.<doc-sep>Lego's upcoming Hidden Side playsets will offer ARKit 2 'haunted' gameplay using a companion iPhone app, offering more ways to play. Lego Hidden Side consists of eight "haunted" sets for a number of locations that children can construct, including a school, a house, a bus, and a graveyard. All of the models are set as if they are viewed in the daytime, with no spooky elements on view outside of the AR experience. Using the companion app for iOS, players are then brought into the virtual world of Newbury, which is littered with paranormal mysteries. In the game, players work with the characters Jack and Parker to explore the playset, which is turned into a haunted version with interactive elements. The AR view from the iPhone can bring models to life when the camera is brought nearby, or if items are triggered within the app's image. "Points of possession" can release virtual ghosts that can be caught within the AR game to stop the haunting of the playset, and to slowly reclaim the town from the specters. The interactivity won't be limited to just tapping elements in the AR view, as Lego advises some gameplay will require one hand on the iPhone and another to move parts of the real-world models in order to progress. Lego Hidden Side playsets will be released globally in the late summer. The Lego Hidden Side companion app will be a free download from the App Store.<doc-sep>
Start transforming your game’s economy and increase your bottom line. Get the free guide now. Elevate your enterprise data technology and strategy at Transform 2021. Though Apple and Google both improved their augmented reality tools for developers last year, AR didn’t have a particularly strong 2018, as consumers largely shrugged off new AR apps and hardware. But the Lego Group announced an intriguing new initiative today: a collection of eight “haunted” building sets that can be enjoyed by themselves, or paired with a new AR app that adds spooky virtual elements to explore. All set in the town of Newbury, the Lego Hidden Side sets will range in price from $20 to $130, with models including a bus, graveyard, and schoolhouse. In physical form, the models will be seen as they appear by day, while the AR app will show them infested with ghosts at night. Lego’s free Hidden Side app lets kids choose between one of two characters to explore the sets from a first-person perspective, using Android or iOS devices to discover and capture the virtual ghosts. The AR app will prompt kids to discover new parts of the real-world models, and change the AR experience as kids physically manipulate the sets. “At our core we focus on tactile building,” explained Lego SVP Tom Donaldson, “but AR presents opportunities to enhance physical LEGO play with new action and mastery elements. We’re breaking the mold of gaming-first AR play experiences to create a new type of play where the physical world actually influences the AR layer, instead of the other way around.” Lego Hidden Side builds on the Lego AR Playgrounds initiative announced at Apple’s 2018 WWDC. After showing a prototype on stage with impressive but largely cosmetic interactions between a Lego set and an iOS app, the company released Lego Ninjago AR playsets as “early experiments” to see how AR could enhance physical play. The Lego Group says Hidden Side will be the first time it introduces a play theme as a service, with promises to keep adding new challenges, ghosts, and randomized gameplay to the app to keep it fresh. Kids will also be able to play several small games inside the Hidden Side app without using building sets. The Hidden Side sets will hit stores around the world in late summer. iOS and Android apps are planned to hit the App Store and Google Play for free at the same time.