From Aerth to Your Pocket, Aerthlings Is the Blind Box Collectible Game You Didn't Know You Needed – PAX East 2026 Interview
By Rob (DadGeek)
The sign of Aerthlings was towering over the PAX Expo floor signaling to all there was something special to come see. The booth was busy. Like, really
busy. As we got closer I saw better what was going on, all around the booth were small mystery cubes and people unwrapping and trading its mysterious cube contents, hunching over their phones, scanning the cube with their NFC reader and shouting
with surprise and delight of victory as small voxelated creatures hatched on screen. Welcome to Aerthlings and if you haven't heard of it yet, you're
about to, as this might become your next obsession.
We visited with the team who generously provided us with the sales pitch of Aerthlings and a few free ones to give it a try. If was just days after the game officially launched in the US for the first time. (It previously soft launched in Australia about six months prior.) The energy around the booth felt electric, and this is understandable the concept once you actually understand it is genuinely fun and exciting. We took the figurines back to the hotel and gave it a go, try the mobile companion game and, the next day we met with Justin from the team to talk more about what makes this game different.
So What Exactly Is Aerthlings?
Aerthlings (spelled A,E,R,T,H,L,I,N,G,S,
not "Earthlings" though
they're seemingly pronounced the same) is at heart a blind box minifig collectible line that comes with with a
free-to-play mobile game. Justin describes their game as Pokemon meets Skylanders, meets LaBubu. Each figure has an NFC tag embedded in its
base which allows you to scan the figure into the iOS or Android app. Once you do a unique character
hatches into the game, which you can then take on an adventure in rebuilding its (game) world. The trick here is of course to collect the all. The first collection that came out, the Genesis collection, features 24 unique characters, and in addition to that the Aerthlings team also produces limited, edition Seed Series of special exclusives only available at launch events
such as PAX as free giveaways.
"You collect the figs, you scan them into the game using
your phone, hatch a unique character and
these become tradable with other players."
And this is where things gets interesting and where Aerthlings tries to set it self apart from other blind box, collection game. First of if you get doubles from a blind box you do not have to worry as they will scan in as a unique version of that type, making them always useful in one way or another. Perhaps you just decide to build an army of just Glo-Bro's or Jetti's, each with their own special mutations. But if you want a larger variety of physical and digital characters you will have to find someone to trade with.
It takes two baby!
You see once you have scanned and hatched your character, it becomes tied to your account. No one else can take the figure from you as i will come up on screen as being owned by someone else and cannot be used in the game. They will stay tied to your account until you choose to trade it. The trade isn't just swapping a physical toy it is an in-game transaction system that both players opt into, and it comes with a genuinely clever mechanic called lineages.
You see, trading the collectable figurine does not trade the digital character you have been playing with and added upgrades and mutations to. That in game character stays with you in your app. on your account. However their adventure does not stop there. Every time a physical Aerthling fig is scanned and hatched by a new player, it adds an entry to that figure's lineage like a family tree of everyone who has ever owned it. And here is the real impressive part, as those future owners play the game and level up, everyone in that lineage receives XP back. As a result trading is encouraged and you get rewarded over and over again for the trading chain you started.
"As the fig gets traded again and again, that generates
lineage XP that gets passed back through the lineage to everybody. You level up
the lineage and get rewards and loot in the game."
As I mentioned , you never lose is the
digital character you already hatched. Trading just gives you someone new to add to
your collection while keeping what you had. It's a fairly elegant system, and one the
team was clearly proud of. The only thing you have to keep in mind is that you can not trade a figure back to yourself. It can only move on to a new person due to the lineage system. On the show floor at PAX they were showing of record lineage scoreboards which is a new feature added recently and there were some real long lines already being established which had the crowd around the booth pretty excited.
The physical trading part bring a fun social aspect that sometimes is missing in todays world. With social interaction being diminished and everyone's face buried deep in a screen, the system of Aerthlings offer a way to go and interact with others. You even have a topic to discuss right of the bat and do not have to worry about small talk. Why not wonder together about figs, trade, show off your Aerths and discover exciting lineages.
At first sight, the comparison to NFTs and blockchain collectibles is an obvious one, and the Aerthlings team addressed it directly. No blockchain, no crypto, no gotcha speculation market. though similar in some of its behavior the figs use NFC chips and a back-end server only. The NFC tags are serialized and locked to your account upon scanning. If someone else tries to scan your fig, they're notified it belongs to someone else.
"No NFTs here. No blockchain. The NFC tags are serialized and we use that to lock it so you own it in
the game."
Justin acknowledged that some
elements of Aerthlings are inspired by concepts that emerged from the NFT space
like procedurally generated characters, but the intent is firmly in the physical
collectible toy tradition. T Justin was adamant that of course the product is designed to make money, it is also designed for people that like collecting and blind boxes, but by removing the hurdle of having to keep buying them just to get a rare and being stuck with many duplicates that bring nothing to the table. As fans of the genre themselves, the team knows how to make every blind box pull feel exciting and fun regardless of what you get.
We cannot end this article without talking about the game itself of course. Present as a top down charming minecraft-ish voxel world (meaning blocky graphics, by design) the game is trying to put cute design to the forefront. The game's lore is charming . Aerth (not Earth) was destroyed when its moon crashed into the planet. The inhabitants Aerthlings survived by "cubing" themselves (the figurine tie in),and turning into voxel-form figures. Now it is up to the player to collect and repopulate them onto a unique procedurally generated world, gather resources, complete quests, battle Moonlings and rebuild Aerth one chonk at a time. Moonlings are the invaders from the very moon that destroyed Aerth and it will take sometimes many Aerthlings to defeat them and send them packing.
Each player's world is unique, with up to 15
different biome types. Terraforming, crafting, and world building are all part
of the gameplay loop and you do not even need a starter fig to get to playing. You can download the game right now and you will receive a digital character to get started and more can be found along the way as you keep playing. those digital ones are not tradable of course. That is reserved for their physical counterparts.
In addition to the game a ten-episode animated YouTubeseries adds backstory to the universe of Aerthlings. All the extra lore and the charm of the physical figures had already started to build a passionate
community. Within days of the Aethelings soft launch in Australia, fans were making fan art and 3D,printing
custom storage cases for their figures and more. That level of engagement, that fast, is
a very good sign, but it remains to see if the momentum keeps moving forward. PAX East sure made it look that it does.
Justin told us that the Aerthlings team is launching
a Kickstarter in about a month that will serve as their actual global launch moment,
bringing the game to all countries that don't have it yet as of now. This also will launch series Two alongside it adding new figs to the original 24. From there, the team expects new series releases on a spring and
fall cadence. Thought limited right now to their own website, retail availability is expanding to Amazon imminently, GameStop
by September, and Walmart and Target in 2027. Additionally the game will also get a PC version and all of it is full crossplay between Android, IOS, Phone, tablet or PC , allowing you to keep playing no matter the device.
If all this has you curious you can download the app now at
aerthlings.com or via your app store. Even if you can't get a physical
fig yet, you can start exploring the world. And if you spot someone at a
convention with one clipped to their bag maybe ask them about trading. You might just
be an epic moment.
Watch the full interview video from our PAX East 2026 chat with the Aerthlings team on our YouTube for more info.
DadGeek (Rob) is the co-founder of GeeksVsGeeks. He is a product of the eighties and never let go of his geek interest and hobbies no matter how often someone told him to stop. His love for gaming and all things geek has been part of his parenting style and permeates throughout the whole family. A family of Geeks vs Geeks.
