The 6 new LEGO Hidden Side sets for 2020 include a haunted lighthouse and fairgrounds [News]

Today, LEGO has taken the wraps off the January wave of sets for its augmented reality theme introduced earlier this year, Hidden Side. Each brick-built set pairs with the Hidden Side app to create a game about finding and catching ghosts to save the fictional town of Newbury. The new wave of six sets features more locations around the town such as a fairground, portal, and even a subway station, each with a spooky twist. There’s even an ominously named “Lighthouse of Darkness.” The new sets will be available immediately after Christmas, beginning Dec. 27.

Part counts and US prices are yet to be revealed, but you can check out the rest of the set information below, along with the official press release outlining a study on the effects of physical versus digital play in children.

70427 Portal | €19.99 | Available Dec. 27, 2019

The LEGO® minifigures Jack, Axel Chops, Scrimper and Waylon bring life to the spooky subway, and ghost hunting with the free LEGO® Hidden Side ™ augmented reality app. This dark secrets come to light, and the children have to record it with the ghost boss Lady E.


70428 Jack’s Beach Buggy | €19.99 | Available Dec. 27, 2019

Here’s how to build and playfully discover Jack’s beach buggy with LEGO® minifigures Jack, Parker and Scott Francis, the two-headed ghost. With the free LEGO® Hidden Side ™ app, children can take on ghosts, chase clues, and fight against the ghost boss Trucker Dale.


70429 El Fuego’s Stunt Airplane | €29.99 | Available Dec. 27, 2019

The single-player or multiplayer mode brings the propeller plane to life with the LEGO® Minifigures El Fuego, Jack and Mary Breaksom. With the help of the free LEGO® Hidden Side ™ app children bring out the ghosts. At the end of the hunt for haunting ghosts and the search for hidden clues awaits the fight against the ghost boss Harry Cane!


70430 Newbury Underground Station | €29.99 | Available Dec. 27, 2019

Together with Jack, Parker and the roving Pete Peterson, explore the interactive subway model for a fantastic augmented reality experience. The free LEGO® Hidden Side ™ app transforms the model into a mysterious portal, waiting for exciting adventures in a digital game world.


70431 The Lighthouse of Darkness | €49.99 | Available Dec. 27, 2019

The Lighthouse of Darkness explores the interactive lighthouse model of Jack, Parker, a skeleton, Jennie Napo and Claus Stormward. With the free LEGO® Hidden Side ™ App, the model comes to life and transforms into a digital world full of ghosts, hidden clues and the ghost boss Joe Ishmael.


70432 Ghost Fair | €49.99 | Available Dec. 27, 2019

It haunts the fair!
Along with the included LEGO® minifigures Jack, Parker, JB, Jimbo Loblo and Terry Top, the interactive coaster and fall tower models of Ghost Rummels can be spotted.


Read LEGO’s full press release below:

DISRUPTION IN THE NURSERY

A neuroscientific study shows that physical-digital game concepts like LEGO® Hidden Side  make children more creative

Munich. November 14, 2019 – Digital skills yes, but please not at the expense of creativity and imagination. Especially parents, the pursuit of their children in the digital is often anything but right. The worry that too much screen time has negative consequences and is at the expense of the “good old” playing with draft drives them around. A neuroscientific research * carried out by the Goldmedia research institute on behalf of LEGO® Hidden Side TM now shows that the combination of physical and digital, ie “phygital”, play has a positive effect on sensory and motor skills and can promote children’s creativity.

Parents have always been confronted with changes in the nursery. If magic cube or discman were still available for earlier generations, digitization has made much more opaque. As a result, parents are often cautious especially with digital gaming offerings. According to the LEGO Group’s Play Well Report of 2018, 41 percent of parents surveyed question the positive impact of digital gaming. However, a neuroscientific study commissioned by LEGO® Hidden Side  now shows the positive effects of phygital play.

“The phygital play with LEGO® Hidden Side TM , the combination of physical and digital play, shows mental patterns that suggest increased creative processes in the brain.” Florian Kerkau, study director at Goldmedia. “The results of the investigation also suggest that the different requirements of virtual-physical play can be expected to have a positive impact on both basic and specific cognitive abilities. It trains, for example, the concentration or the memory span, but also skills such as logical thinking and planned action as well as processes of attention and recognition, “Kerkau continues.

The neuroscientific results of the investigation in overview

  • The physical games created especially analytical, cognitive brain activities and training in particular skills such as logical thinking, the memory span or fine motor skills .
  • In contrast, digital games primarily activate emotions, spontaneity and reaction speed . In addition, skills such as orientation , attention and perception as well as cognition are promoted.
  • In the case of phygital play , the study participants showed an overall high degree of focus and concentration . The measurement of brain activity also suggests increased creativity .

Phygital play stimulates different brain areas
The central result of the neurophysiological analysis: The varieties “physical” and “digital” differ significantly in their cognitive requirements and complement each other optimally. If in purely physical games, especially analytical and motor-specific requirements are placed on the children, in which spatial imagination is required, playing with the inclusion of the augmented reality app requires a completely different set of cognitive skills. Here, the information processing must be very fast, motor reactions occur spontaneously, which among other things promote a spatial orientation via augmented reality and can positively influence the creativity and activity of the child.

 * About the study
On behalf of LEGO® Hidden Side TM , Goldmedia Custom Research GmbH conducted a neuroscientific study in October 2019 with 33 children aged 10 to 14 years. The study looked at children’s responses to play with LEGO® Hidden Side  kits and the associated augmented reality app using EEG measurements, facial analysis, and electrodermal activity (EDA) measurements. The measurements initially took place while building up the haptic LEGO® sets and were repeated while the subjects went on virtual ghost hunting around the kits using the AR app. In addition, qualitative interviews and surveys with questionnaires were conducted among the subjects.

4 comments on “The 6 new LEGO Hidden Side sets for 2020 include a haunted lighthouse and fairgrounds [News]

  1. Skye Barnick

    For what it’s worth, the pictures for the subway station set are switched. Seem to have been mislabeled on LEGO’s newsroom site.

  2. Juan A Baez III

    I was excited when Hidden Side got announced, after buying a few sets, I found them to be pretty disappointing. It’s extremely weird to me that this study talks about adding creativity, when only 1 of the 2 modes uses the set at all, and then the use of the set is as a boring shooter. There’s no real exploring the set, or having cool animations while you manipulate the physical. Anything their study says about the benefits of this kind of play is true, but then their actual sets very much miss that mark. I look at these, and I STILL want them to be cool. That app is just lackluster at best.

  3. Hammerstein NWC

    I like the ghost parts – the dual head thing is pretty neat but could have done with being executed a little better maybe like the dual head brick warriors mold. Still I like the ghost claws as well.

Comments are closed.