"Basically, there are five different beasts that you can pick at the beginning of the game," Outernauts designer Rowan Belden-Clifford elaborates. "Each of the plushies that we've made is one of the five starter beasts, so buying these is a way that you can get more starter beasts than the one you've chosen."

The idea behind the push, Insomniac Games brand development director Ryan Schneider told, is to expand the game's universe in a way that benefits the player in-game. Such a strategy has worked with Rovio's seminal Angry Birds franchise--albeit with less cross-media flair--but the Finnish developer casts a much wider net than Insomniac Games looks to with Outernauts.

Insomniac Games has it sights on the 13 to 25-year-old demographic, an audience that developers Kixeye and Kabam have tapped rather successfully with their strategy-heavy war games on Facebook. But will a similar player base latch onto Outernauts and its plush toys? That depends upon whether the game packs fun and depth, ultimately.

Note:

Outernauts is currently in a closed beta testing phase and will launch on Facebook this summer.