Some of Scanlings is built, finished, and shut. It opens when enough of the world has been found — not by you, by everyone together. Every barcode anyone scans counts toward it, which is the whole idea.
Not every barcode holds a creature. A few hold something else, and nobody has worked out the pattern yet — but they are turning up, slowly, in shopping bags all over the place. There is somewhere for them to go. It cannot open with the handful found so far.
Closer than it looks.
During all your journeys you see, in the distance, a tower. It seems to go up to the sky without any limit. What is that place? Nobody who has gone looking has come back able to say — and the way in has something to do with how much of the world has been catalogued.
Found. The door has not opened.
You have beaten the Instructor often enough that it has begun repeating itself. Other people are elsewhere, doing the same thing, against the same opponent. Nobody has arranged for you to meet, and there are not yet enough of you to make arranging it worthwhile.
Not enough people yet.
The earth is rumbling. Something is awakening, and the more creatures are discovered the more we seem to upset this entity. It is not clear yet whether finding everything is a good idea. It is going to happen anyway.
Far away. Keep scanning.
There is one catalogue and it belongs to all of us. Scan something nobody has scanned before and that creature exists from then on — not just in your collection, in the world. The same is true of the other things people keep turning up.
Which means there is nothing here to grind. You do not need a hundred hours or a hundred scans; ten barcodes nobody has found yet moves everyone forward by ten. Somebody who plays for five minutes a week and happens to buy unusual coffee is contributing more than somebody re-scanning the same cupboard all evening.
It is also why more people in more places opens all of this faster than any of us could alone. Your kitchen is not like anyone else's — a different shop, a different diet, a different job. Someone who works in a bakery can reach things a shopper cannot buy at all. Whatever is on your shelves, some of it is new to everybody.
There are no numbers on this page on purpose. We would rather build the thing properly than run a countdown to it.