Interview: Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure designer Jonathan Mintz talks toys and games

Have you ever found yourself walking past a toy shop and wishing you were still a child?

Then upcoming 3DS title Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure might appeal to you, because it uses physical toys in its gameplay.

Not only does it come with action figures to play with, but you can scan them with your 3DS camera and warp them straight into the game.

Okay, so it's not quite as magical as that, but the toys do remember specific statistics and then beam the numbers into your game.

Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure follows the story of Spyro and his friends as they're frozen in time by the evil Portal Master Kaos.

The group journey across 25 wide-ranging levels in order to save the Skylands, all brimming with stereoscopic 3D life.

Developer Vicarious Visions is working on the 3DS version, and was happy to share the inside scoop on the game with Pocket Gamer.

"Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure introduces 'Toys with Brains', or interaction figures that remember their dynamic experiences (XP, hats, gold collected, etc.) from the console and handheld games," says lead designer Jonathan Mintz.

"Wherever the toy goes, its experiences go with it. This allows players to personally customize and power-up their toys, as well as bring them to life on their friend’s game through their Portal of Power [pictured below]."

He continues, "So if you reach Level 4 on the Wii, you’ll be able to pick up that toy and bring it into the 3DS game at level 4 with everything you’ve collected and/or upgraded along the way.

"Then, as you earn more experience on 3DS, you can sync the toy with the 3DS Portal of Power, then bring that experience back to the Wii game, or X360, PS3, PC."

Sounds great so far - but a game that requires toys to play is going to be expensive. Mintz tells us that, "The core of this game are the interaction figures and thus you need them to play."

So how much are we talking then? "The Skylanders Spyro’s Adventure starter pack includes three characters, a Portal of Power, collectible cards and a full-featured video game that players can complete out of the box from beginning to end for $69.99," he reveals.

"The 3DS [version of the game] includes Stealth Elf, Ignitor, and an exclusive Dark Spyro interaction figure. Individual Skylanders characters will retail for $7.99, which is in line with other toy action figures."

As for why you'd want to collect more toys outside the three provided, it's all down to mixing up your style of play.

"Each of the toys provide a unique experience," Mintz explains. "Each has their own personality, abilities and style of play, so no two characters play quite the same.

"You can complete the game with the toys that are included in the starter pack, but every new character that you add to your collection gives you a new way to play and provides new experiences in the game."

There will be over 30 different toys to collect when the game launches on October 16th, and the developer is currently working with multiple retail partners to make sure they are freely available for those gamers who want to expand on the starter characters.

While it all sounds pretty intriguing, we're more than a little dubious about whether parents will want to fork out so much cash when they could simply buy a different game for much less.

However, Mintz believes that Skylanders is the perfect game for bringing parents and children together over gaming.

"We’ve found that kids of all ages, including us 'adults' have been pretty excited about the toys even before they come to life in the game, so we feel it’s really good value for kids and parents - getting a new toy is fun on its own, but using that toy to discover new ways to play and experience the game makes it better.

"It’s really about choice and it’s up to the player to choose which characters they want to play with - each of us have our favorite characters and utilize different characters and strategies at different areas in the game," he concludes.

We shall, of course, have a review of the game closer to release. For all the exclusive images, scroll to the top and click the screenshot.