Ready your wallets and keep your kids away from the internet -- Activision is revamping its
successful Skylanders franchise with a full-featured tablet release of the game. The upcomingSkylanders: Trap Team, the fourth in the series, will see a dedicated figure portal and controller for Android, iOS, and Kindle Fire devices launch alongside traditional console versions.
The mobile version comes with its own modified Traptanium portal, which uses NFC tech to transfer the physical character toys into the game world when placed on it. It features a built-in stand to prop up a tablet, and includes a proprietary Bluetooth controller to allow the full range of and interaction found in the home games, while sitting at a distance from your iPad or similar. The starter kit also includes two character figures -- Snap Shot and Food Fight -- plus two traps, the new feature of this year's entry.
Developed by Toys for Bob, Trap Team on all formats allows players to capture and control enemy characters for the first time, as well as retaining compatibility with earlier Skylanders toys. Monsters have been let loose across the Skylands, and the smaller trap accessories can be used to house them once defeated, retaining the series' ability to transfer characters between games.
The core game comes as an app, with the opening area available to play for free and the full version downloading in the background as figures are added. Impressively, it's identical to the full version found on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, rather than a technologically toned down mobile outing. The tablet and console versions retain compatibility with each other, with progress stored on the figures themselves, which can then be used on any version of Trap Team.
Trap Team on tablets also lets kids play without lugging around the portal and a bunch of figures, with onscreen virtual controls and 'Instant' versions of Snap Shot and Food Fight to adventure with when they're away from their toys. Peace at last on long car journeys?
The move to a mobile platform for Skylanders alongside consoles makes a great deal of sense. Kids increasingly have access to their own screen devices, so allowing them to take the full version of one of the most successful toy brands of the decade on the go with them (or at least to their rooms, freeing up the living room TV) will likely be well received by parents and children alike.
Karthik Bala and Paul Reiche demonstrated the new mobile version of the game before Gamescom opened [check out the video embedded in this post]. Bala outlined the approach to development at Vicarious Visions. "We are bringing the full experience from console to tablets. We had to wait for the performance of the tablets to catch up with what modern console hardware can do. Now they can do this, the other part of the equation was bringing the toys to life. So we have a new Bluetooth portal, using the new BLE standard of low-energy Bluetooth that automatically syncs across iOS, Android and Kindle platforms."
Trap Team launched on 10 October in the UK (5 October in the US) and will retail for £64.99.
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