Skylanders will always hold a special place in my heart. It’s a project that we quite simply didn’t expect Activision to go for, and I thought that at any moment during development, one of the Activision accountants would burst through the door and yell ‘Waitaminute, you want us to make HOW MANY TOYS?!’ Of course, that didn’t happen, and it felt great to be an instrumental part of a franchise that brought so much joy to kids everywhere. (And maybe even a parent or two.)
In fact, Activision had such faith in the project that they gave us an extra year to work on it to bring it to AAA status. Originally the first game was going to use blocky characters, with a bunch of levels that had a simple aesthetic (translation: ‘cheap to assemble out of common parts’) and were built to be simple, short, fun experiences. Bobby Kotick thought that the initial toy proofs were underwhelming (think ‘Happy Meal’ quality) and that the marketing and distribution plan for the title didn’t match the franchise potential. He asked each of those 2 teams what it would take to make it AAA-worthy, and each team said they could do it in a year. He said ‘do it.' We focused down to 26 levels (from the 60 or so we had in the pipeline) and developed plans to boost the production values and make every level memorable.
Throughout the bulk of the 4 Skylanders games we worked on, my job was to be the wacky ‘change of pace’ designer - the big, epic gameplay moments that we threw at the players to keep things fresh. As such, I got to put players in (or out of) control of giant robots, flying vehicles, pirate warships, and even the occasional DOTA fight.
Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure - One of the systemic things I developed was the cinematic handler in the first Skylanders game - although it really wasn’t designed to carry a full game’s worth of in-engine cutscenes. I built it just as a way to do ‘reveals’ when a player did a task and we needed the camera to pan over to see what to do next. At some point I used my system to block out one of my levels’ opening cinematic just to show the Animators what it should look like for their (as yet unbuilt) system, and apparently TFB’s top folks thought it looked good enough to ship, so my role evolved into the primary cinematic designer for the game’s levels. it turned into one of the things I loved doing the most.
We also needed a last-minute system to apply some kind of lip-sync during the boss battles for the evil Kaos. We didn’t have time for creating animation for all of the 100 or so lines we had recorded, so in a few hours I had developed a method to stitch sections of our 4 or 5 lip-flapping animations together, and within a day I was able to get all of those done. We even used that system in a few levels to allow the NPC pilot Flynn to similarly express himself with gestures that fit the lines… ”BOOM!”
Crystal Eye Castle - This level was one of the first levels created for Skylanders. It shows off a bit of the cinematics system, and how we're able to quickly introduce different gameplay elements individually and then begin combining them more and more as you continue through the level.
7:00 - Opening cinematic
9:20 - Suicidal Cyclops! One of my favorite hidden moments I snuck in, some of the Barrel Cyclops are set up to leap over the side to their deaths if you get close but don't kill them.
13:30 - Arena Tower battle
14:11 - Rudimentary 'Tower Collapse' sequence. We used a similar script method I wrote to collapse several locales throughout this game and Giants.
21:55 - Eye Puzzle, where you have to hit all eyes within a time limit to open the gate.
Arkeyan Armory - A late level in the game, where the Skylanders retrieve the Eternal Magic Source.
4:05 - door that prevents backtracking. One of my great regrets is that we couldn't get it to 'roll' between positions due to how it was rigged, and we ran out of time to make changes.
6:00 - Ride the Arkeyan Robot! This gameplay was unrefined for this appearance, too much emphasis on shooting things at distance. I think we improved it for Giants, although movement speed is still quite slow.
8:15 - Drone shooting gallery. Waves of drones appear, drones you miss during their initial path show up later on the final cross platform. (8:35)
9:55 - Final faceoff with another War Machine.
Pirate Seas - one of the expansion Adventure levels, I handled the in-game cinematics, main path level layout and the minigame setups.
11:30 - 'Sink the Frigate' turret minigame
26:40 - Pirate Card minigame (advanced version)
29:00 - Plunder Island target minigame (Yeah, probably a bit too one-note. But destruction is fun!)
Skylanders: Giants - The success of SSA caught virtually everyone by surprise…except Activision. They were the ones watching the User Research data, which told them that they needed to invest more, not less, in this franchise. They came to us about six months before we shipped the first game and asked us what it would take for us to release another game for the following year. (They had Vicarious Visions already looking at jumping into the franchise, but VV didn’t think they could get up to speed fast enough.) We were comfortable claiming that we could come up with a game around 70% of the size of SSA, and they thought that was terrific.
We had gotten very proficient with our toolsets, so while Giants had fewer levels (20 to SSA’s 26), they were longer and packed even more full of content, making Giants a bigger game. I still handled some cinematics (mostly for my levels) but Giants turned into a project with a laser-like focus since we literally didn’t have time to experiment, we just had to move.
Secret Vault of Secrets - OK, I admit it, this level is too long. I probably should have trimmed out one of the robot sections.
1:20 - A shift from the previous game was to incorporate setups that the player can't interact until the torso rotates into position, increasing tension by giving a shorter window for player action to handle threats.
7:50 - Dam opening cinematic, lowering water level on the other side.
31:00 - Closing in-game cinematic where the Robot's friendly AI 'Ghost' meets his end. The effect of subbing in the T-pose as the VO glitched was something I did by hand, but it was very effective. (We heard later that kids were sobbing at his demise.)
Autogyro Adventure - a vehicle-based level where Flynn accompanies the Skylander on a trip to unlock the gate to the Lost City of Arkus. (The 'Airwolf'-like music was no accident.)
1:18 - Basic flight movement. The controls weren't terrific, the stick inputs in retrospect were treated as binary instead of smooth transitions in/out of pitch/roll. I was able to refine this when the mechanic was reused in Trap Team.
2:15 - Hover mode/combat
28:15 - Arrival at central area
36:55 - Escape Sequence
Skylanders: Trap Team - The idea of trapping villains was an idea that that I came up with while Giants was wrapping up, and after TFB pitched it to Activision as the central gimmick for the next game, they loved it and wanted to patent its physical interaction with the Portal. (I mean, I’m glad to have my name on a patent somewhere, but it’s not like capturing bad guys is a new idea.)
Skylanders Trap Team was our final game using the TFBTool scripting language system that I had been using for the better part of the previous 15 years. I had become one of the level designers with the most detailed knowledge of the system and as such was given quite a bit of the ‘odd’ gameplay bits across many levels.
Operation Troll Rocket Steal - a mini-DOTA-esque level where you rescue the Mabu Defense Force so they can assault the Rocket Launch Pad.
12:45 - Q-Bert homage!
14:00 - Tech Elemental Area. The devious simplicity of the counterrotating platforms seems hard - until you realize the solution and how easy it is.
14:55 - Bombing the Turret Wall. I did most of this myself using existing assets.
16:00 - Mabu Catapult delivers reinforcements.
25:45 - I designed and built the Rocket Exhaust Port sequences for the end battle. (I even did the VFX, which is my first shippable VFX. Just sayin.)
Skyhighlands - Another re-use/refinement of a previous game's mechanic, this time a combat sequence against other flying enemies before an on-foot section with the aerial battle still happening around you.
0:55 - Opening cinematic. I'm particularly pleased with this one, as the full cast of good guys riding vehicles from previous games use the rocket obtained in the previous level to ride to the upper stratosphere.
1:45 - Arkeyan Copter Flight gameplay. Take out the enemy vehicles with bullets and missiles! In co-op (seen here) the forward-facing cannon becomes a turret that the 2nd player steers with the controller to hit onscreen targets.
10:40 - Previous Skylanders games used turret controls similar to the Giant Robot, this is an upgraded version that adjusts the camera based on the player movement, and elicits an elemental-based 'bonus' powerup when the player hits a threshold of enemies defeated.
22:30 - Bonus area, have to raise the water level to bring the Hat Box to the level of the platform the Skylander can retrieve it from.
28:40 - Final battle, with the Prism Cannon firing occasionally at the player.
Fun fact: The enemy vehicle designs were mine, I blocked out simple ones and our Art Director loved the silhouettes.
Future of Skylands (Big Bad Woofer Fight) - a brief mid-level shooter sequence to take down the Big Bad's giant space station concert venue.
33:30 - Start of Sequence
Nightmare Express (Train Chase) - This was a fun experience to work on. We learned from Mystic Mill (another level of mine) that several systems (enemies, projectiles, VFX) did not function reliably on moving platforms, so we needed to figure out the Train Chase gameplay by making sure that whichever platform that the Skylanders were standing on never moved. We wanted the train to be able to turn along tracks instead of it always looking like it's just moving forward, so I reversed everything - only the car that the Skylander is standing on is stationary, everything else dynamically moved to stay on whichever moving track shape was in front of it. As the player advances, the 'current' train car changes and the camera switches orientation around the predetermined 'curves'.
27:00 - the track turns to the right. Remember that everything is movable except the train car that the Skylander is standing on.
Skylanders: Imaginators - There’s no other way to describe Imaginators than as a disappointment. With this many games in the franchise, every gameplay area is overstuffed with collectible or NPC interruptions or other legacy moments. In addition, the combat just seemed drawn-out and lackluster.
In level design land, we were working with VV’s toolsets now and learning on-the-fly, so we probably played it too safe with our design choices in order to reduce risk. The 2 levels I contributed each had elements that we expanded into end-game level content in the form of DOTA-like Battlefield missions and a re-use of the Battleship in the form of a Resogun-like circular-2d combat minigame.
Sky Fortress - This level turned out to be an Activision Vertical Slice level, so there are a lot of overwrought mechanics thrown in to show them off.
7:15 - Pushblock laser puzzle
12:20 - Wrecking Ball event
25:45 - Battleship Turret reload sequence
36:45 - Guacamole Monster Battle
Lair of Kaos - this level uses several of the same designs as the final level from the first game. But this time it's a DOTA with Kaos Klones doing battle against friendly forces.
10:35 - Kaos' Game Show
(I had a lot of fun working on the Game Show elements like the floating holographic monitors and the scoreboards.)
