Skylanders: Imaginators hands you a blank toy and asks you to fill it in. Toys for Bob built the sixth Skylanders game around that idea, and it is the most interesting thing the series has done — even if the sales never matched the ambition. The game came out in 2016, ten years ago, and no Skylanders title has followed it on consoles since.
Kaos, Brain and the Mind Magic Book
The story picks up after an era of peace. A mysterious figure steals a book from the Skylanders Academy, and the theft leads back to Kaos, who wants the power of Mind Magic to build an army of Doomlanders and take Skylands. He teams up with Brain, the last of the Ancients — the same Brain who once tried to brainwash all of Skylands and got sealed away for it, along with the magic itself.
Eon calls on the Portal Masters and the Senseis, the greatest mystic warriors of Skylands, to stop him. Spyro stays immune to the brainwashing because he is a dragon, which is the kind of logic this series has always run on.
The final battle turns twice. Kaos transforms into a more powerful form and summons Doomlanders to help him. Then Brain betrays him and fights alongside the player. Kaos loses, Brain tries to flee, and instead ends up working with the Skylanders under threat of being sealed away again. He shrinks Kaos and Glumshanks for good measure.
It is thin, cheerful, and exactly what a kids’ fantasy game should be.
Build Your Own Skylander
The core loop is unchanged: solve puzzles, platform, fight enemies. Figures go on the Portal of Power, and the character on the toy is the character you control. Local multiplayer is supported.
What is new is the Imaginator. At the start you pick a battle class — Knight, Smasher, Sentinel, Swashbuckler, Brawler, Sorcerer, Quickshot, Ninja, Bazooker or Bowslinger — plus an element, and that choice decides how your character fights. You then name it, voice it, and set its abilities, appearance, colors and size. The game will also roll a random Imaginator for you if you would rather not decide.
Body parts come in four grades: Common, Rare, Epic and Ultimate. You find them while exploring and can swap them in at any time. Finished Imaginators can be shared with other players, and they live in Creation Crystals, which carry them between consoles.
The battle class cannot be reset inside the game. Unofficial workarounds exist using older games on the Wii and Nintendo 3DS — a small crack in a system that otherwise wants you to commit.
Thirty-One New Figures and a Card Game
Alongside the created characters, Imaginators adds 31 standard Skylanders. The Senseis are the headliners: powerful fighters refined in their own classes, 11 of them villains from earlier games in the series. They carry Sky-Chi powers, and the game treats them as the answer to Kaos’s army.
Creation Clash returns as a remake of Skystones, the card game introduced in Giants. Side quests and mini-games fill out the map. The game lists 10 battle class types, which this paper finds gives the combat more shape than the last few entries managed — that is our read, not the source’s.
The Switch version adds the Digital Library, which the source describes as easy on-the-go access to your Skylanders toy collection, and the Imaginite Creation Crystals do the same job for your Imaginators. The source also lists Wii U among the platforms, alongside PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One.
What the Imaginators Actually Change
Here is the part that matters. Skylanders spent five games selling you someone else’s characters. Imaginators hands over the tools and steps back. A kid who picks Bowslinger, builds a lanky Ultimate-grade archer and names it after the family dog has made something the series never let them make before.
The limits are real. Ten classes is a narrow frame, and the body parts you want are gated behind exploration and luck. The inability to reset a class in-game is a genuine annoyance, and pointing players at Wii and 3DS workarounds is not a fix.
But the sharing and the Creation Crystals are the smartest thing here. An Imaginator that travels between consoles is a character that belongs to the player, not to the disc.
Where Imaginators Leaves the Series
Imaginators received generally positive reviews, and sales came in below Activision’s expectations. Both of those things are true, and only one of them is about the game. The critical score sits at 7.8 out of 10 across 13 outlets, per the IGDB critic aggregate.
The franchise went into hiatus after this release. Imaginators is the sixth and most recent Skylanders game on consoles, which makes it an ending whether it meant to be or not. That is a strange fate for the entry that finally trusted its audience.
Toys for Bob built a game about imagination and then let players use it. The toys-to-life market was already cooling when it shipped, and in this paper’s view the cooling is the likelier explanation for the weak sales than anything in the design. What is left is a platformer with a creation tool at its center, a card game remake, 31 new figures and a plot where the villain gets shrunk and put to work.
Key facts
- Release year: 2016
- Developer: Toys for Bob
- Publisher: Activision
- Platforms: PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch
- Genre: Platform, RPG, hack and slash, adventure
- Modes: Single player, co-operative
- New figures: 31, including 11 former villains
- Battle classes: 10
- Body part grades: Common, Rare, Epic, Ultimate
- Critical score: 7.8/10 (IGDB critic aggregate, 13 outlets)
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