Senior character Gameplay designer
Skylanders Spyro's Adventure was my first title in the Senior Designer role. As such, I took on the role of prototyping much of the combat design as well as setting up how characters would be implemented. Supported our by the deeply talented systems scripter and portal of power magician Dan Gerstein, we put together the roots of character gameplay design for the Skylanders franchise. This process included first and foremost a lot of hands on scripting in what was then known as TFBscript, an in-house proprietary tool that empowered designers to realize their creations without the support of engineers.
TFBscript used a series of op-codes to construct gameplay logic that was then converted into XML to be interpreted by the engine. With these tools, I was able to take my designs and script out player controls for 14 unique playable characters (and contributing to 3 others detailed below). This process involved directly working with animators (and directing them in some cases), hooking up controller inputs to queue animations, change movement parameters, create projectiles, visual and sound effects, and various different logic states needed to create the most responsive controls and gameplay we could.
Additionally I worked to design our branching upgrade system which was designed to create replayability in our toys but inadvertently got some of our customers to buy twice as many Skylanders just so they had one for each path. Honest, it was meant to bring added value to our players! I set the bar for upgrades as being the ultimate form of an ability and really pushed our other character gameplay designer to make the flashiest upgrades. This style would manifest more in future titles and be a hallmark of the Skylanders franchise as well as the Wow-Pow upgrades introduced in Skylanders Giants series 2 toys.
I had a similar role developing the magic items that were used in the game. These were also toys that activated when placed on the Portal of Power.
Finally, I spearhead the prototyping Skylanders Spyro's Adventure's PvP mode along with the level design, flow, and variant modes. Eventually designer Erol Otus would take over PvP mode through Skylanders Giants.
SpyRo
I was given the task of bring Spyro to life. Spyro was one of the original-four Skylanders that was made for the game's first playable prototype. Spyro's skill-set is derived from the original games: fire ball breath attacks, charging, and dragon flight. Flight provided an armor buff as well as increased mobility but would lose efficacy after the first game as deep water terrain was removed from the level designs. End-path upgrades such as the Daybringer Flame and Ibex's Wrath Charge were designed to embody the ultimate form of the base abilities. The visuals from Ibex's Wrath Charge were influenced by Battletoads. Spyro's Earth Pound soul gem ability was a call-out to the headbash ability from Ripto's Rage.
Trigger Happy was the first Skylander outside of the original-four to be designed and is one of three Skylanders appearing in the starter-pack. His original design had him spend his gold as an ammunition resource with a secondary ability that would pull coins towards him with the coins acting as projectiles. The psychology of spending your gold resource as ammunition proved to be too negative and would eventually contradict one of Skylander's character design tenets: spammable primary attacks that are fun no matter what. Due to some confusion with the marketing team, Trigger Happy has a french accent in the early commericals. In development, Trigger Happy was first referred to as the Golden Cheat. Much like the battlecruisers in Star Craft, the Golden Yamato Blast upgrade pays tribute to Leiji Matsumoto's Space Battleship Yamato. The charge up mechanic beckons back to the Melnorme Trader from Toys For Bob's classic Star Control 2.
Stealth Elf represents one of the more tactical Skylander designs. The core abilities are much like Ilwrath Avenger from Star Control 2. Early on, the Skylanders team was still figuring out the Skylanders formula so we see Stealth Elf with a not-very-combat-effective mobility only move in the Arboreal Acrobatics upgrade. While the controls are crisp and responsive, the move only really shines in the Pook Blade Saint upgrade path. The Shadowsbane Blade Dance upgrade turns Stealth Elf's Arboreal Acrobatics into a flying blender. The Forest Ninja upgrade path allows players to leverage positioning all the while dropping aggro from enemies. The Blade Fury combo attack definitely draws influence from Rock Lee's Ura Renge.
Originally, Eruptor's Lava Barf move was just lava bursting out the cracks in his body but after Activision's marketing department showed us a launch trailer cinematic and a well received commercial campaign featuring the "Lava Barf" chant, the team immediately pivoted to rebrand his secondary attack ability. Fortunately, none of our assets required any changes. Eruptor's bulbous physique would provide the ideal candidate for a Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade balloon.
Chop-Chop's design was more PvP conscious than other Skylanders. His shield primarily allows him to close in on long-distance projectile users both in PvP and in PvE adventure modes. The Demon Shield of the Shadows upgrade stores up enemy attacks to redirect them back making Chop-Chop the original Zarya / Black Panther Chop-Chop bears genetic connections to Star Control 2's Yehat Terminator. In development, Chop-Chop was known as the Arkeyan Knight.
WHIRLWIND
Another Skylander influenced by Star Control 2 ships, Whirlwind's Tempest Cloud ability functions very much like the spinning blade discs of the Kohr-Ah Marauder ships. Originally, the primary attack tried to manifest as a projectile of wind but after many iterations, the wind project was deemed visually weak. After multiple meetings, one designer jokingly said "what if she shoots rainbows" to which Paul Reiche responded enthusiastically "Yes! Make them the deadliest rainbows ever." Whirlwind would go on to really set the bar for crazy Skylander abilities. The rainbow theme really let her upgrades shine with the Rainbow Singularity being a benchmark for over-the-top powers. The slow methodical approach of its harmless-seeming projectile conveys a disarming sense of calm before it explodes into rainbow death. The Dual Rainbow upgrade was to be named Double Rainbow after the Yosemitebear Mountain meme, but due to a legal issue ( there is an ice cream company of that name). Tempest Matrix remains one of my favorite zoning upgrades.
Lightning Rod was voiced by Toys For Bob's very own producer, Alex Ness. Any Star Control 2 fan should be able to spot this Skylander's obvious connection between the Chmmr Avenger's Zap Sats and Lightning Rod's aptly named Cloud Zapper Satellite upgrade. I am unsure if Lightning Rod is supposed to have legs or if he is in fact a handicapped Skylander with a "wheel chair" made of clouds but the latter is much more interesting so I like to imagine that is the case.
Slam Bam is probably my favorite Skylander in Spyro's Adventure. When travelling over deep water terrain (which was eliminated from all subsequent Skylander games), this water element Skylander would create a surf board made of ice. If you had his not-very-useful Yeti-Cooling Factor soul gem upgrade, Slam Bam would don a pair of sunglasses to give some serious Thrilla Gorilla (of T&C Surf fame) vibes. Slam Bam's secondary ability was a deliberate attempt to bring to life Hyōrō no Jutsu (Ice Prison Technique) from the first Naruto movie. Named "Ice Prison" this ability has some auto-tracking to help the player land hits more reliably. Ice Prisons can also be used to block projectiles making for difficult but exhilirating PvP matches against projectile-based opponents.
Originally known as the Cyclops Slime and then later Tarclops, Zap's original model design tested so poorly that his concept design had to be hauled over from scratch. Thankfully, we were able to keep his gameplay design which has a certain degree of similarity to the Thraddash Torch from (you guessed it) Star Control 2. I recall Zap's chain lightning (aka Lightning Strikes Twice) upgrade ability to be particularly challenging to script as the second projectile had to exclude the original target less it immediately hit the original without chaining. Getting the environment bounces right was also tricky as though were mathed out and not done with any physics simulations. In his Cyclops Slime form, Zap was one of the original-four Skylanders created.
Simply known as "Rock Dragon" in development, Bash was another one of the original-four Skylanders first made. His kit was relatively straight forward; roll close to enemies and smash them with your mace tail. Some of the nice-touches put into Bash's roll ability were variable yaw correction based on the normal of a wall you hit. There was a minor correction threshold, a major correction threshold, and a stop/impact threshold. The corrections gave his roll a fluid feeling. Additionally, the move loses speed as it ends. I received frequent feedback that the roll ending abruptly felt bad for players so the slow down at the end successfully and almost subliminally conveyed to the player what was previously frustrating, a necessary game-balancing action.
Closing out the original-four Skylanders is Boomer aka Bomb Troll. His kit is also straight forward in lobbing explosives and knocking enemies away from him with his Troll Smash ability. The Dynamite Fuse Fake-Out move which delayed primary attack projectile explosions so long as the primary attack button was held was a very fun ability to use in PvP but as years of development have taught me, moves that involve holding a button down frequently are not understood by players. Troll Bombs and all of their subsequent upgrades were direct homage to Super Bomberman which Toys For Bob designers used to frequently play and Boomer's Accident Waiting to Happen upgrade was influenced by the Banana Bomb in Worms by Team 17.
Drill Sergeant aka Drillbot's original design had him have to retrieve his Drill Rockets each time he fired them. It quickly became apparent that this was not fun. The Drill Rockets do have some resemblance to the Fire-and-forget Nuclear Missiles on the Earthling Cruisers in Star Control 2. I recall Drill Sergeant being particularly difficult to design requiring many more iteration cycles than some of the other characters.
Wham-Shell has one of saddest typos in all of Skylander upgrades. Somewhere there is a marine biologist turning in his grave. Introducing interesting vocabulary in Skylander upgrades was very important to me. I can recall back to playing Dungeons and Dragons as a teenager and learning the word "alacrity." Something so simple as being exposed to new words was something I thought I could bring into the Skylander universe. Wham-Shell represents the very extreme of this. His primary ability is called the Malacostacan Mace which should be Malacostracan Mace after the taxonomic class malacostra under the subphylum of crustacea which crabs belong to. Another funny typo is the upgrade Mega Trident which was an over site. You see, Wham-Shell used to have a trident as his weapon! Then there are pseudo-Latin upgrades such as Starfishicus Gigantus which may go against the whole "educating with words" goal but they were meant to be fun even if they ended up being confusing. Long live Captain Crustacean!
Sunburn aka Fire Dragon is the last Skylander from Spyro's Adventure that I solely developed. His teleportation abilities are yet another Star Control 2 power made for the console. Unlike the random teleportation of the Arilou Lalee'lay Skiff, Sunburn needed to reflect the player's intentions so that he always teleported to where the player wanted. In his Guided Teleportation upgrade, I built upon this concept to layer in complexity which comes together beautifully in his Flame Lord path. The Flight of the Phoenix upgrade and its art is a reference to the Phoenix's Firebird Mode from Battle of the Plants / G-Force / Gatchaman anime series which I recall seeing a bit as a child.
Prism Break is a character I initially designed. His first two abilities and their interactions remain relatively intact although they started out with Prism Break punching the ground and having crystals cascade out to form his Crystal Shard with the laser beams on his secondary. These were eventually flipped around and simplified. Designer Jesse Moore would go on completing the design of Prism Break including stunning visual effects used in the Crystal Eruption ability and the complicated laser refraction math.
We intentionally tried to have a dragon in each element and Warnado started off as the Water Dragon. His abilities included a Steam Breath (which much like Whirlwind's Air Bullets, did not come across as very powerful) and a Super-Mario-esque turtle shell spin attack which became Warnado's primary attack. The switch from Water to Air came when our friend the Cyclops Slime was redesigned as the new Water Dragon. As such, we decided Warnado's kit should be redesigned and once again Jesse Moore was given the task.
Wrecking Ball aka Force Field Grub was the last of three Skylanders I started but did not finish. Lead Designer Toby Schadt had a very particular vision for this character that he wanted to personally develop. The one ability that I had originally designed that did not quite make it through was the Power Belch. In the original design, it functioned much like the Mycon Podship's semi-sentient Plasma ball attack. This was a small homing projectile that was very strong at its start and got bigger but weaker with time. The inconsistent nature of its damage ultimately made that iteration of the ability a casualty of the design process.
The magic items in Skylanders Spyro's Adventure were mostly implemented by me. There was definitely some systems support for creating them such as safe time scaling with Time Twister item and global resource tracking and instantiating with the Secret Treasure chests. The most robust of the items and the one I'm most proud of is that of Sparx, the Dragonfly from the original Spyro series. I'm pleased with the way his movement came out with darting motions mimicking that of a dragonfly. The eating of butterflies was also a nice touch I recall we put in in roughly a day at the suggestion of producer Michael Graham.
credits
Towards the end of Skylanders, I put together a credits level that would we would go on to use in Skylanders Spyro's Adventure, Skylanders Giants, and Skylanders Trap Team. For Spyro's Adventure, writer and producer Alex Ness came to me with a bunch of recorded audio. That was about it. The rest I came up with. The angled credits was definitely influenced by the end credits from Pixar's Incredibles. For Giants, I was able to train a junior designer to set things up and by Trap Team, the art team was able to independently set up the credits level. I always appreciate it when developers put time into their credits. It's a great reward at the end of a game and to get players to actually sit through them is a nod to the developers. Hope you all enjoyed them.