Spyro's Kingdom

Spyro's Kingdom
Developer(s):	Toys for Bob
Released:	Cancelled
Genre:	MMORPG

Spyro's Kingdom was a defunct Spyro game concept that soon evolved into concepts similar to its successor, Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure.

Details

Spyro's Kingdom was originally set to be a mature Spyro game with a much darker tone that included blood, but the developers of Toys for Bob lost their enthusiasm and felt that this direction did not feel like "Spyro".

It soon started life as a project, which Graham says still featured "the toys-to-life idea - taking your toys, putting them on a magic device, and having them come to life in the game. Spyro was going to be a full-grown dragon and the king of Spyro’s Kingdom. You would go to him for quests, and he'd tell you where to go and help you on your adventures.

Graham says this version of the game "was very close to something we were going to go forward with. I think it was April or May of 2010 where we were almost ready to hit alpha with Spyro's Kingdom, and it was time for the go/no-go call. That’s where we said, ‘this is fun and cute, but it can be so much bigger.'"

At this point, one of Skylanders' key elements - "toys with brains," which remember your characters' progress as you level up — wasn’t in the mix. If the action figures had memory inside them, the save functionality would be hassle-free and invisible, plus they’d be platform agnostic — a huge win for kids who might not own the same game system as their friends. "The goal was to make it very reminiscent of something you would do as a kid," says Graham. "You could put your toys in your backpack, go to your friend’s house after school, and you could play with your Star Wars characters with your G.I. Joe characters with your Transformers characters; it didn’t matter that they were from different worlds. We looked at consoles that way too: How great could it be if you could share in an experience regardless of what console you were on? So there was this big idea of what this game could be."

With Spyro's Kingdom nearly at alpha but an ambitious alternate plan on the table, the decision was up to the top brass, including Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick. But as Graham reveals, "Bobby believed in it completely. He said, 'What do you guys need?’ And from that point on, it was this little idea that continued to grow to what we have now, which is a team of fantasy superheroes - Skylanders."

Gallery

• 
  Spyro the Dragon selection
• 
  Concept sketch of a Spyro's Kingdom game stand
• 
  Concept sketch of a Spyro's Kingdom game stand
• 
  Spyro's Kingdom further developed website layout, with the early designs of some of the the Skylanders including the artwork of Spyro from Dawn of the Dragon
• 
  Spyro the Dragon character selection on Spyro's Kingdom
• 
  Some of the early characters that would've appeared in Spyro's Kingdom. From left to right: Rock Dragon, Ghost Roaster, Fire Dragon, Cyclops Snail, and Bomb Troll.