Saturday, January 3, 2015

Skylander Trap Team (Miniatures meet video games)

Hi everyone,
 
We haven't been posting about any video games - but we have been playing one the last couple of days which seems like an interesting hybrid of video game and miniature battle game -- Skylanders....

Skylanders Trap Team is a video game which uses very complex models.
 
What is cool about the game is that the bases of the models have memory which records that model's gaming data (levels, money, upgrades, villains defeated, etc....)
 
The game is pretty fun to play - we played it on our Xbox 360.
 
So far, we have 5 Skylanders.  Here's our list:
  • Food Fight (came in the basic set, shoots tomatoes - a bit Orkish for 40K fans)
  • Snapshot (came in the basic set, shoots traptanium arrows, can also strike enemies with arrows for a big attack)
  • Jawbreaker (got him as an expansion, has huge fist punch attacks - very good at attacking - also very Orkish)
  • Wildfire (got him as an expansion, has shield attacks and flame attacks - also can use his shield as a defense)
  • Krypt King (got him as an expansion, uses a huge sword attack - also can attack with bee thingies which come out of his face)
Here are our five Skylander models.  The portal which hooks up to the Xbox 360 is in the background.

Each of these Skylander models has an elemental type.  At times in the game, there are advantages to different types and elements.  What's cool is that you can snatch up one model from the portal and put down another (which might have stronger advantages) and keep on playing.
 
  • Food fight - Life type
  • Snapshot - Water type
  • Jawbreaker - Tech type
  • Wildfire - Fire type
  • Krypt King - Undead type (we think it is awesome that he is an undead type)
Another feature of the game is that villains can be trapped in electronic traps.  There is one type of trap for each elemental type (tech, water, life, chaos, undead, earth, air, fire, magic, and "?" type).  You can only trap a villain with a trap matching that villain's element type.  Then, once you have the villain trapped -- you can play as the villain as well.
 
 It seems that there will be more and more chances for games like this.  In Seattle we got a good look at the game Golem Arcana.  Very cool miniatures.  We haven't tried it yet - but the explanation we got is that you have a stylus in this game - and upload miniature positions and map data - and then have a computer playing as game master during your miniature battle.  Very cool - and somewhat like Skylanders.

A photo of the Golem Arcana base game set box

 

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