Ask A Question

Holian Family: Skylanders Is Great Value

Featured Image for Holian Family: Skylanders Is Great Value

Many parents think the toys-to-life games have a high cost, but now you can enjoy all Skylanders has to offer at a fraction of the price.

After falling in love with Disney Infinity our family was keen to try out similar games in the genre. I had heard good things about Skylanders. After discovering a large bundle of over fifty used figures for around £30 on a well know auction site I decided it was too good to miss and the flood gates were open.

My girls instantly fell in love with Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure.

Over the next few months I trawled discount stores, took advantage of seasonal sales and soon I had a more than enough figures to see everything the first 3 games had to offer. With my bounty of figures assembled I decided that, rather than give the games and toys to my kids all at once, it would be better to keep them as rewards. I would give them out weekly, provided they displayed good behaviour, completed chores and did well at school.

We started playing right back at the beginning with Spyro’s Adventure on the Nintendo Wii (also playable on the Wii U). Although the graphics may seem a little dated by today’s standards, the dungeon crawler style gameplay is very solid and still great fun for all ages.

There are 37 figures available for use in Spyro’s Adventure and all are available on the pre-owned market at really low prices. That said you will only require 8 figures, (1 of each element) to complete all of the games level’s and hidden areas.

My girls instantly fell in love with Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure. The ability to use 2-player co-op and battle arena challenges kept them busy for months, just in time for Father Christmas to drop a copy of the second game, Skylanders: Giants under the tree. As with the previous game, the Giants figures are abundantly available, they can even be found new online and in some shops for some amazingly low prices.

One of the greatest features of the Skylanders series is that every character from the previous games is backwards compatible with the next.

This means that if you own at least 8 different elemental characters from Spyro’s Adventure you only need one Giant character to access all areas. This compatibility has continued right up to the latest game in the series Skylanders: Imaginators.

A new version of this will be available with the Nintendo Switch console at launch. This version has an exciting feature not available on other consoles, the ability to permanently scan in your Skylanders collection into the game so you can play with all the characters on the go without having to haul every figure along with you.

Currently my children and I are working our way through the third game, Skylanders: Swap Force. The girls are now completely Skylanders mad, and loving the series more than ever.

Their collection is growing and the reward system has done well to encourage hard work and good behaviour.

We now enjoy regular “Skylander Hunts” in the local countryside, where I hide a couple of figures on our weekend walks and the kids work together to find them. The whole family get some much needed exercise and fresh air, plus the kids get a new figure to play with when they get home, it’s great fun!

Avatar for Andrew Robertson
Andrew Robertson
Andy Robertson is the editor of AskAboutGames and has written for national press and broadcast about video games and families for over 15 years. He has just published the Taming Gaming book with its Family Video Game Database.