“Toys to Life” is a relatively new genre of video game that lets you take physical toys and play with them inside a video game.
The first game that used this concept was Skylanders, and it’s probably the most well known. Skylanders was first released in 2011. The game comes with a few figures and a base that you plug into the game console. The gameplay is similar to other popular kids games like the Lego video games, but the character you play as is the toy that you’ve put on the base. As you play with that character it grows, and that progress is saved to the figure, so you can go to a friend’s house and each of you can play with your own Skylander.
The next company to release a game in this style was Disney, and they leverage many of their characters and stories for Disney Infinity. Here, there are shorter games, but they are tailored for some of the different character figures you can buy. You can play a superhero adventure with The Incredibles, or help Captain Jack Sparrow defeat Davy Jones. And now, Marvel characters are available, too, so you can play with the Avengers or Spider-Man.
Disney Infinity also has what they call the Toy Box, which is a creative mode where you can build a world up however you want, add buildings and gadgets, and easily create your own open-world game. Here, you can have swordfights between Donald Duck and Aladdin, or an archery contest between Merida from Brave and Hawkeye of the Avengers.
The newest set of figures for games is by Nintendo, called amiibo. Amiibo are unique because instead of being for one game, they work across multiple Nintendo games. Right now, there are more than half-a-dozen games on Wii U that use amiibos, or will soon. These figures cost a little bit more, but are of a significantly higher quality.
