Under the watchful eye of Activision, the Skylanders series has endured significant change at the hands of different developers. Since Toys For Bob’s 2011 release, Spyro’s Adventure, we’ve seen and played with Giants, a Swap Force and now meet the Trap Team. These new Skylanders resemble a finely honed squad of bounty hunters, equipped with shiny crystal weapons made from mystical material; Traptanium.

Returning development of the Skylanders series to the original creators has opened the door to a denser, fuller world, populated with iconic, infamous and relatively unknown characters from Skylands. Alongside familiar friends Flynn and Cali, are your foes, including the wonderful Kaos. It’s the villains within Trap Team who present the most interesting innovation.

Central to Trap Team is the new and improved Traptanium Trap, doubling as a portal to activate your Skylanders. Colour-coded physical Traptanium crystals can be inserted into a space on the portal, allowing defeated villains to be captured within, and then brought into play under the control of the player with the push of a button. Seeing a defeated villain sucked skyward, seemingly transported from your screen and into your trap has a lovely Willy-Wonka-Mike-TeeVee feeling. It’s amazing that after four games Skylanders does retain a little bit of magic.



Playable villains provide a refreshing point of difference to gameplay, and allow for younger players to wear damage before switching back to their Skylander.
All treasure and experience collected is applied to the Skylander and not the villain, making leveling Skylanders easier and faster than before.

As with all Skylanders games, some areas within levels are barred by elemental gates, and can only be accessed by specific figures. Trap Team does lock content, accessible only to Trap Team Skylanders and the new playable villains. This literal definition of gated content can at times be frustrating, but is part and parcel of the Skylanders experience. If anything, playing through levels to discover new gates hidden off the beaten path is exciting, and level design continues to improve with each release. Trap Team represents some of Toys For Bob’s best work, who have in the past, relied too heavily on the magic of their toys and their personality.

You’ll be hard pressed to run out of characters, as Trap Team ensures all existing Skylanders figures are forward compatible. This also applies to the Minis (formerly Sidekicks). These minitaurised versions of popular Skylanders, who’s abilities can be upgraded, are playable for the first time ever.

When you tire of the missions and have captured all the villains, Trap Team offers an arena combat mode and a traditional game of tower defence. Both modes prove helpful when upgrading characters, and are scaled to levels much more challenging than previous games.

Divergent upgrade paths for Skylanders return, and when villains complete their specific challenge during missions, they are automatically upgraded, providing cosmetic changes (a palette swap and power upgrade). Only select villains receive their own challenges to complete, and some (Pepper Jack outrunning a floating head as he collects pungent cheese) are amusing. It’s a missed opportunity to not give all villains their own challenges, however Trap Team’s focus remains squarely upon figures which can be purchased.
Trapping villains in crystals is satisfying; I’d give my left eye for a Pepper Jack figure.



Back under the creative control of Toys For Bob, Trap Team delivers an experience with enough depth and variation to warrant a fourth buy-in to new toys and a new gimmick. A talking portal and trapping baddies inside magic crystals feel like stretch goals on an original pitch doc from Toys For Bob back in 2011. Take my money.

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The Author: Paul "Hoops" Houlihan is host of The Fourth Player Podcast. Connect with Paul on Twitter at @paulyhouly.