Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - EXCLUSIVE Spyro A Realm Beyond with Toys For Bob - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: July 6, 2026

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free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. It's Kind of Funny's Patreon. month support us at patreon.com slash kind of funny. We really appreciate it. What's up everybody and welcome to the Kind of Funny Games cast for July 6th, 2026. Of course, I am your host, Tim Geddes. And on the day that we are recording this, it is blessing at Eioia Jr's birthday. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. There we go. And joining us today two very, very special guests from Toys for Bob, one of our favorite developers out there. Can't

wait to actually talk to you all about Spiro a realm beyond and much, much more. We have the associate creative director, Lou Stuttert. Hey, everybody. Whose birthday it was on June 29th? Happy birthday, Lou. Birthday, let's stop. Let's go.

And we also had the studio head, Paul Jan. When's your birthday? Lends in August. I feel jealous now. I feel like I need to pull it up. Of course, of course, if you're watching live, you can't be part of the show because this is pre-recorded, but we still would appreciate your super chat.

send them through. Remember, we couldn't do this without our producers on patreon.com slash Kind of Funny. So thank you to Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster, Delaney, the Somm twining, and lax nomad. But for now, let's begin with the topic of the show. Tots, Tots, Tots, Tots. It's toys for Bob. It's Spiro, a realm beyond. First off, I want to say congratulations, boys. Thank you so much. Congratulations on going independent a couple years ago, on finally announcing the project that you've been working on. And for that project to be, Spiro, a realm beyond, and it getting so much positive reception.

How's it feel, Lou? It's honestly pretty shocking and incredible. I mean, you make something in secret for so long, and then you just hope that people connect with it, and to see the response that we've gotten so far is just really amplified the team. It really made us really feel seen and excited, so it's felt great. Paul, were you surprised at how well received everything was? I think so.

I mean, you never really know how things are going to get received. And, you know, we bank a lot on Spiro. It was his first game out as our independent, you know, in independence. And it's just so great to see that positivity and that reception. And, yeah, we're going to roll with it. Is there a difference from Crash? Because I know Crash 4, it's about time came out. And I'm sure when it was announced, there was an excitement around it because Crash is what you associate with the PS1 platformer.

But for me growing up, I was always more of a Spiro kid. You know, I had an S-D4, but on the PS1 side, all my friends all had Spiro. So I associated the platform with Spiro So like when we saw the trailer I was like oh man this is awesome But I know Crash feels like more of the I guess iconic PS1 character I don't know if you guys have opinions on that

But when this was announced Did you guys have that same thing of Oh man they're showing up just as much as Crash? I think you know It's just it's almost been 20 years Since there's been a new Spiro So there's just a lot of I'll speak for myself

Just a lot of pent up energy of like finally we need to see Spiro, not just in a remake form. And like, obviously, we did the, in 2018, we did the Reignited Trilogy. And that gave us a lot of confidence that there was going to be an audience who had the hunger for a new title. And so that's where we went. And it's great to see validation of that in this first announce. And yeah, very, very excited about it. I mean, what I love to seeing from this is because I am a huge crash guy.

I'm a huge Spiro guy. I'm a huge 3D platformer guy. All of this is right up my alley. And when the trailer dropped, obviously, we're all very excited. But over the next couple of days when I was like, we were talking about all the Summer Game Fest announcements because I think this was an incredibly strong Summer Game Fest. Seeing a lot of the kind of standout trailers,

I was shocked at how many views the Spiro trailer had. Like, it was up there with, and in some ways, eclipsing, some of the biggest titles, the Final Fantasy Seven Revelations and God of War. Like, Spiro was right there. Like, that must have been pretty awesome. Absolutely. I mean it knocked us back into our seats We were literally watching the numbers climb up

As we're like oh people are connecting with it You know as Paul mentioned it's been a while And so you always kind of hope that there's the audience You hope that new people are interested in it And I think what's great about Spiro He's such an appealing character It's such an appealing you know type of world and tone to live in And you know it kind of stuck out from the rest of the summer games fest

You know it really kind of found his own you know Lane and I think that's what helped him I'm kind of, you know, soar above the noise in some ways. Yeah. So speaking of soaring, Spiro, a Realm Beyond, there's not much that we have right now. If it was spring 2027, it's coming to all platforms, which is very, very exciting to hear. What else can you tell us that wasn't in this trailer? Not a whole lot to.

What can you tell us that's in this trailer? You can expand upon. I'm seeing a lot of flying in this. There's more than lying than normal. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so essentially, you know, Spiro Realm Beyond, we wanted to really push what it meant to be a dragon. We wanted to push and expand on Spiro's just general playability and his kit of moves and what that means and what we're showing off in kind of the reveal is Dragon Flight. And so if you remember the original games, you know, they had the Speedway levels, they had the regular exploration levels, but they were always divided.

Yeah. Yeah. It was always these differing experiences that you'd experience, you know, for a limited subset. at a time or with boundaries. And so when we started the game, you know, after working on Reignited, we kind of had this notion of what happens

if that is Spiro's base kit, base ability. And how do we still retain the feeling of exploration and, you know, adventure of a Spiro game while also embodying him with that ability to take to the skies

at a moment's notice. So you're going to be exploring on ground. You're going to be exploring in the air. It's just, it's up to you on how you want to engage with it as opposed to the game going, now you've got 90 seconds, have it, right?

So that's one of the big things that we're pushing on for the game. When approaching creating a new Spiro game, are there previous Spiro games that you look at as far as, oh, we want to make sure we include these elements? You know, are there things from maybe the PS2 games or PS1 games that really speak to what makes Spiro Spiro Absolutely. I mean, we're paying attention to the whole spectrum,

the whole timeline of it, the fan base, our own feelings about it, the original intent for all the developers and what they did with the games and where they carried the series. So we're looking at all of those things as inputs. But I think where we are building this game off of this, really trailing off of the Reignited Trilogy and harking back to the classics, right?

The Spiro that we remember in the early 90s of PS1. And so, like, what are those elements there? How do we make sure that we're paying reverence to who the character is and that whatever we're building on here and taking them into a modern era, that it's always paying respects to that core? I think the character is one of those things.

You know, one of the things that we found when we were making Reignited trilogy is, you know, there were different voice actors between Spiro 1 and Spiro 2 and 3. You know, Spirer 1, it was Carlos Alas Rocky. You did a great job, but then Insomniac switched over to Tom Kenney for 2 and 3. When we did Reignited, we brought Tom back and we

unified it so that Tom Kenny was the voice of Spiro because that kind of where the fan base gravitated as well as our own flavor. And so for this game, we decided, hey, we want to, while we're making a new adventure in a new game, we still want to retain the character that we really fell in love with,

that original personality. And so we also brought back Tom as well as the voice of Spiron. So if you played the original games, you played Reignited, you will recognize that tone and that personality and that voice that really drives a lot of who that character is.

But then for us, it's what happens when we take him that person, that character, on a new adventure. And so it isn't a full reboot, like the legend of ones where they kind of reset their own timeline

and retold the tale. in a different way, this is taking that character that you know into new places. Tom Kenny is SpongeBob, right? He is, yeah. He's SpongeBob. He's the Ice King on Adventure Time. StarSream and Transformers, animated.

He's amazing. He is one of my favorite people to work with. And as soon as we got him in the booth, he was telling us about how many times he's been at conventions for those voiceover roles that he's done, hearing people come up to him, telling him that they want new Spiro. Right. And so it was really,

I know. So in booth, Tom's so excited with us about how there is such a vocal fan base and an excitement around the character, the personality, and seeing this purple dragon come back. So looking at Toys for Bob with this purple dragon and the orange bandicoot. Yeah. The back and forth between that, I've always found very interesting. Like there was a lot of, you know, about a decade ago, a lot of different studios under Activision that would seemingly kind of like do this handshake back and forth with a. V-Nox and Vicarious visions and Toys for Bob of who's working on the remakes, who's working on the sequels, who's working on the cart racers, spitoffs, and all that, to follow y'all's path from Skylanders,

which was very much a reinvention of Spiro with some crash appearances too. But then to get into the Reignited trilogy, to follow that up with y'all making Crash 4 and now making this, why was that the kind of path you guys went down? Yeah. I mean, honestly, it's a really interesting perspective. And one of the things I wanted to mention is, you know, Vicarious Visions, B-Nox, great friends of ours, and they go back to, with us, on the Skylanders franchises. You know, so on the Skylanders games, we would alternate years between us making, you know, the original ones and then Vicarious doing superchargers, and we'd go back and forth.

And we also worked really closely with B-Nox. We actually worked with B-Nox on Crash 4 as well. And so we have that kind of connection with those studios. You know, and as far as which one we worked on when, it was kind of based on also the release patterns of the remasters and just what, you know, seemed like the fan base was calling for at the time. And we're a small studio. And so for us, it's kind of like we have to mentally put a pin in something and go, yeah, we'd love to get back to Spiro. But, you know, let's get this out of our system first. Let's really invest.

Let's really dive headfirst into the world to crash. And then once, you know, we get out of that, it's like, okay, now where do we want to? to go to next. And while they're kind of hand in hand, you know, with the mascot and the era they came from, the PlayStation, you know, uh, uh, mascot platformers of their time, they play completely different. Oh yeah. You know, like one is about tense precision execution, you know, super exacting tests with a very specific answer to how you need to play that, which is crash. And then Spiro is much more about this fluidity and exploration and Zen-like kind of combination of moves and interacting with the world.

And so it really is a very, very stark kind of design mindset shift for us by going between both of them. I love Crash 4 so much. I took the point that despite being such a huge Crash fanboy from back of the day, I do think it is the best one. And a lot of that was just because of how much clear love, care, passion was put into the gameplay, getting it right, the characters, the world, the music. All of it, right?

And everything we've seen of Spiro so far has that as well. Crash took all of the precision platform in your time out that, like, challenge, that difficulty, that bang your head against the wall type stuff. Spiro, it being more exploration-based and all that, are there things you learn from Crash 4 that you are going to add into Spiro? Is there a desire to add a bit more of that crash platforming precision into Spire? I don't know if it's direct relationship, but I think the process of us observing and learning the character, learning about the fan base and what they appreciated, learning about what

we remember our fondest memories about them. And how do we build on those? Those are things that we absolutely take forward into Spiro. I have a hard time grasping on specifics from Crash to say, like, it's because, as Lou mentioned, the experiences are so, so different. I mean, I guess one commonality that attracts us to these types of characters and these types of IPs that it's character base. We love colorful characters

and we love controls that feel amazing in and of themselves, even independent of the level and the structure of the game. If you can have a character that feels incredible to almost toy-like in its controls, that's where we want to be.

I've always been so impressed with Spiro Reignited Trilogy in particular with that because just the way that Spiro, the animation of it, it's so satisfying to look at that moving around just spinning the stick 360 and seeing the way that he moves. It's like, oh, this just feels right.

Yeah, which is why I'm curious of what are some of the learnings that you had while working on this game as far as what fans gravitate to and why they love it. Because, yeah, when you talk about Spiro, sadly, I hadn't played the Rignited trilogy, but I still have memories of playing OG Spiro. And two things come to mind. It's the exploration that you're talking about with that dynamic with Crash v. Spiro and what makes them different. But then also, it's holding square and just, like, dashing real fast.

Yeah, like running circles and stuff. Yeah, absolutely. I'm glad that thank you for saying that. I'm sure there's many folks on their team where just like, thank you for appreciating the finesse and the attention to detail that is going on. I think like when we did the Reignited Trilogy, which is a remake of the classics,

we spent an incredible amount of time doing frame analysis of how much, how much movement does Spiro actually achieve in a jump or in a glide. And so making sure that all of those things feel very, very accurate is like a strong foundation for that feel that you're talking about, which is a culmination of a number of things. It's about the frame accuracy.

It's about the animation. It's the juiciness of it. It's the interaction with the world, the sloping of the world, the sound effects, the V effects. You know, all of these little things come together into something that you inevitably, you just have these muscle memory about, right?

Like you talk about charge, and I can immediately feel that on my thumb, right? Yeah. Yeah. And so for this game, it's taking that, just what we learned about how those, moments make us feel and how it feels as a player to charge to hit ramps to go into a glide to then you know round a corner to chase an egg thief and to do all these things in that

fluidity of movement it's how do we explode that now to an added vector how do we add that to now these new abilities that Spyro has and the new way of kind of encountering your environment and so it's still wanting to retain that core of how you evaluate a space and how you explore these areas but now to give you so many more tools and then to build from the ground up around that

and so with the ability to fly from the get-go you're still charging you're still doing that but now you can also just immediately jump start flapping your wings and going up and so it led us to building things at a grander scale and so you see it in the gameplay snippet much more verticality there's much more height to things

There's much more layering of the play space. And so it's figuring out how to build that still that same feel, but modernize it and push it forward, add more to it and build on it. Can you talk a bit more about the mechanics of flight? Like are you, once you jump in the air, you're just kind of unlimited flying around? Is there like something you need to, is there buttons you're press into flap? Yeah. So it was we're not wholly diving into all of the systems just yet. But I can at least tell you, you know, what we got in the in the gameplay.

trailer shows we wanted to make sure that it is active, it is decision making, it is pressing buttons, it is almost that platforming feel of evaluating a play space and figuring out how to continue. And so what we show in the gameplay is Spiro diving down to pick up speed. We then have him use his flame breath, spit a fireball at distance to ignite a campfire to create a windup draft to give him quicker lift to then press a button to fly. his wings to push on his momentum and keep his speed up before then activating a magical, what we call these sky rings, that then allow you to boost forward in the air. And so it's really about evaluating the play space.

It's looking what you can interact with and connecting all of those to sustain your momentum and to keep going. It's super important for us that the player is able to say, look at that thing off in the distance. How do I get there? And then how do I leverage the environment around me and my abilities in order to do that? because what we don't want is for it to be a flight simulator where we say, okay, here's the destination,

hidden the GPS, we're going to coast and get there. There's no fun in that. No autopilot. No autopilot. We want active decision-making. And that's, you know, platforming as a term in this flight space is a little bit different than platforming, like jumping on the ground.

But similarly, we want that kind of decision-making to happen in that space. I know as you're describing all this, it excites me. I'm sure it excites Tim because I'm already thinking about like, oh, yeah, I'm going to light this, hit this button right here. And like, I think there's something about, that execution that really works for us when it comes to platformers. For you guys, when you're thinking of these mechanics that are newer to the series,

is it exciting? Is it scary? Is it both when you're doing something that's additive? Because of course you've done this before with crash, but with Spiro, how's the feeling? Yeah, it's very much both. And for this game in particular, we had this goal right at the outset of let's kind of start with this new idea in mind and not just take a singular thing and let's add it on for level specific usage. It was full-blown. This is his kit. This is everyday movement.

And so for us, we started with building that out. And so in white rooms, you know, in early development prototypes, it was two purple blocks with two yellow triangles to make a facsimile of a spiro. And then let's see how flight feels. Let's get that feeling right. And then let's build the world and the activities and the play spaces and everything around what we're. we found out of the character movement. And so it wasn't, hey, let's take everything the way it was and let's add something new to it. It was we had to start from scratch and build outward.

So part of that is scary and there's excitement in that too because there's some pioneering that goes around. Yeah. I mean, one of the first questions that we ask is like, what other games even attempt to do something like this? And there's not many examples of that. Most of the times when you think about flight in game space, it is a flight simulator. You're a plane or you're an Iron Man type of, you know, you're a game.

you know, mech helicopter type of, yeah, rocket kind of thing. And what we wanted was something that is... Exactly. But something that speaks to the fantasy of whose Spiro is as a dragon, as a physically traveling through space, and not this giant, you know, giant dragon, but a small but mighty dragon. All those are a very new territory.

And so there's a lot of exploration and discovery, and that's exciting for us, because there's a lot of newness there. Yeah. It's really leaning into that dragon fantasy, but as Paul mentioned, And most dragon fantasies are, it's much, much bigger than the rest of everything else. And for Spiro, it flips that on its head.

What was the conversations around Crash? It's About Time having the number four in the title and Spiro around Beyond, not. That is a very interesting question. For Crash 4, for us, that represented a very direct continuation from those original games. And it was a bit of making a stance of, hey, we really revered these original games. The games that came later, really great, but they got away from the foundational type of gameplay.

That was those original crash games that we were returning to. And so some of it was a bit of an expectations and level reset of, hey, these are going to play very much like the original trilogy of games and not so much like Mind Over Mutant or the more 3D open space era. Insanity. Yeah, exactly, right? Where it was more, you know, you've got full stick. control, you're more Mario 64 inspired exploring areas.

For Spiro, we wanted to make sure that, you know, with the number four, that comes the expectations of, hey, you may want to know these original games. For Spiro is very important to us, given the gap of time between new games, to make sure that this is a welcoming entry point. This is a place that anyone could start. So yes, it has, you know, reverence to the originals. It has references. It has, you know, things that will satiate.

Surprise and delight. Yeah, exactly. The deep fan base. But at the same time, we want to make sure it was clear to everyone who's coming into this. No homework required. And it is a new experience. It is playing in a new way in a way that, you know, maybe your crash four was more, you know, tied to us returning those original game.

What are two things, in your personal opinions, that you think every Spiro game should have? two things. I mean, to me, it's charming characters. I always like exploring, you know, the levels in the world's meeting new, exciting, charming, fun, comical characters. That, to me, is so much of what makes a spiro game a spiro game jumping from, you know, the first spiro game where you had all the elder dragons to the second spiral game where you really had, you know, Allura and Hunter and everyone show up. And then in the third game, they had Sheila and Bentley and all these other characters. To me, making sure that you're filling the cast with really unique, really fun, really compelling characters that interact with Spiro in fun ways. That, to me, is the tonality of the adventure of a Spiro game.

And then it is that fluidity of movement and the exploration piece, right? The feeling of, I want to scour every bit and it's fun to move around the space. Like, you get in this relaxed mindset of now I'm kind of chaining my charge into finding a ramp to going on speed pads to doing all of that as you explore and evaluate and kind of make your way through, that is the toy-like joy of a Spiro game to me. Yeah. I'd agree with that one. I think I would describe it as flow. Yeah. Flow is so, so important for Spiro. And yes, I think you take the words out of mind. The second one I would say is gems. Yeah. That's maybe very tied intimately. And with flow is that you need a compelling reason

to go after things. And I think that's just the lust for collecting and hoarding. Treasures, right? I'm dying to ask questions that I know you guys can answer because I wanted to be like, one of the collectibles like,

are we going to be collecting eggs of dragons that are going to be hatching? We'll come back soon. We'll come back. Please. You bring up, it's toy-like. Yeah. Was there anything from Skylanders

that you're bringing in to this spiral game? I mean, I think Skylanders is really where we as a studio kind of found our humor and our kind of fun and whimsy, you know, it's something that really defines us as a studio and something that's carried forward. Just the, the, the, the, the, the, the feeling of being in places you want

to spend time in, with characters you want to spend time with is so part of what made Skylanders special and all the different ways that the characters moved and played, you know, it really got our own chops of making character-based, you know, action-adventure games or platformers. And so that, you know, obviously there's no one-to-one, but it's just that is what our studio has thrived on, and that's what we love making. And so that is continued from finding, you know, how we make crash move to really how we feel about just hands-on sticks with Spiro as well.

Yeah. And talking about me, I love Skylanders and have so many, like, cherished memories of that series. I'd love to return to that at some point. But Skylanders universe and Spiro Realm Beyond, completely different universes. So we just want to make sure that there's a really clear line between those two, even though Spiro does exist in different forms there. In my head, they are very different universe

is very different characters, and so I think indirectly there's many lessons that we've learned or there's tonality that can be brought about, but they're different. I mean, speaking to that, I kind of want to talk about the game development side of all of this because it's so as the industry is falling apart

around us, it is very nice to see every single platform on that screen and to kind of have a level of belief where Spirow's not just a nostalgia act. It is, and it will speak very loudly to the old people. But also, there is something that is just naturally endearing. And like, this is a product that makes sense to release at any time.

But in 2027, that makes sense for Switch 2 players, for PS5 players, for Xbox players, for Steam players. Like, I have a feeling that this game is going to do very well. And that's good. But also, y'all went independent not that long ago. Now this game is happening. How long was the development time on this? We're at about, you know, a little over two years. We started really from the ground up when we win independent.

And you feel good putting a spring 2027 date on this. We do, yeah. That's incredible. Like how is that possible at a world where we're seeing so many teams take five plus years to get these projects? Like we're hearing about Spiro and we're going to be playing it, you know, not too many months from now. Yeah. It's hard to speak. I won't speak for other teams, but I know our team.

And we have like a sweet spot. If you look at the track record of the games that we produced before, two. to three years, somewhere in that pocket is like the sweet spot for us. I think like we can just understand the scope of what that looks like, the timeline of development, and we like to ship. It's very important for us to ship because ultimately the end goal of this is not for us to noodle endlessly. It's to get this into people's hands and produce joy in the world. That's the real end goal. So when we see a timeline, we're going to commit to that and we feel good about it here. Yeah. And it prevents us from going stir crazy. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, yeah, you live with a game for some. long. Like I just, you know, it's been our development mentality for so long of kind of the size of projects we like to make and the time in which we like to make them. We are a smaller studio which allows us to be nimble and punch above our weight, which is just amazing shout to our team for that. But we do like to make sure we've got our own guardrails and get things out the door to people as quickly as we can. When working with Xbox for this, does the

conversation start off at Spiro or was there an exploration process of figuring out what IP or what kind of game you wanted to make with them? It came, it started with Spiro. We started it to say, this is the game that we've been thinking about since 2018, and we'd like to make this. By the way, we also want to go to independent. So it was a, these two giant topics came together and said, listen, this is our proposal. We'd like to spin off in independence.

And the first game that we'd like to do is for you in partnership with you. And we want to make Spiro because it's been on our minds. And we have this design premise, which Lou just spoke to about how, how can, how, how, How can we take the flight in classic Spiro? And how can we elevate that and take it to any level? I want to talk more about your independence and how that all looks and the pitching and all of that. After a quick word from our sponsors. This week, we're sponsored by patreon.com slash kind of funny because it's Patreon Pledge Month.

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Let's take the Cadillac. Find out more at Cadillac Canada.ca. Luxury sales claim based on S&P Global Mobility Canadian New Vehicle Total Registration for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. So now that we're back, I want to talk about this, this independence. First off, congrats. That is huge, again, like, especially with where we're at in the industry right now. It's like, I, the amount of games daily is that Bless and I were talking about toys for Bob

and just being so concerned about what might happen or what is happening or whatever it is. When the independence news broke, it's like, there is faith here. Having said that, I didn't really think that faith would end in a new spiral game. Yeah, it was very, it was whiplash because it's like, all right. they're alone. Oh wait, they're still working on the kind of games we want them to work on, which is really cool. So that, I mean, as much as you can speak to this, like, has it been a fairly seamless process? I would say on the development side, yes. You know, one of the great things is, and I'll give a shout out to our studio leadership as well of making sure that, you know, behind the scenes and keeping that continuity of our team and our process, it was a very quick reset. you know, from us going from, you know, being wholly owned to being independent and allowing us to get right back into our tools making games super quick.

Obviously, the process of getting there took some work that I'm sure you could talk to and having to be grownups and, you know, take care of our own, you know, taxes and payroll and stuff. But, you know, as far as getting the team, you know, we had our team, team carried forward and team began working. And so that's been really nice. there's certainly been a lot of work on the behind the scenes like this kind of suggesting there on setting up a company and doing all these adult things and like taking care of ourselves outside of development but maybe you know I think it's important to probably roll back the context for like what led to up to that decision and I can understand the optics of it is like oh you went independent and now you're working with the same folks that you were working with before how does that make sense I think part part of that is it speaks to the partnership that we've had with Activision has been a successful one and it's been a good one and there's plenty of we've got folks over there, they're very thoughtful and they're very supportive. We've got a lot of friends over there. And so that was a very natural transition to continue working in that capacity. To cut you off real quick,

the Skylanders franchise generated over $3 billion in lifetime revenue. The partnership. We did okay on it. So, you know, that's all been fantastic. And I think what led to it is if we look back to like 2019, 2020, when COVID hit, everything changed, right? Everything changed. One of the things that changed, a real small thing, but at the company level, there was a mandate to support these larger franchises, like, Orzone was huge, right? It just exploded, it surprised everyone. It needed a ton more resources.

Overwatch 2 was another one that was big in development. And so there was a mandate for all teams within the company to support these initiatives. And so Toys for Bob stepped up and we did good work. work that we're really proud of. We got to collaborate with teams that were fantastic to collaborate with. But also, we were straying away. We were splintered off in our effort. And like Lou talked about,

we're a small team. So one side of it is that we splintered off into many subteams. And so we kind of lost that singular team aspect of who Toys for Bob is. And then the second is that we got away from the types of games that we are kind of best known for and the types of games

that we're personally attracted to, which is these games that are about colorful characters in whimsical, handcrafted worlds. So I think that the combination of all those things in that time, the whirlwind of the world is upside down. On top of that, Microsoft was in the process of acquiring activists. There were just so many changes. They were on the horizon.

And so we just looked at our, we had a lot of times of soul search and we looked at ourselves and said, this is probably, we should make a change. We need to find our core again. to find our soul again and get back to the types of games that we love. So that was the, that's the real impetus out of that. And we said, look, Activision, we love working with you.

We love Spiro. We have this idea that's been, you know, a germ of an idea that's been, you know, killing us. And we want to make this game. How can we make this happen? And so we, when we connected with Xbox leadership, you know, they saw in context all of these things, there's a plan immediately for independence, you know, and a game. And it was a win-win situation, right?

on paper. And so obviously I'm oversimplifying, but there's a lot of details to kind of sort out there and it was very complex. But there's so many people on all sides of it. They're very thoughtful and they said, look, you want to preserve the team? Absolutely. Like, we're celebrating our 37 year anniversary

this past April. The team has been one of the longest running in all of North America. Let's continue doing that. We'd love to keep the team together and make the types of games that we want to make. And so long story short, they were supportive and worked out for the best. And so that's That's why we're here with Spiral Realm Beyond.

Yeah, I mean, I love it. I feel like that that is an incredibly lucky reality that we're in, that this is going to go and all went the way that it has, because it's not the case for some other teams. The timing was good. What's up? The timing was good. Yeah.

And, I mean, you know, the timing in so many ways you bring up COVID like that, that kind of that killed your, your in-person studio. And now the entire team is remote. Yes. We are a fully remote studio. How is that? Like, do you stand by that? Does that feel like, hey, things are working?

We can get a game done in three years and it's remote. I mean, we've done it a couple of times now. Yeah. It went right at, you know, again, that tight turnaround times of the games we make. I mean, we shipped Crash 4 remote. We worked in support capacity across a number of initiatives, across a number of games remote. We shipped Crash Team Rumble fully remote. And so we're continuing it on with Spiral.

At this point, it's just the way of life. Yeah. Like, it'd be a more controversial question to say, should we return back to the same space? This is just how we operate. When you have approached Activision and Xbox about independence and then also making a Spiro game, at that time, did you guys have ideas beyond Spiro? Or was it very much we want to make Spiro and we'll figure it out later? We've got lots of ideas. That's just probably the one that, you know, as we're thinking about, you know, reignited trilogy sold over 11 million units.

You talk about the commercial viability of that. There's a strong case to be made, right? There's a validation that there's an audience. And every year there's a Spiro celebration and community day. And it's like the fans are so loud about this, so clear, how can we not make this game? So let's make this our priority out the gate. Yeah. I'm so fascinated by the support studio stuff.

If you're talking about the call of duty and there being the mandate for that coming down. Because, again, we talk about this stuff a lot. And we know some things, but we're very uneducated on how things are really going. So we are often talking out of our ass to the best of our abilities to get things right. But I've always been fascinated in what that kind of looks like throughout the ages. Because going back to the before the Call of Duties where it's obvious, everything needs to be like helping Warzone or helping Overwatch, it would just be like when the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater games were like the biggest thing ever.

And I always find it so fun that Toys for Bob made Disney's extreme skate adventure back in 2003, which was... We still get asked about that. It's the most unbelievable game because it literally just took the end. engine from Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 and just slapped Disney stuff on it. And it's like that means it's an incredible game because Tony Hawk 4 was incredible. Like the that is, I think, an old school example of the same type of idea. Like, there's money to be made here.

Like let's do this. And then later, obviously, Skylanders being the, you know, initial Toys to Life game. And then I kind of feel like it was the opposite way of like people then copying the Toys for Bob up, like trying to do all that. As we get to Crash Team Rumble in 2023, that's the one that I find so fascinating where I loved the game, like playing the game itself was like a lot of fun

and we had fun doing party modes and streams for it, but it felt very like some of the decisions made with it were, it felt mandated, I guess is a thing. Am I wrong in saying that? Yes. Okay, was that a game that y'all are like, this is the game we want to make? We actually started, I think, prototyping that before Crash 4.

Interesting. And it was just something that someone had an idea for. I mean, obviously, again, this was in more of the era of the bubble of live service games or more online games. And it was something where it was this notion of, hey, there's these really fun, you know, characters. But every time Crash became a spinoff, it was like, you know, Crash Team Racing or Crash Bash. They never played like Crash as a platformer. And so it was this wild idea of, hey, these are these really cool experiences, but they always deviate from what makes a crash game, a crash game.

Crash Team Racing and, you know, the crash games. Sure, you're piloting a biplane, but there's no racing, right? And so it always felt very different than the core moment to moment of a crash game. And so this notion of, A, can we get that feeling of platforming in a multi- multiplayer space in a way that's never been done. B, can we feed our own team's joy and hunger of making unique playable characters

that interact with a space in a really different way? And so that's where all these different playable characters came from, all these unique ways of traversing. You have dingo dial doing his reverse vacuum cleaner, jump to glide and boost. You've got double jumps from some. You've got

air dashes from others. It really kind of comes down to, if you talk about the lineage of the studio, the love of making characters and the way that they move and attack and explore a space is something that is just so fun to do and to try and experiment and push on platforming to not just be a single player run through a space and be done with it but to find a way to connect those was the thought experiment behind that game as you're operating as a studio in 2026 of course like to mentions, we talk about video game news all the time.

In the last few years, and increasingly so, there has been a lot of bad news, whether we're talking about layoffs, studio closures, you know, games taking longer to make, physical additions going away, just so many things, right? For you guys operating as an independent studio, is that something you feel every day in your day-to-day, right? Or is that something that you're able to ignore and just go, hey, business as usual, lock in, make the game? You know, I mean, speaking for me personally, I mean, we're a part of the greater community of game developers.

And so, yeah, it's awful to see that stuff, you know, but at the same time, we count our blessings that there is hope for our team and there is hope for people and fans out there to deliver a game to them. And so for us, it's really, it's trying not to fall into, you know, thought holes or, or, or, growing concerns and to really make sure that we're fully committed on doing what we do best, which is creating fun, amazing, joyous experiences for players who want them. I mean, you're speaking to like some really big things that, even beyond the industry, too, right? Like multiple industries. Yeah.

Yeah. So, I mean, those things definitely exist. I don't know how much of it is actionable on our part. So we've got a lot in front of us to focus on for developing. So, like, I think that's kind of both, you know, the most important thing that we could be focused on and also our happy space. So, you know, how the industry trends, you know,

we counterbussings and we see where we go and we survive and we persist. That's what we do. So 3D platformers seem to be that core thing, you know, being like, we're going independent. We want to do what we want to do. And that is 3D platformers

for the character, for the gameplay, for all that. What are your thoughts on 3D platformers outside of Toys for Bob? They rule. In 2020. Right? Like, Do you feel like this is like a golden era? I don't know about golden era, but it's a resurgence, definitely. I mean, it's something that, you know, warms my heart, because that is totally my genre of choice.

You know, seeing the Rayman announcement at the Games Fest, so bring it on. That's awesome. We talked a bit about, you know, Astrobot, game of the year. Couldn't be more happy. It is so great because these are the experiences that, you know, the reason that I play games is because I grew up with those experiences. You know, I mean, I was an NES kid.

playing as many marios as I can get my hands on and making my way through. And so to see that come around, I think to me, and the reason I always gravitate to it is it's like the purest form of video game in my mind, because it is really about the fantasy of controlling a different character and the fun and joy that comes in the responsiveness and how you interact with the world. And it's like you can layer other things on that. But to me, that's like the source of what makes a fun video game is just exploring a space and having a unique character and a unique way of doing that. And so to see that rise up and to see people really connect back in with that and also in the indie scene. You know, I mean, there's a ton of really amazing indie platformers too. And so, yeah, bring it on.

The more the merrier, it's phenomenal. I love seeing it. By any chance of either of you played Penny's Big Breakaway? I haven't, no. That's one that came out a few years ago. I feel like you should check it out. Okay. Yeah, it's a little bit Loki.

I feel like we didn't talk about it enough. Like, it's one that I played and appreciated just for how unique it controls. You're playing as a main character who has a yo-yo, and that yo-yo kind of drive a lot of your momentum. A number of our team members have played that. Yes, yeah, I believe it's from the same people who made Sonic Mania, right? Part of the team. Got it, yeah. Yeah.

I remember the yo-yo, yeah. A question that I'm sure you guys can't answer. Sure. Because you are working on a Spiro and because you guys have put out, crash, and have now worked with these franchises for a while now. Sure. Back in the day, for Game Boy Advantage. There were two games. Yep.

Crash Purple, Spiro Orange. Would you guys ever want to do something like that again? Having worked on them both in quick succession, you know, as mentioning, it's, they're very, very different. Obviously, we love a challenge. We love both those franchises. If someone said, would you like to do it? I don't think anyone would turn it down.

But as a thought experiment, it's hard. Oh, yeah. Because that would be my follow-up question is, what would be your vision on how to make that kind of crossover thing work? Because crash is all about limitations. Yeah. And specificity. Whereas Spiro is all about free form.

And so it is very, very, very different. So I think that would take a heck of a thought to figure out. But, you know, again, we adore both of those characters, both those franchises. And yeah, if the opportunity presented itself, I'm sure we would take on the challenge. And again, because we have you, I feel like we have to ask this, so the comments are going to get mad. Has Banjo Cazoo We ever been talked about

Over and Torres for Bob? How frequently you mean? Of course Yeah No I mean it's a franchise we love Again as as platformers You know as platformer fans Banjo's top of the heap

We have some You know huge huge fans of that franchise On our staff You know I'm talking They've got the jiggy as their you know Profile pick kind of a thing They're that level of fans. So, you know, if the opportunity ever arose, that'd be amazing.

But we love the franchise. You know, if you look at the through line of the types of games that we like to make, I can imagine that that's part of that staple as well. Like those characters, you know, I think you described as nostalgic. I think that's one way of looking at it. I think of them as timeless. Yeah, iconic. Yeah.

You're iconic. And I think there's, you know, the types of games that we want to produce are ones that speak to a timeless place in the player as well. an ageless place, right? We call it the inner child, right? So I think those, they're wonderful games. We're huge fans. Yeah, I love that.

Has there ever been desired to make a new 3D platform mascot character, or are you very happy kind of sticking with these iconic characters? Because they do exist and they have been underserved for a long time. I guess, you're like, we, our brainstorms go really wide. So absolutely, we've thought about, you know, the big spectrum of this. I would say that a big attraction to characters that are established is that they have a timeless quality. They have a foundation. They have an audience that is vocal about them and are speaking specifically with direct feedback about what's important about that.

And that's really useful to build on in terms of developing your design ideas about what's next. So I think there's an appreciation for both of those things, right? There's the openness of new and its possibilities. And then there's the foundation that comes with these timeless characters. that's actually very inspiring creatively. Of course, we're talking about Spiro being this first project during your independence, and that's kind of what helped drive your independence. Do you guys have a dream project beyond Spiro?

Is there something that you're itching to make, that you're like, this is the next step, or this is like the top of the hill that we want to climb here? This is certainly one of our driven ones, right? And making this our first game, I think that speaks to that. I'll speak personally. I just love this crew and this team. Whatever that project is, as long as we're working together,

I think the combination of everyone's different sensibilities and craft and, you know, creativity produces some magic and when it's paired together with properties that you see some commercial, you know, viability with and you've got a fan base with, I think that's the right, you know, mixture of things that would be something that we could latch on to and be successful with. Yeah. I mean, I do think that that is, again, a testament to the talent that you all have over there, of like keeping so many of the team together to be able to put out these projects.

Like looking at the list like back to back to back, it's kind of wild where there's some project being released that y'all worked on every year, even if some of them were like, Call of Duty support things. But it's like, it's wild. And like just for a realm beyond coming out in 2027, it's like, well, with what y'all are saying,

it's like maybe if this is successful, 2030, 2031, we get another game. It's like, that's a really nice cadence to be able to have the team be creative, put out products people are loving like, I don't know, it just warms my heart. We're always talking about such bad stuff.

This just seems like such a huge win. But taking it back to Spiro, Realm Beyond, like talking about that game, what does a Realm Beyond mean thematically for the game? We'll have more to share on the narrative, obviously as we go. But, you know,

I think it also speaks to us wanting to take Spiro beyond, right? It's the evolution of the franchise. It is pushing it forward. It is bringing it into a new era. And so for us, it was very important to have that feel in the name as well. We want to say, hey, this is the first new game in 20 years. But we are making sure that this is a new adventure or want to remind you that you're going to, you know, places unexplored, both in gameplay and narratively.

We want Spire to be timeless. Yeah. Just nostalgic. Yeah. And this is one step towards doing that. So this is a semi a silly question, but we always talk about when a new game's coming out, specifically a legacy sequel or reboot or, you know, any combination of those things. To get excited and build the hype, should you go back and play the old ones or should you kind of just not get spiraled out and wait for this to come and allow this to like be the thing? Do you guys have recommendations?

I don't think there is ever a bad time to play a spiro game. I think it's fine. Yeah, no, I'm all in. Is it homework to do this? No. Should you play those games? Yes. Yeah.

Definitely. Yeah. Can you talk any more about the fire breath mechanics? Because what we're seeing here of the, you hit the campfire and then it allows them to blow up. Like outside of the flying, is there going to be a lot more in terms of like combat and things like that? Well, absolutely. Have more to share. Yeah.

But just the tip of the iceberg you can see here is changing the way he's using his flame breath. while in flight. You know, if the original game it was all very much a sustained flamethrower and what we found when we increased the scale and increased the speed of movement and the want to interact with the world while you were doing so, he needed to have

more range. And so what we are showing off here is, yeah, when he's in flight, you see it is now a fireball and so you're being able to interact with the world much quicker and, you know, with that lead time of you getting to it. When you are considering the scope of

the game of it being kind of manageable. Were there moments where you all had to look at this and be like, okay, we're hitting, we're going too far or, okay. Yes. Yeah. I mean, every, every game is like that. You know, I mean, part of it is you're eyeballing. It's always napkin math, right?

It's you're like, I think we can pull this off. And then you realize, oh, that's a lot, you know, and then you kind of maybe pair down in one area, you know, amplify in another. It's just part of making a game. It's part of the iteration loop. It's part of the development process. And so yeah, absolutely. There were times where like, that's a lot of game.

And we want to make sure that we, you know, manage our team, manage our focus, manage what it is as important about the game. And so, yeah, there are areas where you tighten the belt and there's areas where you expand. Just part of the game development process. Scope is a real thing. Oh, yeah. Right?

Because every time you're in a conversation with creative folks, it's always like, wouldn't it be cool if this happened? And wouldn't it be cool? And they absolutely are cool ideas. But if you commit to every single one of those, you know, without some discipline, then your game blows out of budget and blows out of time. And so luckily for us, we have high tenure folks

who have worked together and can complete each other's sentences. They kind of know each other's, like, sensibilities because for decades we work together, right? And they're also highly senior and they understand what it means to ship. And we have this cadence. And we understand like two to three years. What is the scope within our team?

what is possible. So all those things kind of focus down into, we know ourselves and we know when things are a little bit beyond our reach or like too much and then we'll pull it back down to be what's appropriate for us developing it and also for the experience. Of course you guys have been working with Spiro for a while right when we're talking about Skylanders. But when we jump to Spiro Reignited Trilogy in 2018, were there things you guys learned from making that game that you've been able to carry into working on this new one? Oh yeah. Yeah. I'll talk about kind of just the spiro scope of it all and kind of how that went together that was kind of oh yeah absolutely well i think one is is is first recognizing that skylander's is a different beast of its own right i think just

making that crystal clear for ourselves was a was one part and i think if we're honest with ourselves and we're paying attention to the feedback but there's fans during the skylanders era of spiro that that felt left behind like oh that's not the spire that i recognized that's not the one that i grew up with So when we, you know, the opportunity came up for Reignited, we're like, oh, yeah, to get back to the authentic, you know, classic Spiro. Yeah, of course, we would love to go full circle. So in that discovery period, there's a couple of different lanes of how we wanted to validate our own memories about who Spiro was. One of that was doing this deep pool of all of the fan feedback, all the fan videos and all the forums and just plucking out all the comments they make and all their rose-tinted. memories of what the game was. That's like one giant bucket that we just

showered ourselves with to like get familiar with. So just Jeremy Dooley's entire life. Right. He's definitely a big game. Yeah, absolutely. If you had a tattoo of Spiro, yeah. Probably someone we're going to be paying attention to it. Yeah. Yeah. So like that's that's one giant bucket. Another one was going to and talking with the original devs. So we actually reached out to Ted Price and some of the original artists and developers at Insomniac who worked on it. And they were so gracious to have a conversation with us. They had no obligation to.

But we wanted to go down memory lane with them and just say, hey, could you just paint a picture for us? Like, what did you, what were you going for? What were you trying to do? And they actually unloaded on us a bunch of original concept art and sketches and even design docs. So we got to take that and just shower ourselves with like original intent, the fan feedback.

And then the third one is the technical analysis of what that game was to make sure that we had absolute accuracy on what it feel like. Because we wanted to make sure that your muscle memory of the game, once you picked up the controller, it just resumes, right? You shouldn't have to be reprogrammed or recollect. So the first question that we asked, Ted, was, do you guys have source material? We'd love to look at the code so that we can reconstruct it. And he's like, unfortunately, we moved several times. That was many, many years ago. We don't have that.

So actually, one of our engineers took an open source emulator and then modified that so that we looked at the original game and actually peered into its data, extracted a lot of the models. We extracted the levels. We measured all the metrics. We found the exact placement for every gem. We measured the timing and the speed and the paths of certain enemies. And like I said, with Spiro, we looked at per frame.

What are they doing? what is he doing as you're pushing the button over that period of time? And so that gave us a lot of metrics that gave us the authenticity on that side of it. So I think that between those three things, we had a pretty good picture about how we got to authenticity and reverence. How much were those metrics kind of accurate to what it should feel like versus you having to change it to make it feel like you remember it feeling like? One of the benefits of SpiroScope was that we were able to have a single controller

run both the emulation of the class game and what we were building. So a lot of times simultaneously. So sometimes we would spawn Spiro in the same spot and we'd go chase the egg thief and we'd run the same thing and just look at it and say that's, of course you're never going to get 100% 100%. We're getting really, really, really, really close.

But as far as, you know, the kind of what things that you had to change to make it feel almost a little more to the expectations which kind of go with the rose-tinted glass. is like controllers have changed. Yeah. Right. Right analog stick.

Camera. That wasn't a thing in the original games. Even though it was, you know, a fully 3D space, it was the bumpers, you know, rotating it just on a thing. So it becomes, okay, you have to make some of these small concessions to modernity, but you do it in such a way that they exist within the rose tinted glasses because everything has modernized with it. And so you can't go so far back that you're preserving some.

of those quality of life things. And so we introduced a couple of different camera moves. You know, you could change between an active or a passive camera that changes kind of how quickly it snapped behind Spiro and charging and exploring the world. The right analog stick was supported. So a lot of those things were done without much friction or any, you know, negativity to the preservation of the original game because it's just the way games have evolved along the time. Yeah.

So a huge question for me, right? as a kid, I had a demo disc that had Crash Bash and Spiral Year of the Dragon on it. And in the Spireorier of the Dragon one, I believe in that demo was the skateboarding level. You are correct.

Is there any chance that we bring back the skateboarding? Because I loved it. I don't people hate on it. I loved it. It was huge for me. I think I can say no skateboarding. Sorry. No.

I would have preferred no comment. I didn't mean to break your hearts. Oh, man. Oh, well. Yeah. There's always, you know, hopefully there's a sequel. That's the thing, right? We want to set expectations for a future for Spiro.

If that means, Spiro's skate adventure comes next from the studio because the fan outcry, maybe that's where we go. I'll be the outcry thing. Yeah. Noted. Yep. my big question is is Bob a real person is there a real Bob

there is no Bob at the studio but no Bob is who I liked I call the inner child so our studio mission is to inspire love joy and laughter for the inner child and all gamers so Bob is who I call that inner child is a way better answer than I ever that's so beautiful now a follow-up question to my skateboarding question

Sure. Would you guys ever want to bring back Crash Bash? Because I also liked that. Yeah, I don't know. That's an interesting one. Honestly, I'll take that. I mean, that's a toss to the comments to see like, yeah. Like, is there an appetite for it? I mean, we kind of scratched a bit of that itch internally with Crash Team Rumble, just the notion of kind of crash and platforming as these kind of more of a party. Party sensibility to it. But never say no. All right. Better than skateboarding. which I will always say no.

Well, thank you so much for joining us. This was awesome. Such great insight into all of this. Is there any final things that you guys want to say about Spiro a realm beyond or just toys for Bob in general? I mean, honestly, shout out to the studio. Everyone's working to make sure that, yeah, we are coming out in spring of 2027.

And so immense, immense pride in what the team's producing and, you know, the quality of the game. And we're pushing hard and we're really excited for to come out. Yeah. Yeah, couldn't add to that. We're Spiral Realm Beyond comes out spring 2027 and we're super excited to see the excitement from the reveal and we're appreciative of all

the fan and the community, you know, feedback and all that attention and the support for the studio. Absolutely. The good feels bolster us. I mean, it's great. Yeah. Yeah. You guys are doing incredible stuff. I can't wait to have you back in this studio. Happy to be back. Hopefully playing the game sometime soon. You know what I don't know when, but.

Yeah. But sometime before spring 2027, you know. But you are welcome here anytime. Thank you. Thank you for all of this. Thank you all for checking this out. Until next time, I love you. Goodbye.