The Toy Box game sets represent genre-specific alternate experiences for Disney Infinity. Past Toy Box games were built entirely using the in-game creation tools and included Thor’s Assault on Asgard and Guardians of the Galaxy’s Escape from the Kyln, which were tower defense and dungeon-crawler style games respectively. For 3.0, Avalanche and its team of contracted developers are taking the Toy Box games a step further and stretching the engine beyond what’s available to the average player in the interest of creating a refined experience. Neither Speedway nor Toy Box Takeover is something the average player would be able to create with Disney Infinity’s creation tools, and they will be available separately from the main game. They will both be sold as separate discs, but you need a 3.0 starter set in order to play.

To read about the other planned Toy Box for Disney Infinity 3.0, a dedicated kart racer called Speedway, head here.

Toy Box Takeover

Originally titled Villain Takeover (as it was described in our cover story), Toy Box Takeover draws inspiration from top-down dungeon crawlers like Diablo and openly recognizes the problems that made Disney Infinity 2.0’s Escape from the Kyln Toy Box game a disappointing experience. “We just didn’t feel like we hit the mark qualitatively,” says John Blackburn, senior vice president and general manager of Disney Infinity at Avalanche Software. “When we were starting development of those, we underestimated how much you needed to change the mechanics to tune them for those games.”

Two of the Kyln’s biggest problems were that, despite changing the gameplay style from the main Disney Infinity game, enemies still took the same amount of damage, and when the player took damage, the amount of knockback was unchanged. This meant that despite there being more enemies on-screen, it still took a long time to defeat each one, and it was easy to get overpowered by them when you kept getting knocked down over and over. If you look at other dungeon-crawler games like Diablo and Torchlight, getting knocked down is a rarity, and though enemies are plentiful (and can be overpowering), taking on many at one time is a common and empowering occurrence.

For Toy Box Takeover, these two elements of the game have been addressed, and are an example of gameplay metrics that can’t be accessed with the standard creation tools. You will be taking on more enemies, and can battle continuously without interruption.

The premise of Toy Box Takeover (and the source of he name, Villain Takeover) is that The Incredibles’ Syndrome gets his hands on an Infinity Wand – the tool players use to create their own worlds. Syndrome starts pulling together all sorts of worlds and iconic villains that span Infinity’s myriad franchises, including Star Wars, Pixar, and modern and classic Disney.

New enemy variants are being created specifically for Takeover, and you must also have to steer clear of The Void, an unstoppable, slow-moving force that creeps up behind you, destroying everything in its path – including enemies. Luckily, you have your sidekicks to help you, who have been dramatically overhauled from the previous games. Your sidekicks help you fight, or act as support, and you can upgrade their stats and equipment both in and outside of Takeover.

The main purpose of these Toy Box Games is to let Avalanche craft structured gameplay in an environment where a number of different franchises can be represented. When it comes to structured gameplay, normally Avalanche has to stick to the Playsets, which are franchise-specific, but here they can go crazy and build a world where Mickey Mouse can try to escape the trash compactor from the first Star Wars film, or Elsa from Frozen can explore Syndrome’s volcano with missions, objectives, and curated action. With the wiggle-room Avalanche is allowing itself to refine these Toy Box games, the teams are hoping they’re seen as a destination for players who want to play with all of their figures and toys in one place, but don’t want to craft their own worlds with the Toy Box.

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