Toys for Bob Reveals How Flight Will Transform Spyro: A Realm Beyond

18 July 2026
Nintendo Switch 2
11 min.
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Toys for Bob Reveals How Flight Will Transform Spyro: A Realm Beyond

Summary:

Toys for Bob has shared a substantial collection of new details about Spyro: A Realm Beyond, offering a clearer picture of how the purple dragon’s next adventure will expand upon the foundations of the original trilogy. Studio head Paul Yan and associate creative director Lou Studdert discussed the project during a lengthy Kinda Funny Games interview, covering everything from active flight controls and vertical world design to the studio’s independence and affection for Banjo-Kazooie.

Flight sits at the centre of the new experience. Rather than giving Spyro an automatic way to glide between predetermined locations, Toys for Bob is building a system that asks players to flap his wings, maintain momentum, dive for additional speed and use environmental features to remain airborne. Campfires can be ignited to produce rising air, while rings in the sky provide bursts of speed. These mechanics can be chained together, turning movement into a playful puzzle without making the experience feel like a complicated flight simulator.

The studio also wants Spyro: A Realm Beyond to feel like a natural evolution of the series rather than a reboot. Spyro’s personality, voice and general tone remain rooted in the original games, while larger environments, greater verticality and expanded narrative ideas push the formula forward. Development has been underway for a little over two years, with Toys for Bob expressing confidence in its planned Spring 2027 release. The game is currently heading to Nintendo Switch 2 alongside Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5 and PC.

Toys for Bob Shares Its Vision for Spyro: A Realm Beyond

Spyro: A Realm Beyond is more than another project on Toys for Bob’s schedule. According to the studio, it represents the kind of game its developers have wanted to create for years. The team previously demonstrated its understanding of the purple dragon through Spyro Reignited Trilogy, which rebuilt the original PlayStation adventures with modern visuals and refined controls. This time, however, it has the opportunity to move beyond restoration and decide what a completely new Spyro experience should look like. That means protecting the qualities that made the character memorable while introducing ideas that were not technically practical during the series’ early years. The result is intended to feel familiar without being trapped in nostalgia. Spyro still charges, glides, breathes fire and collects glittering treasure, but the world around those abilities has grown considerably more ambitious.

Spyro Evolves Without Abandoning His Original Identity

Toys for Bob is drawing its primary inspiration from the original Spyro trilogy rather than treating A Realm Beyond as another reinvention. The character’s attitude, humour, voice and general personality remain connected to the young dragon players remember. This is not positioned as a reboot in the style of The Legend of Spyro, nor does it appear to be borrowing its setting from Skylanders. Instead, it extends the identity established by the earliest games and asks where that version of Spyro could go next. That distinction matters because Spyro’s appeal has always depended on more than purple scales and a pair of horns. His confidence, playful impatience and willingness to leap into danger give the adventures their spark. Change too much and the character could feel like a stranger wearing a familiar costume. Toys for Bob seems keenly aware of that risk.

Gems, Characters and Dragon Fantasy Remain Essential

Several familiar pillars remain central to the experience, including gems, colourful personalities, exploration and responsive movement. Gems are not being pushed into the background simply because the environments are becoming larger. They remain an important part of how players investigate locations, follow visual trails and experience the satisfying rhythm of clearing an area. Anyone who has spent an embarrassing amount of time searching for one missing gem will understand why that detail matters. The studio also wants to lean further into the fantasy of controlling a dragon. Spyro has always breathed fire and glided, but A Realm Beyond aims to make his species feel more meaningful through movement, environmental interaction and the scale of the places he can reach. Rather than merely looking like a dragon, Spyro should increasingly move through the world like one.

Flight Reshapes How Players Explore Spyro’s Worlds

The largest change is the addition of active dragon flight as a fundamental part of Spyro’s movement set. Players can still explore on foot, charge across pathways and examine environments at ground level, but the sky now offers another route. Toys for Bob designed the world around this capability from the beginning instead of adding it late in development as a convenient traversal shortcut. That decision affects the shape of levels, the placement of landmarks and the way players identify possible destinations. Mountains, towers and distant platforms are no longer decorative pieces sitting beyond an invisible wall. They can become destinations, puzzles or clues. The studio wants players to look across the horizon, spot something intriguing and wonder how to reach it. Flight provides the freedom, while the surrounding environment provides the answer.

Active Flight Requires Momentum, Timing and Environmental Awareness

Flight is fully controlled rather than automatic. Players must flap Spyro’s wings to preserve speed and momentum, making the act of staying airborne something they actively manage. Diving allows Spyro to accelerate, while rising currents and speed rings help him recover height or cross longer distances. The challenge comes from combining those actions smoothly. A player might dive to build speed, pass through a ring, ignite an object below and ride the resulting current upward before continuing towards a distant ledge. It sounds more involved than the classic glide, but Toys for Bob does not want the system to become a flight simulator filled with complicated instruments and rigid controls. The aim is playful movement that feels expressive and understandable. You should feel like a nimble young dragon, not an exhausted pilot searching the dashboard for the landing gear.

Fire Breath Changes Between Ground and Aerial Combat

Spyro’s flame breath behaves differently depending on whether he is standing on solid ground or soaring through the air. On foot, his flames retain the closer, sustained behaviour associated with the classic games, functioning somewhat like a flamethrower. While flying, the attack gains additional range and behaves more like a projectile. This allows Spyro to launch fireballs towards targets, activate objects from a distance and interact with environmental elements while moving at speed. Campfires are one confirmed example. Igniting them produces lift that can carry Spyro upwards, linking his signature attack directly to aerial navigation. It is a smart extension because the flame is not merely a weapon anymore. It becomes part of the movement system, turning the world into a playground of potential boosts, reactions and routes.

Vertical Locations Turn Distant Landmarks Into Invitations

Building an adventure around flight requires more than raising the ceiling and scattering a few floating rings around. Toys for Bob is giving its locations substantially more verticality and layering, with points of interest positioned above, below and beyond the player’s immediate route. This design should encourage curiosity from several angles. A structure seen from the ground may reveal a landing point from above, while a high-altitude route might expose a hidden passage that cannot be noticed at street level. The approach supports the studio’s belief that exploration should inspire questions. How do you reach that tower? Can the rising smoke become an updraft? Does the cliff hide a cave beneath it? The best destinations effectively wave at you from a distance, and Spyro’s expanded abilities provide the vocabulary needed to answer their invitation.

Spyro Prioritizes Fluid Exploration Over Precision Platforming

Toys for Bob draws a clear distinction between Spyro and Crash Bandicoot. Crash is built around precision, hazards and carefully measured platforming challenges, where a mistimed jump can turn a crate-filled corridor into a slapstick disaster. Spyro offers a calmer rhythm. His adventures focus on flowing through attractive environments, gathering treasures, meeting unusual characters and choosing where curiosity leads next. The studio describes that movement as almost zen-like, which helps explain why active flight cannot feel overly punishing. It must add expression without disrupting the relaxing sense of momentum associated with the series. Few existing games offered a direct blueprint for the system Toys for Bob wanted, so the developers had to establish many of their own rules. That experimentation appears to be shaping an experience that treats movement as a pleasure in itself, rather than merely a way to travel between objectives.

Development Required Careful Scope Management

Development on Spyro: A Realm Beyond has been underway for a little over two years, and Toys for Bob believes the project remains on track for Spring 2027. The studio generally prefers a development cycle of roughly two to three years, allowing it to move efficiently without letting production stretch indefinitely. That does not mean every idea survives. The developers acknowledged that the project became over-scoped at certain points, forcing the team to make difficult cuts to protect the schedule and budget. Such decisions rarely produce exciting promotional quotes, but they are essential to finishing a focused game. A promising feature can still become harmful when it consumes resources needed elsewhere. Toys for Bob describes itself as a nimble studio with disciplined scope management, and its willingness to remove ideas may ultimately help the strongest parts of Spyro’s new adventure receive the attention they need.

Independence Allowed Toys for Bob to Return to Its Strengths

The studio’s route to independence is closely connected to its return to Spyro. Toys for Bob originally hoped to work on the purple dragon after completing Spyro Reignited Trilogy, but it was assigned to Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time instead. The team later supported larger Activision Blizzard projects, including Call of Duty: Warzone and Overwatch 2. While that work provided valuable experience, it gradually moved the studio away from the colourful, character-led adventures it most wanted to create. Following Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Toys for Bob proposed becoming independent and pitched a new Spyro project to Xbox. Leadership supported the arrangement, giving the developer an opportunity to rebuild itself around the games it loves. Establishing a separate company required considerable effort, but the operational transition was helped by the studio’s experience working remotely.

Spyro Presented the Strongest Opportunity for the Studio

Toys for Bob has numerous original concepts it would like to explore, but Spyro presented the strongest combination of creative enthusiasm and commercial evidence. The sales history of the franchise helped form a convincing business case, especially when paired with the enduring affection surrounding the original trilogy and Spyro Reignited Trilogy. Established characters give a studio access to an audience that already understands the basic appeal, although that familiarity creates responsibility too. Longtime players notice when personalities, movement or humour feel wrong. Toys for Bob appears comfortable working within that balance. The studio enjoys handling timeless characters with passionate communities, then finding ways to broaden their worlds without sanding away their identity. Spyro was therefore not chosen simply because the team lacked new ideas. He offered the clearest path towards independence while matching the kind of joyful adventure the developers genuinely wanted to make.

Crash Team Rumble Was Designed as a Genuine Crash Spin-Off

The interview also addressed Crash Team Rumble and the assumption that it was created to follow the industry’s enthusiasm for live-service releases. Toys for Bob explained that the concept existed in prototype form before Crash Bandicoot 4 entered full production. The intention was to develop a spin-off that still captured the movement and personality of Crash without returning to the familiar kart-racing formula. That context helps explain the unusual competitive platforming structure, even if the final release did not connect with every Crash fan. It was an attempt to stretch the character into a different format while preserving recognisable abilities. The same creative instinct can be seen in A Realm Beyond, although Spyro’s expanded flight system is being integrated into a traditional adventure rather than a multiplayer experiment. In both cases, the studio is searching for evolution that still respects what makes each mascot distinct.

Toys for Bob Sees Renewed Interest in 3D Platformers

The developers believe 3D platformers are experiencing a meaningful resurgence. Modern successes have demonstrated that colourful mascot adventures can still attract large audiences when they combine polished controls with memorable worlds. Toys for Bob referenced games such as Astro Bot and the return of Rayman when discussing this renewed momentum. These releases do not need to imitate one another to strengthen the genre. In fact, their differences are part of the appeal. Spyro focuses on open-ended discovery and flowing traversal, while Crash favours structured tests of timing and precision. Other series build around transformations, gadgets, collectibles or cooperative play. That variety gives the genre room to grow instead of forcing every mascot into the same mould. For players who missed the era when bright landscapes and improbable animal heroes ruled store shelves, the current revival may feel like an old toy box suddenly opening again.

The Studio Would Welcome a Banjo-Kazooie Opportunity

Banjo-Kazooie naturally entered the discussion as another beloved 3D platforming series associated with Xbox. Yan and Studdert described the games as timeless and made it clear that Toys for Bob contains many enthusiastic fans. The studio would love to work on Banjo-Kazooie if the opportunity appeared, although no such project has been announced. Its interest is easy to understand. Banjo and Kazooie inhabit the same broad family of character-driven adventures that Toys for Bob clearly enjoys, complete with colourful locations, eccentric supporting characters and movement that invites experimentation. However, affection alone does not mean development is underway. For now, the comments reveal enthusiasm rather than a formal plan. Spyro remains the studio’s active priority, but the idea of Toys for Bob one day opening Rare’s backpack again is certainly enough to make platforming fans raise an eyebrow.

Spyro: A Realm Beyond Heads to Nintendo Switch 2 in Spring 2027

Spyro: A Realm Beyond is scheduled to launch in Spring 2027 for Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5 and PC. The Nintendo Switch 2 version gives Spyro a chance to establish a new audience on Nintendo hardware while welcoming players who previously experienced Spyro Reignited Trilogy on the original Switch. Many details remain under wraps, including the broader narrative, supporting cast and exact structure of the connected locations. What Toys for Bob has explained so far nevertheless establishes a clear direction. This is a Spyro adventure built around movement, curiosity and the fantasy of taking flight. Ground exploration has not been discarded, and familiar ingredients such as gems, humour and colourful personalities remain important. The sky simply gives those elements more room to breathe, quite literally.

Conclusion

Spyro: A Realm Beyond appears to be expanding the series in a way that grows naturally from its original strengths. Active flight introduces new mechanical depth, but it also supports the relaxed exploration and fluid movement that separate Spyro from more demanding platformers. Vertical environments, environmental updrafts, aerial fireballs and momentum-based traversal could make every distant tower or hidden ledge feel like a tempting challenge. Behind the scenes, the project also represents a defining moment for Toys for Bob. Independence has allowed the studio to return to the colourful characters and imaginative worlds it values most. There is still much to learn before Spring 2027, but the current details suggest that Spyro’s next adventure understands an important truth: becoming a bigger dragon does not require forgetting where you first learned to glide.

FAQs
  • When will Spyro: A Realm Beyond be released?
    • Spyro: A Realm Beyond is scheduled to launch in Spring 2027. Toys for Bob has said it feels confident about that release window after a little over two years of development.
  • Is Spyro: A Realm Beyond coming to Nintendo Switch 2?
    • Yes. The game has been announced for Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5 and PC.
  • Can Spyro fly freely in A Realm Beyond?
    • Spyro has an active flight system that lets players flap his wings, dive for speed and use environmental features to stay airborne. Toys for Bob does not want it to feel like a complicated flight simulator.
  • Is Spyro: A Realm Beyond connected to Skylanders?
    • No. Toys for Bob considers Spyro and Skylanders to exist in separate universes. The developers mainly carried forward lessons about humour rather than characters or story elements.
  • Is Toys for Bob developing a Banjo-Kazooie game?
    • No Banjo-Kazooie project has been announced. The studio has expressed strong affection for the series and would welcome the opportunity to work on it, but Spyro: A Realm Beyond remains its confirmed project.
Sources
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