Skylanders: Imaginators

Similar to its predecessors, the core gameplay of Imaginators revolves around solving puzzles, platforming, and fighting enemies. Being a toys-to-life game, players can put a figurine onto a Portal of Power, which allows them to control the represented character in-game. It also features Creation Clash, a remake of Skystones, which was introduced in Giants. The game supports local multiplayer.

The game introduces "Imaginators", which are characters created by the player that can be shared with other players. At the beginning of the game, players can select a battle class (Knight, Smasher, Sentinel, Swashbuckler, Brawler, Sorcerer, Quickshot, Ninja, Bazooker, and Bowslinger) and elemental class, which determines their fighting style. While the battle class cannot be reset within the game itself, unofficial methods exist to do so using older games on the Wii and Nintendo 3DS. Afterwards, players can customize the names, voices, fighting abilities, appearances, colors, and sizes of their Imaginators.

In the past, the Ancients used Mind Magic to create anything they could imagine. However, one of the Ancients, known as Brain, tried to use Mind Magic to brainwash all of Skylands, so the Ancients sealed him away along with the power of Mind Magic to prevent evil from using it.

Following the events of the last game, there has been an era of peace. However, a mysterious being steals a book from the Skylanders Academy and is revealed to work for Kaos, who seeks to use the power of Mind Magic to create an army of Doomlanders and conquer Skylands. To this end, he teams up with Brain, the last remaining Ancient, and they decide to brainwash Skylands, leaving only Spyro immune because he is a dragon. They are able to free Skylands and fight Kaos in a final battle, during which he transforms into a more powerful form and summons various Doomlanders to aid him.

Development of the game began after completion of Skylanders: Trap Team, with a development cycle of approximately two years. With SuperChargers not being a commercial success, and Disney's decision to shut down its own toys-to-life developer Avalanche Software and its franchise, Disney Infinity, Activision, which had grossed $3 billion with the franchise, remained hopeful and believed that the genre still has potential for continuous game development. As the game's target audience is kids, many development team members suggested ideas to their own children to see whether they resonate with them, and pitched these ideas to other members to see whether their children are equally interested in order to ensure that these gameplay ideas appeal to them.

According to Jeff Poffenbarger, the senior executive producer of Imaginators, innovation is one of the most important aspects while designing the game. They hoped that with new mechanics and systems, they can continue to attract new customers to play the game, as well as retaining the core players. In addition, according to CEO Eric Hirshberg, one of the advantages is that Skylanders, unlike its competitors, features largely original characters and would not be confined to any limitation. The Imaginators mechanic was the most significant introduction, and was designed to be similar to other complex role-playing games.

Skylanders: Imaginators received "generally favorable" reviews for most platforms according to review aggregator website Metacritic; the Nintendo Switch version received "mixed or average" reviews. Despite the generally positive reception, the game sold only 66,000 copies during its launch month.