Activision's first true spinoff for the Skylanders series is a card-collecting battle game. The decision to go this route might have something to do with the mountains of cash that the World of Warcraft card game Hearthstone rakes in every month.
Skylanders: Battlecast is a free-to-play mobile game that uses both store-bought physical cards and in-game virtual ones. You assemble your cards into a deck and then use that hand-picked collection to take on other players in battle.
It's similar to games like Magic: The Gathering and Hearthstone, with some added flourishes that make Battlecast feel uniquely Skylanders. Physical cards scanned by your mobile device's built-in camera come to life on the screen, popping out of the card with animations akin to what players see when they swap characters in more standard Skylanders games.
It's also possible to scan two cards at once to stage a fully-animated battle sequence that lets players "physically interact with the characters." Activision didn't detail exactly how this feature works, but you can see a few, brief flashes of it in the trailer above.
Expect to hear plenty more in the months ahead. Skylanders: Battlecast comes to the iOS App Store, Google Play and Amazon Appstore in 2016.