According to a recent report, Nintendo could have an amiibo-only game in development for its Wii U and 3DS consoles that would be free to download for a limited time.

If there's one thing that's surprising about Nintendo's toys-to-life initiative, amiibo, it's that the house of Mario has yet to use them in a significantly engaging way. Meanwhile, other titles with similar premises (such as Skylanders and Disney Infinity) have managed to take a chunk of the market with core, annual installments. This leaves Nintendo with a line of products that interacts loosely with many of its games, but doesn't collectively utilize the entirety of its highly collectible figures.

However, a new rumor seems to indicate that Nintendo is well on the way to rectifying this situation with a brand new game from the team at Nintendo Software Technology. According to the report, the new game will be free to download for a time on Wii U and 3DS, but can be used only as long as players have one of the, presumably many, compatible amiibo. There's no word yet on which plastic statues would be compatible with the project, but the game is said to have already wrapped up its development time and is currently awaiting an early 2016 release.

According to Nintendo Life and Robert Liamson – the latter being an individual responsible for leaking several major in-development projects such as Zombi U arriving on Xbox One and PS4 – North Americans will have until around April 2016 to download the unannounced game. Meanwhile, those in Europe will have a little bit longer to wait, and will reportedly have to come up with a bit of cash to access the amiibo-centric title when it does arrive.

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It should be noted that this won't be the first game from Nintendo that requires amiibo to play, Animal Crossing: amiibo Festival has that honor, but it'll be interesting to see how the new title actually pans out. If it is the intention of Nintendo of America to make the game available for free for a brief period of time, then it's hard to imagine much depth to the final product. This is just speculation on our end, though.

Also keep in mind that this is a rumor for the time being, and it'll be interesting to see if it pans out – as it should be doing so in the near future if reports are correct. In the meantime, Liamson's rumor about Shovel Knight appearing in Super Smash Bros. will either be coming to fruition or remain in limbo with tomorrow's Direct presentation, but be sure to stay tuned to Game Rant for any and all news on that front.

Sources: Nintendo Life, Robert Liamson - YouTube