Yooka-Laylee

Yooka-Laylee
North American cover art
Developer(s)	Playtonic Games
Publisher(s)	Team17
Director(s)	Chris Sutherland
Producer(s)	Andy Wilson
Designer(s)	Gavin Price Gary Richards
Artist(s)	Steve Mayles Steven Hurst Kevin Bayliss
Writer(s)	Andy Robinson
Composer(s)	Grant Kirkhope David Wise Steve Burke
Engine	Unity
Platform(s)	Linux macOS Microsoft Windows PlayStation 4 Xbox One Nintendo Switch
Release	Linux, macOS, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One WW: 11 April 2017 Nintendo Switch WW: 2017
Genre(s)	Platform
Mode(s)	Single-player, multiplayer

Yooka-Laylee is a platform video game developed by Playtonic Games and published by Team17 for Linux, macOS, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. It was originally also in development for Wii U, but was later cancelled in favor of the Switch version due to "unforeseen technical issues".

Yooka-Laylee was developed by Playtonic Games, a group of several former key personnel from Rare during the Nintendo 64 era, as a spiritual successor to their game series Banjo-Kazooie and other works. Similar to the title of Banjo-Kazooie being a play on the banjo and kazoo musical instruments, the title of Yooka-Laylee is a play on the ukulele.

Gameplay

Yooka-Laylee features gameplay similar to spiritual predecessor, Banjo-Kazooie, where the player searches for and collects items in an open 3D environment.

Yooka-Laylee is a platform game played from a third-person perspective.^[1] The gameplay is similar to that of games in the Banjo-Kazooie series. The player controls two characters that work together to explore their environment, collect items, solve puzzles and defeat enemies. The playable characters are Yooka, a male chameleon^[2] and Laylee, a female bat.^[3][4] During their adventures, Yooka and Laylee explore open worlds contained within magical books and complete challenges to collect "Pagies": golden book pages that act as the main currency in the game. Players can use their Pagies to either unlock new worlds or expand those which have already been unlocked.^[5][6]

The characters' abilities include "sonar blasting", "tongue whipping", "sky soaring", eating berries for temporary powers such as fire breath, and a "fart bubble" for breathing underwater. Most of these abilities use a power meter that is filled by collecting butterflies (which can be eaten instead to restore health). Each new ability is earned by collecting enough quills to purchase them from Trowzer, a snake salesman who wears pants.^[7] Collectibles by the name of Mollycools are used in order to give Yooka and Laylee various transformations that grant them exclusive abilities. Play Tonics are RPG-style ability modifiers that are purchased from Vendi, a living vending machine, and equipped to modify or enhance players' ability stats.^[8] Also found in the levels are Ghost Writers, collectible characters who provide various challenges like catching or fighting them for more activities, and Play Tokens, which are used to play the secret arcade games that are found once per level, hosted by a low polygon T. rex named Rextro Sixtyfourus, a homage to the Nintendo 64. There is a "quiz show challenge" featured before the final boss, similar to the Banjo-Kazooie games. Furthermore, 2D and 3D "mine cart" sequences are also included, similar to those of Donkey Kong Country and Donkey Kong 64.

The game features a local cooperative multiplayer mode for two players. There is also a 2–4 player adversarial local multiplayer mode, with eight different minigames.^[3] The game also features an optional "N64 shader" mode, which imitates the graphical appearance of Nintendo 64 games.^[3]

Plot

Yooka and Laylee venture out from the safety of their home in Shipwreck Creek to explore deep inside the work halls of a baneful business known as the Hivory Towers, to find the "Pagies" needed to explore the mysterious Grand Tomes as the buddy-duo battle to stop Capital B and Dr. Quack from absorbing all the world's literature and converting it into pure profit.^[9]

Development

Composer Grant Kirkhope

In September 2012, a group of former Rare employees announced their intent to create a spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie. They joined under the Twitter handle Mingy Jongo, a boss from the game Banjo-Tooie, with cooperation from ex-Rare developers, such as Grant Kirkhope. The account was left abandoned and the project confirmed to be on indefinite hiatus by Kirkhope in a Reddit AMA.^[10] Later, the account was revived under its current name Playtonic Games. Playtonic then announced that they were planning a spiritual successor to the Banjo-Kazooie franchise titled Yooka-Laylee, formerly codenamed Project Ukulele.^[11] Yooka-Laylee is believed to have been the result of Mingy Jongo's work, which was similarly based on the Unity game engine and was intended to be crowdfunded through Kickstarter.

At the start of development, six people were involved. After the successful Kickstarter campaign, the team was expanded to an average of fifteen full-time employees. The game was created with the Unity engine with help from middleware tools.^[12][13] This allowed for bugs to be more easily repaired and the incorporation of ten thousand polygons.^[14] The phoneticizing of "ukulele" was an early idea that went through several versions (e.g. Hawaiian terms Yoku, meaning "to eat bugs", and Laylee, meaning "to fly") until the final title "Yooka-Laylee".^[5]

The game features 3D worlds by environment artist Steven Hurst, who also worked on the Banjo-Kazooie series as well as Viva Piñata. The game's characters were designed by Kevin Bayliss, who helped design the modern Kong characters in the Donkey Kong Country series, and Ed Bryan, who designed the characters in Banjo-Kazooie.^[3] Originally, character art director Steve Mayles imagined Yooka as a lion, but eventually made him a chameleon and created Laylee as a bat, because of how their abilities could accommodate the gameplay.^[15][16] Player characters were deliberately left without voices so as to enhance player choice. The game's perk system was based upon what was done in video games outside the 3D platform genre.^[13] Layered animations were among other things employed to improve character movement.^[14]

Former Rare composers David Wise, Grant Kirkhope and Steve Burke collaborated to compose the game's orchestral score. A soundtrack CD was released and rewarded to certain supporters of the crowdfunding campaign.^[3] Kirkhope noted that the increase in memory availability since working on Banjo-Kazooie permitted a higher quality soundtrack.^[14]

The game is intended as a resurrection and modernization of the "collectathon" 3D platforming game genre of the late 1990s and early 2000s, with an emphasis on progression by collecting various different items.^[17] Some of the collectibles were created using 2D sprites.^[12] Additional post-launch downloadable content is planned, which began production following the game's release, with crowdfunding participants receiving this content for free.^[18][19] The game's native language is featured in English, but it also features professional French, German, Italian and Spanish translations. Wil Overton, a former artist for Rare, illustrated the game's instruction manual.

The title character of the indie game Shovel Knight makes an appearance as a non-playable character. The inclusion was announced by Shovel Knight developer Yacht Club Games following the release of Yooka's character trailer in September 2016.^[20][21]

Release

The game is published by Team17, who also assisted Playtonic with localization, product certification, quality assurance, marketing and general non-developer tasks.^[22] The game's funding project was announced on Kickstarter in May 2015. It reached its initial crowdfunding campaign goal of £175,000 within thirty-eight minutes^[23] and its initial highest goal of £1,000,000 in 21 hours,^[24] at the time becoming the fastest video game in Kickstarter history to reach US$1 million.^[25] Playtonic Games later sent out a public statement thanking all their supporters and promising more updates in the future.^[26] The campaign added four additional stretch goals, all of which have been reached. Those who contributed predetermined amounts to the campaign received special rewards related to the game's release. It is currently the highest-funded UK video game in Kickstarter history, passing the previous record held by Elite: Dangerous,^[27] earning £2,090,104.^[28] with success in the crowdfunding campaign allowing a simultaneous April 2017 release for consoles. A Wii U version was in development but cancelled in December 2016 due to "unforeseen technical issues", with a Nintendo Switch version of the game taking its place.^[29]

In June 2016, Playtonic announced that they had delayed the game to early 2017 in order to give the team additional time to polish the game.^[30] Additionally, it was confirmed that Playtonic Games were focusing their development efforts on the PC and Wii U versions, and originally giving the latter platform "the right attention" due to greater demand from Kickstarter backers, as well as nostalgia factors. Publisher Team17 assisted porting the game to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.^[31]

In October 2016, Playtonic Games confirmed to their Kickstarter backers that the game would have a physical retail release alongside the digital release, and promised backers who earned the digital version the choice of physical media.^[32] In December 2016, Playtonic Games confirmed the game would be available both digitally and at retail worldwide on 11 April 2017 for all platforms. In the same update, Playtonic Games announced that the Wii U version had been cancelled, with development duties moved to the Nintendo Switch. The announcement cited "unforeseen technical issues" as the reason for cancelling it. Playtonic offered Kickstarter backers who pledged for the Wii U version choices of refund or moving their pledge to any other platform at no additional cost. Playtonic stated that additional details regarding the game's Nintendo Switch version would be announced in January 2017.^[33] It was later explained that the decision to cancel the Wii U version is unrelated to the console's poor commercial performance, and that some of the developers expressed reluctance to do so.^[34] Playtonic announced that there would be no physical release for Yooka-Laylee on the Nintendo Switch.^[35]

In March 2017, Playtonic announced that YouTube personality Jon Jafari, better known as JonTron, who was originally set to voice a character in Yooka-Laylee, would be removed from the game due to racist commentary he made the same month on immigration, ethnicity, and nationalism.^{[36][37][38][39][40]} Jafari was first revealed to be playing a minor character in the game in February 2015.^[41][42] On the same day, Jafari commented on his removal by stating "Unfortunate to see Playtonic remove me from Yooka Laylee, but I understand their decision. I wish them the best with their launch!" on his Twitter.^[43]

On 1 April 2017, Playtonic released The Yooka-Laylee Rap!, which was a stretch goal on Kickstarter. It pays homage to the DK Rap from Donkey Kong 64, with Kirkhope reprising his role as the rap's composer.^[44]

Reception

Reception
Aggregate score Aggregator Score Metacritic (PC) 73/100[45] (PS4) 68/100[46] (XONE) 73/100[47] Review scores Publication Score Destructoid 8/10[48] EGM 7/10[49] Game Informer 8/10[50] Game Revolution [51] GameSpot 6/10[1] GamesRadar [52] IGN 7/10[53] PC Gamer (US) 68/100[54] Polygon 5.5/10[55] VideoGamer.com 4/10[56] The Escapist [57]

Critical reaction

Yooka-Laylee received "mixed or average" reviews, according to review aggregator Metacritic.^[45][46][47] Critics generally agreed that the game recaptured the feel of a classic 3D platformer, but were divided over whether this made the game successful or simply made its gameplay and design feel unoriginal and outdated.^[58] Its Kickstarter backers were ultimately satisfied with the final product, despite their disappointments with the pre-release demo being delayed and the cancellation of the Wii U version.^[59]

Many critics praised the game as a successful follow up to the original Banjo-Kazooie games. Steven Bogos of The Escapist positively referred to the game as "Banjo-Threeie", calling it "a nostalgic ride through time, bringing the collect-a-thons from the N64 era into the modern age".^[57] James Kozanitis of Game Revolution felt that Yooka-Laylee improved on the gameplay and structure of classic titles, in particular the relevance and importance of the collectables.^[51] Chris Carter of Destructoid praised the expansive levels and the colorful design, while noting instances of what he felt were "a creeping sense of budgetary concerns" due to the varying quality between them. While Carter himself was favorable towards the game, he concluded that due to the throwback designs, it would not be for everyone.^[48]

Marty Sliva of IGN called Yooka-Laylee "a good reminder that this genre, once thought to be dead, still has some life left in it". Sliva noted different aspects of the game that felt authentic to games from the 90s, praising the level design, soundtrack and characters while also criticizing how the game controlled at certain points and stated it was "not 1998 anymore" regarding frustrating camera movement.^[53] Kallie Plagge of GameSpot similarly praised certain aspects such as the collectibles and non-linear structure while also criticizing the uncooperative camera. Plagge conversely was critical of what she felt was convoluted level design and outdated gameplay.^[1] Shortly after Yooka-Laylee's release, Playtonic announced a free update to the game that will attempt to address criticism of the in-game camera and make other improvements.^[60]

Sales

The game debuted at number 6 in the U.K. all-formats chart in its first week^[61] as well as the number 2 spot in the Australian sales charts in its first week.^[62]

References

External links

• Official website