‘Banjo-Kazooie’ creators reveal its spiritual sequel, ‘Yooka-Laylee.’
You know. I ain’t opposed to classic developers creating spiritual sequels to franchises. I mean. Look at Mighty No. 9. But Yooka-Laylee? Oh my. I don’t know.
Playtonic Games, an independent studio composed of former Rare developers, revealedits spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie today, a colorful new 3D platformer called Yooka-Laylee.
Playtonic’s new game stars the titular duo, Yooka the chameleon and Laylee the bat, who will use their sticky tongue and powers of flight in concert to move through a challenging 3D world. The pair were conceived by character artist Steve Mayles, the man behind Rare’s take on Donkey Kong and Banjo and Kazooie.
As previously announced, Yooka-Laylee is heading to Kickstarter to raise money for development. Playtonic will kick off its fundraising effort tomorrow, May 1.
“You told us you wanted Yooka-Laylee … to be the best game it could possibly be,” Playtonic said on its website. “You said you wanted sprawling, gorgeous worlds to explore, tons of smartarse characters to meet and inventive moves to learn… and you wanted to do it all on your gaming platform of choice.”
Playtonic hasn’t said which platforms it’s targeting, but it sounds like that will be decided by Yooka-Laylee‘s success on Kickstarter. “Fans of our past work are all over the place and it’d be a shame to leave anyone out and we’d really not do that,” the developer said in March.
The independent studio started teasing its new game earlier this year under the name Project Ukulele. Playtonic described its debut game as “a worthy spiritual successor to those fondly remembered platforming adventures we built in the past.”