Yooka-Laylee Wiki – Everything you need to know about the game

Yooka-Laylee is an upcoming 3D platforming adventure game for Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux, PlayStation 4, Wii U and Xbox One with an expected release window of October 2016 for the computer version of the game and the console version coming sometime after that. The game is being developed thanks to a partnership with Playtonic Games and Team 17, which is working as the publisher. The development team working is made up of a number of people who worked at Rare during the Nintendo 64 days. Banjo-Kazooie designers Chris Sutherland, Steve Mayles and Steven Hurst reprise their roles of lead programmer/voice actor, character artist and environmental artist respectively. All of the people working on the project have described the game as a kind of spiritual, current generation successor to Banjo-Kazooie.

• 1. Development
• 2. Story
• 3. Gameplay
• 4. Characters

Development

On August 8, 2012 a number of former Rare employees announced they were going to put together a new game that would be the spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie. The announcement came thanks to a new Twitter handle, Mingy Jongo, a boss from the game Banjo-Tooie. The group was joined by people like composer Grant Kirkhope. While the team had real hopes of getting the game started, the account was eventually left abandoned and Kirkhope confirmed the project was dead during a Reddit AMA.

Later on, the account was revived by Playtonic Games and a Kickstarter event was announced in order to fund the development of this new game, now dubbed Yooka-Laylee. The Kickstarter was officially launched on May 1, 2015 and the campaign hit its first goal in less than 38 minutes, demonstrating just how popular the old Banjo-Kazooie series was in certain circles of the gaming world. The massively quick funding didn’t stop there, as the game eventually became the fastest ever Kickstarter to hit the $1 million mark achieving the same in less than 21 hours. Once the smoke had cleared on the Kickstarter campaign, the game was officially the highest earning UK Kickstarter game campaign and the project ended up raising well over $2 million.

After hitting all of its funding marks, the game is said to be getting a release on Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux, PS4, Xbox One and the Wii U. The company has said it will be looking to bring the game to computers first with a target of October 2016. The firm hasn’t said when the game will be hitting consoles but it did say the massive amount of money they raised will indeed allow them to publish on the current generation devices.

The game will feature 3D worlds by environment artist Steven Hurst, whose previously worked on the Banjo-Kazooie series as well as Viva Piñata. Some characters will be designed by Kevin Bayliss, who was instrumental in designing the modern Kong characters in the Donkey Kong series, and Ed Bryan, who also designed characters in Banjo-Kazooie. Former Rare composers David Wise, Grant Kirkhope, and Steve Burke will collaborate to compose the game’s orchestral score and a soundtrack CD will be released and sent to supporters who donated a certain amount of money during the crowdfunding campaign. In addition to graphics that look better suited to current generation games, Yooka-Laylee will also feature an optional “N64 shader” mode. This mode is geared to imitate the graphics of Nintendo 64 games. Additional post-launch DLC is planned, and that DLC production will begin shortly after the game’s completion. Players who donated money in the crowdfunding campaign will get this DLC for free. In order to continue with the tradition of harkening back to the N64 days of video games, former Super Play and Rare artist Wil Overton will be illustrating the game’s instruction manual.

Story

There isn’t a great deal known about the actual story behind Yooka-Laylee. We know that Yooka and Laylee are traveling through a rather colorful and vibrant world. They are being chased by various baddies and will need to fight these guys off using a number of different special abilities. Why the chase is on, or what the end goal for the main characters are hasn’t been discussed yet. The developers have talked more about the amount of fun the players are supposed to have while they are in the game world.

Gameplay

The game is intended as a resurrection of the “collectathon” 3D platforming game genre of the late 1990s and early 2000s such as Banjo-Kazooie. During their adventures, Yooka and Laylee will explore worlds contained within large magical books and complete challenges to unlock and collect “Pagies”, golden book pages that act as the main currency in the game. Players can then turn around and use their Pagies to either unlock new worlds or build on and expand those which have already been unlocked in the game.

Both of the main characters will be able to transform into various forms, granting them a number of different abilities. The abilities include sonar blasting, tongue whipping, sky soaring and others. The two main characters  will be able to buy more moves. Other moves for Yooka and Laylee can be found and equipped using “Play Tonics”,  which are collected in game and modify players’ abilities. A boss battle and at least one secret arcade game will be featured in every level, and there will be a “quiz show challenge” featured before the final boss, similar to the Banjo-Kazooie games. Furthermore, 2D and 3D “mine cart” sequences will be included, along the lines of what players have seen in Donkey Kong Country and Donkey Kong 64 games.

The game will feature a local co-op multiplayer mode for two players. There will also be a 2-4 player adversarial local multiplayer mode with eight different minigames. There doesn’t appear to be any kind of online multiplayer offered.

Characters

In addition to the main characters Yooka who is a male chameleon and Laylee who is a female bat, there are other NPCs that the main characters will be able to interact with including Trowzer, a snake who wears pants. Trowzer is the character that Yooka and Laylee will be able to buy their additional moves from. There will also be a number of enemies and bosses the main characters will have to face off of, but they haven’t been named.

Note: This wiki will be updated once we have more information about the game