Yooka-Laylee, the spiritual successor to the wildly popular Banjo-Kazooie series of games completely and utterly obliterated its Kickstarter goal almost exactly one year ago. The buddy-duo platformer raised £2,090,104, which was well above their fairly reasonable request of £175,000. It’s clear that gamers believed in the Playtonic team, and with good reason. The group consists of former Rare developers, people behind those Banjo-Kazooie games as well as Donkey Kong Country and other classics. Today, Playtonic had some good news and some bad news. Let’s start with the good news.
Yooka-Laylee E3 Trailer
If you’ve been following the Kickstarter, you’ve already seen plenty of early game footage. Today you’ll be able to watch the very best footage polished up nicely for E3. I’ll just let you watch the trailer, and we’ll talk about it afterwards.
OK, so that looks fantastic… The animation is smooth, the colors are vibrant, the gameplay elements look familiar but updated for modern consoles, and each scene looks carefully picked to show off the types of things you’ll be doing in the game. The music has a very playful frantic feel, and it all just comes together so nicely.
Plus, there’s a freaking snake wearing pants and a fedora… I mean, how awesome is that!
Seeing the game in motion makes me happy that I backed this project, and I can’t wait to get my hands on the finished game! That leads us to the bad news…
Release Pushed To Q1 2017
Womp womp… While this isn’t a huge delay — the initial estimate for completion was October 2016 — it is still disappointing for people who backed the game, which Playtonic definitely understands.
While we felt confident we could ship the game in October as originally projected in our Kickstarter, the Playtonic team has decided that it would prefer to add a few extra months’ polish to the game schedule.
Ultimately, this will allow us to deliver a better game to the tens-of-thousands of you who’ve supported us throughout development. And that’s what we all want, right?
We’re sure some will be disappointed by the prospect of a few extra months’ wait, however the team is confident that we’ve made the right decision for the game and that you’ll be pleased with the results when Yooka-Laylee arrives early next year.
I, for one, am OK waiting a few extra months if the developers feel they can deliver an even better game with that little bit of extra time. Given their work in the past I’d say this group deserves the benefit of the doubt for now. I may also be saying that because as a Kickstarter backer, I should have access to the game’s Toybox experience in July. The Toybox will allow gamers to get a feel for the gameplay mechanics, seeing how the main characters work together in a sandbox that is not representative of any of the game’s actual levels. Definitely a nice carrot to keep us occupied while the game is still in development.
What do you think about the Yooka-Laylee E3 trailer? Are you disappointed about the game’s delay? Tell us what you think in the comments below, or on Google+, Facebook, or Twitter.
