Ludography
67/100
Players108 ratings
70/100
Critics22 reviews

Where to get it

Yooka-Laylee cover

2017 · Playtonic · Platformer · Adventure

Yooka-Laylee

Explore huge, beautiful worlds, meet (and beat) an unforgettable cast of characters and horde a vault-load of shiny collectibles as buddy-duo Yooka (the green one) and Laylee (the wisecracking bat with the big nose) embark on an epic adventure to thwart corporate creep Capital B and his devious scheme to absorb all the world’s books… and convert them into pure profit!

Released
11 April 2017
Platforms
LinuxNintendo SwitchPlayStation 4Wii UWindowsXbox OnemacOS
Genres
PlatformerAdventureIndie
Developers
Playtonic
Publishers
Team17
Modes
Co-opLocal multiplayerMultiplayerSingle-player
Perspective
Third person
Themes
ActionFantasyOpen world
Engine
Unity, Wwise

About

Yooka-Laylee is a 2017 platform game developed by British developer Playtonic Games and published by Team17. Developed by a group of former key personnel from Rare, Yooka-Laylee is a spiritual successor to the Banjo-Kazooie series. The game follows chameleon Yooka and bat Laylee on their quest to retrieve a magical book from an evil corporation.

After years of planning to develop a new game, Playtonic Games initiated a Kickstarter campaign that attracted significant media coverage and raised a record-breaking sum of over £2 million. It was released for Linux, macOS, PlayStation 4, Windows and Xbox One in April 2017, Nintendo Switch in December 2017 and Amazon Luna in October 2020.

Keywords

  • 3d
  • animal protagonist
  • steam
  • crowdfunding - kickstarter
  • crowdfunding
  • steam achievements
  • digital distribution
  • single-player only
  • anthropomorphism
  • dualshock 4 support for pc
  • protagonist's name in the title
  • windows store

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

Yooka-Laylee is a platform game played from a third-person perspective. The gameplay is similar to that of games in the Banjo-Kazooie and Chameleon Twist 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, and Laylee, a female bat.

Yooka and Laylee explore worlds contained within magical books and complete challenges to collect "Pagies": golden book pages that act as currency. Players can use their Pagies to either unlock worlds or expand those which have already been unlocked. The characters share one health meter, but unlike the game's spiritual predecessor, they have unlimited lives; should they die from losing all health or falling into a bottomless pit, they will respawn at a checkpoint.

Story

At the Hivory Towers corporation, CEO Capital B and his assistant Dr. Quack use a machine to suck up all the books in the world with the intention of obtaining a magical book called the "One Book" in order to rewrite the universe. Meanwhile, on Shipwreck Creek, Yooka and Laylee, who have the One Book, watch as the book gets sucked into Hivory Towers with its pages escaping. The two venture to Hivory Towers to reclaim the book.

Traversing through Hivory Towers, Yooka and Laylee explore five different worlds to collect the One Book's Pagies. E. and that Dr. 's supervisor.

Development

In September 2012, a group of former Rare employees attempted to create a spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie. They joined under the Twitter handle Mingy Jongo, the name of a boss from the second Banjo game, Banjo-Tooie, with cooperation from ex-Rare designers, including composer Grant Kirkhope. In December 2014, the account was left abandoned, and the project confirmed to be on indefinite hiatus by Kirkhope in a Reddit AMA; however, in August a video game company named Playtonic Games was incorporated by this group, and the account was revived under the name of its new company. Playtonic announced that they were planning a spiritual successor to the Banjo-Kazooie franchise titled Yooka-Laylee, formerly codenamed Project Ukulele.

At the start of development, six people were involved. To finance the game, the development team decided to use fundraising website Kickstarter to acquire £175,000 to start production. The campaign attracted attention and the goal was reached within 40 minutes, a record on the platform. Later the campaign made another record for the fastest game to get US$1,000,000 pledged in the history of the platform.

Reception

Yooka-Laylee received "mixed or average" reviews on the PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, while on the Nintendo Switch it received "generally favourable" reviews, according to review aggregator Metacritic. Fellow review aggregator OpenCritic assessed that the game received fair approval, being recommended by 57% of critics. 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. 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, with many of those backers being given Steam codes instead of Switch codes.

K. all-formats chart in its first week as well as the number 2 spot in the Australian sales charts in its first week. By 24 November 2018, the game has sold over 1 million copies.

Releases by platformdates and regions as published

PlatformReleasedRegions
Wii UCancelled31 December 2016Worldwide
Xbox One11 April 2017Worldwide · North America 11 April 2017
macOS11 April 2017Worldwide
PlayStation 411 April 2017Worldwide
Windows11 April 2017Worldwide
Linux11 April 2017Worldwide
Nintendo Switch14 December 2017North America · Japan 14 June 2018

Editions and related releases

Included in
Yooka-Laylee: Buddy Duo Pack
Expanded editions
Yooka-Replaylee

Games like this

Collections8 collections

Years

Licensing

Development status

Description adapted from its source, CC BY-SA 4.0.