Yooka-Laylee

About

Yooka-Laylee is an upcoming platformer video game in development by the studio Playtonic Games. The project, run by former developers of the Banjo-Kazooie series, became the fastest video game to reach $1 million in pledges on Kickstarter in May 2015.

History

In 1998, the video game development company Rare released the game Banjo-Kazooie for the Nintendo 64.^[1] Several sequels for the game were subsequently released until 2008, when the final game Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts was released for the Xbox 360. In February 2015, several former Rare employees formed the video game studio PlaytonicGames and announced plans to develop a “spiritual successor” to Banjo-Kazooie. On February 16th, the @PlaytonicGames Twitter feed replied to YouTuber Jon Jafari that he would be voicing a character in the upcoming game (shown below).

On April 30th, Rare announced that the game would be titled Yooka-Laylee. On the following day, a Kickstarter^[3] campaign for the game was launched, which accumulated upwards of £1 million in funds in the first 24 hours, becoming the fastest video game in Kickstarter history to pass US$1 million. The game has an expected release date of October 2016.

JonTron Termination

In February of 2015, Playtonic invited famous YouTuber and notable fan JonTron to do some voice-acting for a minor role in the game. However, on March 23rd, 2017, Playtonic^[7] announced that they had removed JonTron’s voice acting following his recent controversial comments on race in his Destiny Debate.

Online Presence

The same day the game was announced, the /r/YookaLaylee^[5] subreddit was launched for discussions about the game. Also on April 30th, 2015, YouTuber GameXplain uploaded a video containing commentary about the game’s characters and gameplay (shown below).

Fan Art

As of May 2015, the keyword “Yooka-Laylee” yields over 270 search results on DeviantArt.^[6]

Reception

Early reviews of Yooka-Laylee were mixed. Some praised the game for its tone and faithful recreation of the Nintendo 64 aesthetic. The Escapist,^[8] in a 4.5/5 review, wrote that it was visually very pleasing and its humor was in line with its predecessor, Banjo-Kazooie. Still, others knocked it for its technical issues and dated gameplay. Polygon,^[9] in a 5.5/10 review, knocked it for its laborious challenges and “busy-work” feel. As of April 4th, 2017, the game has a score of 72/100 on Metacritic.^[10]