Banjo-Kazooie Spiritual Successor Yooka-Laylee Revealed, Coming to Wii U eShop

[Bolt Strike]

So a few months ago ex-Rare developers formed a new studio called Playtonic so they could create a spiritual successor Banjo-Kazooie, gaining lots of attention from platformer fans (and rightfully so, seeing as we haven't seen any collection based platformers like Banjo-Kazooie in years). Today, they're finally starting to share information on this game.

The game's official title is Yooka-Laylee, and it stars a chameleon named Yooka and a bat named Laylee who play in a similar setup to their inspiration, with Laylee riding on Yooka's back. Also like their predecessors, Yooka can roll into enemies and Leylee can fly. You collect pages called Pagies which open up new worlds and can even expand existing ones, and the game emphasizes collectibles. The duo will also learn new moves over the course of the game.

They also confirmed that the game is coming to the Wii U eShop, and a Kickstarter is going up tomorrow where you can support the game for £10/$15 (the game itself can be comfortably supported without crowdfunding they say, but the money will help them expand the game with new features and other bonuses).

You can find more info here:
Playtonic's Project Ukulele Becomes Yooka-Laylee, Wii U Release Confirmed - Wii U eShop News @ Nintendo Life
First in-engine screenshots of Banjo-Kazooie spiritual successor • Eurogamer.net

Discuss.

EDIT: IGN posted a video showing off gameplay:

[video=youtube;RTXBjstzwNE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTXBjstzwNE[/video]

They mentioned some new moves for the characters, Yooka can use his tongue as a grappling hook and Laylee can use a sonar blast attack. As shown in the video, Yooka can also roll continuously unlike Banjo, which should make traversing the levels a lot easier. The game in general does feel faster than Banjo-Kazooie.

 

[Krash]

I like this. Fans have been wanting an actual successor to Banjo-Kazooie after the awful letdown that was Nuts And Bolts. The footage looks kind of static for the moment with a lot of unrefined movement, but it's still very early on. I'll donate to this. Can't wait to play it. Even if it's not up to par, it's still only 15 bucks.

 

[Bolt Strike]

Microsoft's handling of Banjo-Kazooie isn't the only reason we needed this game. 3D platformers, especially the open world collectathon platformers that we saw a lot of in 5th and 6th gen, are sorely lacking nowadays. All of the franchises in this genre either died out (Spyro, Jak and Daxter, Ty the Tasmanian Tiger) or moved away from that style (3D Mario, Donkey Kong, Banjo-Kazooie) and we haven't had a game of this style in 5-10 years (depending on whether or not you consider Mario Galaxy to be a collectathon). So the genre could definitely use a revival.

The game looks very good for an early build, it's a bit plain but the gameplay and level design look good so far. The gameplay does a good job of conveying its similarity to Banjo Kazooie while still providing its own unique gameplay elements, it retains some of Banjo and Kazooie's abilities but adds some new ones that fit the new characters.

 

[Bolt Strike]

Wow. The Kickstarter's already up and it's utterly smashed the target goal (and halfway through the stretch goals).

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/playtonic/yooka-laylee-a-3d-platformer-rare-vival

 

[Stratelier]

And by now they've smashed basically every stretch goal they set.

 

[Bolt Strike]

Yeah, I'm honestly amazed at how well the game is doing on Kickstarter. I mean, I know that we haven't had a proper collectathon game in a while, but I didn't expect it to be this popular.

 

[fidjnr]

Yooka-Laylee kickstarter project

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/playtonic/yooka-laylee-a-3d-platformer-rare-vival

 

[King Robert]

Oh gosh, I can't wait!