Yooka-Laylee

Banjo-Kazooie, the 1998 bear and bird 3D platformer, is held in high regard by fans of the genre. It represents developer Rare at its apex, delivering gameplay, worlds, and characters rivaling those of Nintendo's in terms of fun and charm. Rare has since moved on from the cartoonish platformers of its Nintendo 64 days, but a handful of its former employees did not. We spoke with developer Playtonic's studio head/creative lead Gavin Price, programmer Chris Sutherland (who provided the voice for both Banjo and Kazooie), and writer Andy Robinson – all former Rare folks with ties to Banjo-Kazooie – about how a colorful throwback platformer like Yooka-Laylee can exist in 2016.

Yooka-Laylee is the product of those former Rare employees' appreciation of Banjo-Kazooie, as well as the investment of about 73,000 fans. The game was funded on Kickstarter in June of 2015 and was pitched as a "Rare-vival." It's an unapologetic Banjo-Kazooie spiritual successor, complete with a dual-protagonist, plenty of jumping, and lots of collectibles. "It's really important to us that we capture the 'look and feel' of that era, while continuing to innovate and bring core gameplay up to date," Price says. "We're evoking classic games with stuff like our old-school UI, which intentionally uses a lot of custom 2D sprites instead of 3D models, and the iconic 'gibberish' character voices, which our composer Grant Kirkhope and lead programmer Chris Sutherland have recreated after originally birthing them for Banjo-Kazooie."

The game stars a chameleon and a bat, Yooka and Laylee, respectively. When Playtonic started to plan for the game, it tried out a few different combos before landing on this duo. It tried a tiger, but felt it was too empowering. "We felt that animal didn't quite fit the 'underdog' archetype we were aiming for with our lead protagonist," Price says. The team even considered an insect as a partner, but decided on a chameleon and bat because of the myriad camouflage, sonar, and tongue abilities the two could use in tandem.

Yooka, the chameleon, can use his tongue to eat objects and absorb their properties, or use it as a grappling hook for platforming. Laylee, the bat, sits on Yooka's head and can pick him up for flight-assisted jumps, and use her sonar to stun enemies and smash objects.

Crafting the controls was Playtonic's top priority, even before it settled on designs. "The very first thing we created was a controllable character – we did that even before we knew what the characters were, so we had no 3D models at all," Sutherland says. "We started with a cube, and made it move and jump around until it felt fun. We knew that if it felt fun to control a cube it would be even better when it came to controlling an adventuring duo."

Control in 3D platformers is one element of the genre that has aged well, but one glaring aspect of the genre has not: rampant item collecting. "We spent a lot of time thinking about collectibles and how we could capture the best bits of the so called, collectathon games of the past while avoiding their occasional bad bits," Sutherland says.

"With Yooka-Laylee we've deliberately put gameplay progression at the core of each collectible type," Price says. Butterfly energy, for example, can be simply picked up or eaten to either refill health or fill a power meter connected to a special move. "This allows us to create some really interesting platforming puzzles, while avoiding the tedium of having to juggle five different collectible types to power your moves," Price says. "We also employ the guy responsible for Donkey Kong 64's myriad collectibles, so we just used him as a barometer of what to avoid," he adds in jest.

Sutherland says modern platformers are linear, and he wants Yooka-Laylee to represent the more open worlds of the past, referencing Super Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie as examples. "We've put player choice at the core of Yooka-Laylee," he says, citing an ability to purchase new abilities in any order and expandable worlds. "It empowers players to explore environments at their own pace."

Kickstarter projects have had a few rocky releases, notably games like Mighty No. 9. Yooka-Laylee is in a similar boat as the Mega Man successor, as both feature the original creators of a beloved, but neglected franchise. When asked about avoiding Mighty No. 9's pitfalls, Playtonic made clear its priorities. "We've been focusing 100-percent on our own game development since our Kickstarter ended," Price says. "Our backers and fans have been really great to us and now we're determined to repay them with a great game. That's why we chose to delay our release by a few months. We could've hit the projected October release, but ultimately we wanted to spend more time polishing the game to deliver our fans the quality experience they expect."

Yooka-Laylee is a platform adventure that takes two friends on an exciting journey. An evil corporation creates a machine that collects all the books in the world. They do this only for the sake of finding “The One” book, a magical compilation found in the possession of the two friends. Eventually, the book is taken and the girlfriends are forced to divert their vacation and chase the machine into the company's main office center. Travel through 5 stories to collect pages for the damaged book of magic. Explore a variety of fantasy worlds, use each girlfriend's specialties to progress through the Yooka-Laylee story.

Game Pros:

• Puzzles in the levels won't make you bored
• Find clues in each world