Before Grant Kirkhope and his ex-Rare affiliates turned to Kickstarter for help, the developers were turned away from numerous publishers who deemed Yooka-Laylee and its attempt to reinvigorate a dormant genre to be a lost cause. How wrong they were. After cementing its place in history as the fastest video game project to reach $1 million on the crowd-funding platform, Playtonic Games’ platformer is a bona fide success, and the studio hosted a Reddit AMA over the weekend to give both fans and backers an update on the title itself.
Among Playtonic’s staffers, Creative Lead Gavin Price answered the majority of the community questions and addressed why the developer is yet to announce a retail version of Yooka-Laylee for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
“We would love to be able to do it at some point if we can, but for launch it would mean having to finish the game 2 months earlier in order to get the discs printed,” he said. “We want more time to make the game!”
Perhaps more so than most Kickstarter projects, Yooka-Laylee will have to shoulder its fair share of expectations given the creative talent on board. But if Playtonic is under any pressure, the team isn’t showing it. During the nascent stages of development, the team also noted that the titular characters went through various iterations as they attempted to render a pixelated pairing who could be just as memorable – if not more so – than Banjo and Kazooie.
“My initial idea was a tiger as they are great-looking animals, but he never got past the sketch phase. He was deemed a bit too much of a ‘hero’ when all of my past characters were more like underdogs. We even tried a witch and a broom with eyes at one point!”
Yooka-Laylee has now accumulated a staggering $1.8 million with 8 days still to go on its Kickstarter campaign. The platformer is due to launch in 2016.
