Several ideas for games featuring characters in the Yooka-Laylee universe are floating around at the studio.
Yooka-Laylee developers Playtonic have been teasing their next game for some time now, but the most recent big announcement they made was not a new game, but the opening of Playtonic Friends, a new publishing label dedicated to supporting indie developers around the industry. But fans of their work need not worry- it seems they’re more focused than ever on delivering new games.
Speaking in an interview with Eurogamer, Playtonic boss Gavin Price gave assurances that the new publishing label will function with a team that’s separate from Playtonic’s development staff. In fact, the studio has actually been staffing up as it continues working on its upcoming projects- and “multiple” games seem to be in the works at the same time.
“We’re actually going to be increasing our development size, purely focused on achieving new games in the Yooka-Laylee universe,” Price said. “For the first time in history there’s multiple things on the go.”
When asked about what things Playtonic in the works as far as new games are concerned, Price hinted that there’s scope for a lot of games featuring characters from the Yooka-Laylee universe that would be “crowd-pleasers” for fans of the series. He then want on to talk about two ideas in particular that the development team is excited to work on.
“There’s always going to some things which I’d say are a natural crowd-pleaser for our fans, but it’d also be great to start surprising them with something unexpected as well,” he said.
“One game we’re thinking about doing we’re like, wow, this game would be great to have announced two years before launch and within that two years there’s actually scope to keep doing lots and lots of cool surprises within those two years. The fact it might be known about for a while could be right.
“And then there’s another game which is just like ‘wow, it would be great if we could just say nothing, and then one day push a launch button… tada!’ It could totally spectacularly backfire, you just never know.”
Whatever it is, here’s hoping their next project is announced soon. While the first Yooka-Laylee was a rather inconsistent experience in spite of the clear homage it paid to the Banjo-Kazooie games, its follow-up, Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair, was a much better platformer, owing more of a likeness to Rare’s 2D sidescrolling Donkey Kong Country titles.
We’ll keep you updated as and when new details come our way, so stay tuned.
