Yooka-Laylee, the adorable revival of the buddy-duo platformer, has big news. Not as big as the fact that they’re the fastest-funded gaming Kickstarter, but still pretty big.
Playtonic Games, the folks working on Yooka-Laylee, are teaming up with indie game label Team 17. That means Playtonic can focus on making the game even better, without worrying about all that business-y stuff. Team 17’s got plenty of experience in QA testing and publishing, so that should ultimately result in more time spent creating the game that backers deserve. This does not guarantee a physical release, even though Team 17’s got experience there, too.
It appears that some backers aren’t approving of this partnership, citing Team 17’s past shortcomings as reasons that Yooka-Laylee is doomed to follow the same path. There is no mention of Team 17 having a hand in the development of the game, and Playtonic seems pretty excited that they’ll be getting to devote more time to working on the game instead of filling out spreadsheets, which sounds like Team 17 is going to be working on those.
“From the very start we said we’d welcome only a partner that could genuinely improve the creation of our game, while respecting the independence and creative autonomy of our development team,” said Gavin Price, Creative Lead at Playtonic. That doesn’t sound like they’re planning to disappoint backers and sabotage their own project.
Yooka-Laylee is expected to launch in October 2016 on the PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Wii U, Linux, and Mac platforms.