Playtonic Games got their start from a dream. Here are veteran game developers from Rare, the people who made games like Donkey Kong 64 and Banjo-Kazooie. Now, these developers are back at it, to make a new 3D platformer just like those Nintendo 64 classics.
Yooka-Laylee successfully raised over £2 million on Kickstarter, and Playtonic released the game on 2017 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC, as well as the now discontinued Amazon Luna.
However, the game failed to live up to the lofty expectations that older fans had about a return of the classic genre. Some of the reasons for this are debatable and can be considered subjective. Central to the debate was the question of whether that 5th console generation style of platformer doesn’t hold up for modern players.
But we can say the critical reception landed closer between mixed to average, than it could have hit the 9/10s and 10/10s that fans expected. Yooka-Laylee received MetaCritic scores of 73 on PC, 75 on Switch, 73 on Xbox One, and a dismal 68 on PlayStation 4.
In response to this, Playtonic Games didn’t return to 3D platformers with a Yooka-Laylee 2. Their next game, Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair, was a 2D side-scrolling platformer. This spinoff retained some story elements from the first game, but mainly felt like the studio getting back to basics.
Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair did better critically and commercially, but it took a little longer for Playtonic to come back with a new project. After years of patching and improving the original Yooka-Laylee, Playtonic announced a remaster to be called Yooka-Replaylee.
Yooka-Replaylee will exist to be the definitive version of the game, with Playtonic proverbially getting back to their groove, and learning enough about modern game development that they can better realize their original vision for it. Of course, the game is now being announced for current generation consoles, but it seems they’re leaning newer than you would expect.
They made this announcement on Twitter:
“As well as PC, Yooka-Replaylee WILL be on PS5, Xbox Series and… Nintendo (eye emoji)
Peep the latest trailer to get a look at some gorgeous 3D-platforming, new gameplay and beautiful ORCHESTRAL music!
Wishlist it now! Wishlist it everywheeeere!”
Because of the formatting on our site, we can’t include the emoji itself, but you can see in Playtonic Games’ other marketing that they refer to Nintendo’s platform simply as Nintendo eye emoji.
Obviously, this is Playtonic announcing Yooka-Replaylee for the Switch 2 without naming the Switch 2. Contrary to what you may have read elsewhere, this is not the first upcoming game announced for the Switch 2. That would actually be Pathea Games’ My Time At Evershine, and they named it as part of their crowdfund.
In any case, it looks like we are about to see a new trend, of games being announced or revealed for the Switch 2, before the Switch 2 is itself revealed. We know fans have been getting increasingly frustrated that Nintendo still hasn’t made the announcement as they hoped.
But if you remember far back enough, many fans were also sure about what Nintendo’s plans with the NX was, and there were also people certain that the NX would fail, all before the Switch was even revealed. So the fans have to admit that they don’t understand the industry as well as they think they do, and we’ll all just have to wait for Nintendo’s plans to play out.
In the meantime, you can watch Playtonic’s eye rolling trailer below.
