Yooka-Laylee: 6 Big Reasons To Be Very Excited

6. The Original Banjo-Kazooie Alumni Are Making It

Playtonic is a new game developer, completely separate of Rare, founded by the industry veterans that worked for Rareware on Donkey Kong Country and the original Banjo Kazooie games. 

It’s a small team of seven, but remains a labour of love - and as Ubisoft regularly prove, too many cooks can spoil the game-broth. The chameleon (Yooka) and the bat (Laylee) were both designed and animated by Steve Mayles, the man who designed both Banjo and Kazooie, as well as the modern-day Donkey Kong that we all know and love. The original world designer from Banjo-Kazooie Steven Hurst is on board too.

Even the voices of both characters, Chris Sutherland, is in on the project (contributing to programming in the process) and fan-favourite composer Grant Kirkhope - who you can thank for all the music in Banjos Kazooie and Tooie - is providing the score alongside David Wise.

Of course this wouldn't be a true spiritual successor if it wasn’t being fronted by the original creators, and although this is a completely new game in appearance and name, they’ve stated that they want to emulate the feel of the original N64 games as much as possible; going back to what made the original franchise so much fun.