Yooka-Laylee Flies to the Shelves in April!

Before I started blogging for MakeSandcastlesNotWar, I was busy writing blogposts for PRSSA.  I have written many posts for my school’s PR chapter and the majority of my posts revolve around the theme of entertainment.  One reason for writing blog content was to further my skills in the writing world.  Some of my work made it into the PRSSA blogpost page while others were just written for fun.

One of my writing works I did was on the announcement of Yooka-Laylee being funded on Kickstarter.  Yooka-Laylee was known as a “3D Platformer Rare-vival!” series that was created by Playtonic Games.   The creative talents behind Donkey Kong Country and Banjo-Kazooie worked to create a new platform adventure game featuring Yooka the chameleon and Laylee as a bat.  It featured a dream soundtrack that was composed by gaming music geniuses Grant Kirkhope and David Wise.  Grant Kirkhope is known for composing soundtracks for Banjo-Kazooie, Donkey Kong 64, Banjo-Tooie, and Goldeneye 007.  David Wise is most famous for composing the music score for the Donkey Kong Country trilogy series for the Super Nintendo.

The game eventually hit their pledged goal of £175,000, being backed by over 73,000 users.  This game did so good in Kickstarter that they raised $1,000,000 in only 6 hours!  It was one of the most funded games and broke records on Kickstarter.  It’s been a more than a year since Yooka-Laylee broke records on Kickstarter and now we’re finally getting release date!

Playtonics Games announced that the game will launch on April 11^th, 2017.  Yooka Laylee will be released for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Mac, Linux, and Steam.  One minor drawback to be aware of is that the Wii U version is canceled and will instead be released for the Nintendo Switch.  Backers who asked for the Wii U version could either choose another version of the game or wait until the Nintendo Switch version is released.  Regardless of the drawback, it is exciting to see that Yooka-Laylee will be released in Spring 2017!

I am so pumped to get this game next year!  Last year I watched the trailers in the Kickstarter campaign and it looked like an incredible game.  Banjo-Kazooie was one of my all-time favorite games of N64.  This was one of those games I spent countless hours wandering around each world, collecting Jiggys and musical notes along the way.  It was so fun and adventurous that I couldn’t put down the controller, knowing that I was leaving this beautiful gaming world.

Platformer-collecting games were a big trend in the late 90s-early 2000s in the video game industry.  Titles like Banjo-Tooie and Donkey Kong 64 took gamers into a big world that contained lots of collectibles to find.  These collectibles were essential for unlocking a new level or other secret content within the game.  It’s hard to find good platformer-collective games, but Yooka-Laylee is bringing that trend back within their gaming mechanic.

Look out for Yooka-Laylee when it hits the shelves on April 11^th!