Nowadays, gaming is defined by shooters and gigantic RPGs...but that wasn't always the case. In the days of the Super Nintendo and original PlayStation, the industry was ruled by platformers: colorful, happy games about anthropomorphic animals bouncing through gigantic overworlds and collecting hundreds of tiny knick-knacks. It's a genre that, aside from Nintendo's Mario games, has nearly disappeared - but one team is trying to bring it back.
During the Golden Years of the platformer, there was one company that did it better than anyone else: Rareware. Donkey Kong Country, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Banjo-Kazooie - Rare was responsible for some of the best games in the genre. Unfortunately, Rare's buyout by Microsoft back in 2002 left the studio in a near unrecognizable state...and it seemed the like days of Rare's platforming adventures was over.
Enter Playtonic Games: a small, independently-run studio that was founded by the core team behind games like Banjo-Kazooie. Playtonic has made it perfectly clear that it wants to resurrect the 3D buddy-platformer, and thanks to Kickstarter, it will. The studio's first project, Yooka-Laylee, hit its crowdfunding goals earlier today - in less than an hour.
It's easy to see why the project was funded so quickly: yes, the characters, the animation and the world all look great, but there's been a huge desire throughout the gaming industry to return to the classic platformers of old. The only problem is that, for publishers, platformers don't necessarily make all that much money. Thankfully, platforms like Kickstarter remove the need for a more traditional publisher altogether, and instead lets the fans fund the games themselves.
At this point, however, funding should be the least of Playtonic's worries: the game blasted through its crowdfunding goals (roughly $265,000) less than 40 minutes after the project's Kickstarter page went live.
#YookaLaylee has hit its initial funding goal in less than 40 minutes! https://t.co/J96nC6PEwN
— Playtonic (@PlaytonicGames) May 1, 2015
One of the best parts about the project is that, comparatively speaking, it doesn't cost all that much to buy the game. Many crowdfunding projects are charging more and more for unfinished games, but a Steam version of Yooka-Laylee can be bought for roughly $15 (the console versions are slightly more expensive at around $23). There's a ton of bonuses on top of all that, like T-shirts, soundtracks and art books. But for those who don't have quite as much to spend, funding the project and getting something worthwhile aren't mutually exclusive.
From the looks of things, Yooka-Laylee could end up being one of the most successful Kickstarter projects in recent memory. The donations just keep coming: it's nearly impossible to include the project's funding here simply because the numbers keep climbing. Also, have you seen how cute this game is?
So, if you've been waiting for a return to the classic platformers of yore, Yooka-Laylee is your best bet. If you want to secure a copy early (and cheaply), you can head on over to the project's official Kickstarter page.
Yooka-Laylee is set for release sometime in October 2016.
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