Hey folks!
It's BEEn a while! We wanted to share a quick update on the development progress of Yooka-Replaylee and what exactly you can expect from the full launch. We know you are eagerly waiting for the release date announcement and on that front the most we can share right now is: soon.
The Playtonic team are busy bees (pun intended) at the moment, QA'ing the game, discovering and fixing bugs, polishing things up and optimising the game to prep it for the upcoming platform submissions. We have some ways to go still but you will be pleased to hear that the game is content complete which means all the content we're planning to have in the game for launch is now in the game and boy is there a lot of it! Speaking of...
Reimagining Yooka-Replaylee has been a true labor of love - one that goes far beyond a simple upgrade. We've rebuilt and expanded the game from the ground up - building out the world with all-new content, tighter controls and mechanics and fresh surprises around every corner. We've enhanced the experience in ways we only dreamed of back in 2017. This IS the Yooka-Laylee we always wanted to make - finally brought to life with everything we've learned and everything you all have asked for. If you love the original, or missed it the first time, this is the one to play.
Here's a recap of just some of the new things you can expect from Yooka-Replaylee at launch:
Refined story – You will now experience the backstory of the beloved buddy-duo and how they find themselves in the adventure of the lifetime, gathering Pagies across all the storybook worlds.
Rextro's Arcade – The old minigames are no more! Instead you'll jump into the feet(?), paws(?) of Rextro the dinosaur and undertake brand-new isometric platforming challenges for collectible rewards. And speaking of collectibles...
New and More Collectibles – Yooka-Replaylee offers more than double the number of Pagies for players to discover, upping the number of 145 in the original game to 300 in Yooka-Replaylee. And that's not all! Quills now come in different colours and act as level-specific collectibles with more meaningful placements. The game also introduces two new collectibles in the forms of the Pagie Puzzle Pieces and Q.U.I.D.S with the latter being used to purchase tonics, cosmetics and hints for Pagie locations.
Tonics and Cosmetics – Tonics make their return offering old and new ways to either modify your gameplay or add a filter over your game. You'll also be able to dress up Yooka and Laylee in a large number of cosmetics!
Tracking and Navigation – Yooka-Replaylee introduces a brand-new map and collectibles tracker, making it easier for you to traverse the environments, track NPC and Pagie locations along with tracking their progress. We're also introducing a new character in the form of (book)Mark who acts as your warp point and guide in Yooka-Replaylee.
Challenges and Secrets – The number of different puzzle and platforming challenges is double that of Yooka-Laylee! There are loads of completely new secrets to uncover.
Bosses and New Enemies – All the bosses have been completely overhauled with new tactics required to defeat them! We have also entirely rebuilt all original enemies and introduced many new enemy types and variations!
All of this is topped off by gameplay and art overhauls make Yooka-Replaylee the ultimate way to experience the buddy-duo's very first adventure!
We've heard your feedback regarding the limited time PC demo that was available during Steam Next Fest in June and the performance issues people were encountering. Rest assured our team has been hard at work further optimising and improving the performance of Yooka-Replaylee with performance testing taking place on a wider set of PCs with different specs. We also want to assure that while the Steam Next Fest demo was not optimised to run on the Steam Deck, the full release is going to run on the system. Wahoo!
Yooka-Replaylee will launch on PC and consoles later this year!