A few years ago, a group of veteran game developers, many of whom had worked on the Banjo-Kazooie games in the 90s, decided to make their own studio to create a spiritual successor to the beloved 3D platformers. The result was Playtonic Games releasing Yooka-Laylee in 2017, and now these characters are returning for a new game.
Playtonic Games and publisher Team 17 recently announced in a press release that the next game in the series is called Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair and it will be out later this year. Before you get upset over the missed opportunity of calling the game Twoka-Laylee (or Tooka-Laylee, I guess, since Banjo-Tooie spells “two” wrong), it’s worth noting that The Impossible Lair exists in the same universe as the first game, but its different gameplay make it hard to call it a direct sequel. The Impossible Lair takes on a more 2.5D approach to the world of Yooka-Laylee, throwing the characters into side-scrolling levels with a top-down overworld to explore in between them, rather than the fully 3D world of the first game. Both the overworld and levels themselves will have plenty of puzzles to solve. Also, both David Wise and Grant Kirkhope will be returning to compose the game’s soundtrack.
Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair is planned for release in 2019 for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. More about the game will be revealed during E3.
