Playtonic’s spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie, Yooka-Laylee, will be published by Team17, it has been announced.
A huge Kickstarter success, Yooka-Laylee is a platformer being developed by a team of former Rare staff, including some of the creative talent behind the Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong Country games.
Team17, itself an independent developer best known for the Worms series, moved into publishing recently, providing localisation, QA, marketing, certification and “other business matters” to fellow indies. Previous games published by Team17 include The Escapists and LA Cops.
“Team17 has significant experience in making the most of releasing a game,” Playtonic’s creative lead and studio head, Gavin Price, told MCV.
“Personally I feel it would be a great shame if after our great Kickstarter success, we delivered on our promise of a great game and then it underperformed sales-wise because we didn’t have the knowledge, or made a mistake in the way we released or marketed the game.”
“Thanks to our Kickstarter backers, we’re on a really positive trajectory and Team17 is acting like a booster for us on top of that by handling non-game dev tasks.”
Team17 managing director Debbie Bestwick added that Yooka-Layla may also be coming to disc, thanks to partnership.
“There is a large demand for a physical game,” said Bestwick. “Playtonic took the decision not to include this in the Kickstarter for the very reason that it could impact on development and at the time of their Kickstarter it would have been a big risk. Team17 has lots of experience in physical and will share ideas and opportunities with Playtonic - so absolutely we will be looking into it.”
Yooka-Laylee is expected to release in October 2016 on Xbox One, PS4, Wii U and PC.