Yooka-Laylee is proof that combining industry veterans of an iconic development studio with a genre that brings to mind the late '90s is a tonic for success. From that laboured bit of wordplay we segway to Playtonic Games, which has quickly turned from a start-up of excellent developers into a significant Kickstarter success story.
Having cleared all of its stretch goals within 24 hours, the studio has been busy adding new goals to keep backers interested - we've already had an N64 'Shader Mode' cleared over the weekend, in addition to a developer commentary and walkthrough.
Another goal has now been added, crystallising the team's desire for its fantastic soundtrack - composed by the likes of David Wise and Grant Kirkhope - to be fully orchestrated, pegging that at £1.5 million. At the time of writing the campaign is already beyond £1.35 million with 42 days remaining, so it'll be interesting to see just how high it goes.
Finally, apparently all of our puns on Playtonic Games' previous employers are rather annoying. We do apologise, but please understand, this is a somewhat rare scenario.
For more dodgy Rare wordplay, don't forget to check out our first impressions of Yooka-Laylee and our behind the scenes interview with Playtonic Games.
Comments 30
Looking forward to this!
Sure, they have the money now, but can they really fulfil all these promises in a year of development?!
@ThomasBW84 and how would you like your steak done sir?
@Dazza Oh, well done sir.
No doubt this stretch goal will be smashed in no time and though I was hoping for an old school Banjo Kazooie style soundtrack as long as it keeps to the roots of what makes it great I am sure I will be happy with it, and heck with David Wise and Grant Kirkhope on the job I have no reason to doubt that it will be amazing.
This is one of the most awesome projects I've seen. If funds continue to soar, I could see this on the fast track to becoming a AAA blockbuster title.
again, can't wait
since this new stretch goal funding has practically stopped which is annoying because the orchestrated sound track would be epic
@abe_hikura According to Kicktraq, it's trending at 7337% funding. However, it's indeed possible that the majority of interested parties have already cast their ballot. And I have seen KS campains actually cancel pledges prior to finish, often cancelling stretch goals in the process.
Yes, that pun stopped being Rare a long time ago. Tom.
And I still need to pledge for this one. It would be nice to have both 64 and orchestra versions of each song, actually.
Wow, this is going to be great! I'm genuinely interested now! 😄
@StarDust4Ever Actually once a goal is met, you can't cancel unless asking the project creators first.
How about a stretch goal to change the bats ugly no nose. Now I wait for the nerds to bash.
I can't be the only one that clicked on this thinking the new stretch goal was to add Yooka-Laylee to Smash.
@TingLz Not true. I have seen instances where a stretch goal was met, then a bunch of blokes canceled their bids reducing the total causing the stretch goal not to happen. This happened with the SNES 4-in-1 homebrew by Piko. The stretch goal at 125% or 150% or something was to add a 5th game.
A bunch of disgruntled fanboys started boycotting the project and some people pulled their bids and the stretch goal was not met. The 5th game basically became vaporware once the Kickstarter fell below the stretch goal right before closing. You can still get the 4-in-1 at Piko Interactive, but the rumored 5th game is nowhere available.
@Snivy102 You're not, my heart skipped a beat when I read the headline. Bad NL. Bad.
@EverythingAmiibo
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/may/05/banjo-kazooie-successor-yooka-laylee-1m-kickstarter
"From here, according to Price, it’s all going to be about adding polish rather than major new features. One thing we’ve seen from several high-profile Kickstarter projects is the addition of ambitious new features, which slow down development and ratchet up costs."
"We’re going to try to do the opposite of what a lot of people have done on Kickstarter – if a stretch-goal feature is vital to the game, then why wasn’t it in there to begin with?"
In other words, they set their stretch goals with that development time in mind. No need to worry
Very excited about this. I've never spent this much on a digital game before to be honest, but it's cool to feel like you're sort of part of the bigger picture of it all.
Was the development time based on the original goal of £175,000? Also that are only ~£125,000 away from 1.5million. A physical release goal would be nice as well.
This stretch goal is AWESOME! I reeeeeeally want this to happen, especially considering I'll be getting the soundtrack, as well.
@EverythingAmiibo I believe they can. Development now is not as notoriously difficult as on the N64, a machine that developers had to program their own custom microcode and debugging for if they wanted to make use of it as the code Nintendo shipped on their devkits was bodged and pretty much nigh on useless.
Plus they have years of experience built up now in 3D gaming!
@Tazcat2011 I'm surprised that wasn't an option already.
@whodatninja I imagine it's costly, I have no idea how much packaging/disk printing on a per unit basis is so I'm just speculating. I would still like it though, I like have having physical media whenever possible.
@Tazcat2011 Well the PC release is getting a disc release, so I would hope for a console release as well... They should have the money now!
@EverythingAmiibo I was wondering the same thing, I would rather them do it right and take two years if necessary instead of rushing it and making a crappy game
@liveswired well, that also makes sense because unity hopefully is a very stable and high frame rate platform for the Wii U, I hope
Several of the the higher backers will most likely back out near the end of the campaign- It is common to set placeholders to raise the total higher, reaching stretch goals faster. (Or just trolling to keep high demand spots closed until the last minute.). We may lose up to £100k, but at this rate we should safely clear the £1.5 million mark. There just needs to be another surge near the end of the project and during the middle of the project, to maintain interest and momentum.
Many of the higher profile developers are taking 2-3 years to complete Kickstarter projects, depending on the size of the project. I don't think we need to worry about YooLay being rushed, these guys know what they're doing.
@TeslaChippie It depends, most of the more experienced developers have not fallen prey to feature creep. It has happened to a few prolific developers who didn't know how to manage their resources (and weren't wise enough to heed some second and third opinions), and many inexperienced developers, but that is not indicative of the platform's reliability at large. It's an untraditional platform, so it gets a lot of flak that the traditional platforms don't. (Even though the traditional success rates are not any higher.)
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