Yooka-Laylee developer Playtonic turns six this year – and is marking the occasion by showing off a brand-new logo and by launching a new publishing label which aims to bring some of the world's best Indie games to market.
Playtonic Friends is the name of the new label, and it already has three partners involved – Bedfordshire-based Awe Interactive, New York studio Fabraz and international outfit okidokico.
Awe created BPM: Bullets Per Minute, which has previously been mooted for release on Switch, while Fabraz will be famous with Switch owners for Slime-san. Meanwhile, okidokico is the outfit behind the smartphone-based OK Golf series, and is spread across Montreal, Geneva and Tokyo.
Gavin Price, Playtonic CEO, had this to say:
The knowledge that we were coming up to our sixth birthday triggered lots of typical Teams calls amongst the staff here at Playtonic. Should we all don party hats and video chat together? Should we have a few mocktails, whip out the Karaoke and belt out our best Beyoncé? Or should we launch a new publishing label designed to bring the best games from indie studios the world over to market? Given I had a bit of scratchy throat that evening - and that the establishment of Playtonic Friends had been brewing as a serious ambition for a while - we went with that.
Steph Darrah, Business Development Manager at Playtonic, added:
While everyone at Playtonic has dreams of recreating Scrooge McDuck splashing around in his pool of cold, hard cash, in reality our motivation for setting up Playtonic Friends was to take what we’ve learned about producing & releasing video games and use it to aid developers of a like mind looking for a fruitful route to market. That said, a yacht moored on the shores of Monte Carlo would be nice.
The games to be published via Playtonic Friends will soon be revealed, but this doesn't mean that Playtonic itself is stepping back from development; according to Price, the studio has more titles in development than ever before, and is working on a "top secret" game involving Capital B, the antagonist of the Yooka-Laylee series.
Comments 21
Cool, so not unlike Yacht Club Games and Eden Pixels helping with the publication of games by other indie developers.
So the only difference is that playtonic has friends now?
Well, at least those annoying rumours about Microsoft buying them out can end... but they probably won’t.
Should be interesting. I hope they publish a nice little catalog of quality games. And I'm excited to see what they develop themselves after how awesome Impossible Lair was.
Good for them
Hope they send publish their next yooka laylee games so we don't have to deal with limited run games like we did with the first one!
Well their games were kind of crap so I guess this is a good move.
Can't say I'm a huge fan of the new logo, but I'm looking forward to what comes of this - hopefully including some more Yooka-Laylee.
WWCS?
(What would Conker Say?)
So they hyped an announcement that ended up being pretty much nothing.
I mean.... Good for them. But I would prefer if they announce stuff like this without giving us a date to look forward too.
Does anyone have a source for the statement about a Capital B game?
Edit: they mentioned it in the video.
Hope to see a new ip
Really would have preferred that after 6yrs they announced that Nintendo had taken them under their wing and handed them a new ip to work on!
Logo still needs work imho, it's hard to recognize the flask if you see for the 1st time. Drop the drop shadow.
This is a great step. I assume future Playtonic games will be published through this venture over Team17? A large step in the right direction if so, I always sensed Team17 were the one hair in the soup for Playtonic (their interference in the JonTron "scandal," for example). Hoping they will publish their games physicically out of the gate rather than through Limited Run. It is so great to see Playtonic grow.
Nintendo needs to partner with these guys to do Donkey Kong Country 1, 2 and 3 HD remakes
@FragRed GOOD GRIEF! I’m just now finding out about this! What would Microsoft do with them? They already have Rare.
@outsider83 Fill that void of family friendly games they say they’re missing. Problem is, Xbox has never been known for these kinds of games and I doubt they can change that.
@FragRed @FragRed That’s what I had in mind when I read your comment. Did they have any Rare style games (the ones their famous for) on the Xbox One? I can’t remember anything like that since the 360 with Nut’s and Bolts. Prior to that, Oddworld, Blinx, Conker, Psychonauts(sp?). All on the original Xbox, if I’m not mistaken.
@outsider83 They did try with Super Lucky’s Tale. However they revealed it at E3 2017, just when everyone’s eyes are on Nintendo and Mario Odyssey. Then it released the month after Odyssey and so all reviews judged it based on their thoughts of Odyssey and I think sales kinda tanked, not helped by being an Xbox exclusive either.
@FragRed now that you have mentioned it, I was in that camp of judging that game, based on Odyssey. I did not play Odyssey until early last year. I remember looking at Lucky Tales, in a quest to continue to get my 3D platform fix. It didn’t look impressive. I ended up getting Yooka-Laylee, only because of who was behind it and I enjoyed the demo for the sequel. What I played felt ok. I had more fun with the demo for the sequel. I kind of want to skip playing the first game and go right into the sequel, but I didn’t know any of the characters! 😂
Tap here to load 21 comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...