Yooka-Laylee (NSP, XCI) ROM + v1.2.0 Update

Yooka-Laylee is a platform game published by Team17 in 2017 for Windows, macOS, Linux, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, followed by a version for Amazon Luna in October 2020. Developed by Playtonic Games, a group of former key personnel from Rare, Yooka-Laylee is a spiritual successor to the Banjo-Kazooie series released for the Nintendo 64 nearly 20 years prior.

After years of planning to develop a new game, Playtonic Games initiated a Kickstarter campaign that attracted significant media coverage and raised a record-breaking sum of over £2 million. The game follows chameleon Yooka and bat Laylee on their quest to retrieve a magical book from an evil corporation.

Yooka-Laylee received mixed reviews, with critics divided on whether emulating its predecessors was enough to make it a successful game, or whether it was purely trying to capitalize on nostalgia. While most critics agreed that it captured the essence of earlier platformers, they also pointed out technical shortcomings and outdated gameplay. A spin-off, Yooka-Laylee, and the Impossible Lair, was released on October 8, 2019, and a sequel to the original game is currently in development.

GAMEPLAY

Yooka-Laylee is a platform game played from a third-person perspective. The gameplay is similar to that of games in the Banjo-Kazooie and Chameleon Twist series. The player controls two characters that work together to explore their environment, collect items, solve puzzles, and defeat enemies. The playable characters are Yooka, a male chameleon, and Laylee, a female bat.

During their adventures, Yooka and Laylee explore worlds contained within magical books and complete challenges to collect “Pagies”: golden book pages that act as the main currency in the game. Players can use their Pagies to either unlock new worlds or expand those which have already been unlocked. The characters share one health meter, but unlike the game’s spiritual predecessor, they have unlimited lives; should they die from losing all health or falling into a bottomless pit, they will respawn at a checkpoint.

Yooka and Laylee can learn a variety of abilities, including “sonar blasting”, “tongue whipping”, “sky soaring”, eating berries for temporary powers such as fire breath, and a “fart bubble” for breathing underwater. Most of these abilities use a power meter that is filled by collecting butterflies (which can be eaten instead to restore health).

Each new ability is earned by collecting enough quills to purchase them from Trowzer, a snake salesman who wears pants. Collectibles by the name of Mollycools are given to Dr. Puzz, an octopus scientist, to give Yooka and Laylee various transformations that grant them exclusive abilities.

Play Tonics are RPG-style ability modifiers that are purchased from Vendi, a living vending machine, and equipped to modify or enhance players’ ability stats. Also found in the levels are Ghost Writers, collectible characters who provide various challenges like catching or fighting them, and Play Tokens, which are used to play the secret arcade games that are found once per level, hosted by a low-polygon tyrannosaurus rex named Rextro Sixtyfourus.

There are several “quiz show challenges”, similar to the Banjo-Kazooie games. Furthermore, there is another character named Kartos, a sentient mine cart who allows “mine cart” sequences, similar to those of Donkey Kong Country and Donkey Kong 64. The game features a local cooperative multiplayer mode for two players. There is also a 2–4 player adversarial local multiplayer mode, with eight different minigames. The game also features an optional “64-bit” mode, which imitates the graphical appearance of Nintendo 64 games.

PLOT

After their precious book, later revealed to be the magical “One Book”, is sucked up by the evil Hivory Towers Corporation, Yooka, and Laylee enter their headquarters to retrieve their property. Fighting their way through the vast company grounds and the levels they contain, they eventually manage to reassemble the book’s lost pages. In a final fight against the CEO Capital B, they manage to defeat him and reclaim the One Book. Yooka and Laylee proceed to invite everyone from their grand adventure for a party at Shipwreck Creek, and Laylee decides to lock the book up in a safe so that it appreciates. During the credits, it is revealed that Hivory Towers is part of the bigger evil organization V.I.L.E., which still targets the book.