Playtonic’s Yooka and Laylee will have species-specific abilities

UK developer Playtonic, which is primarily comprised of former Rare developers, is currently sitting on more than $2.5 million of Kickstarter investments to spend developing Yooka-Laylee, a spiritual successor to Rare’s Banjo-Kazooie series. A portion of that money will go towards funding the development of Yooka and Laylee’s move sets, which Playtonic says will make sense for each of the animals.

“As much as I love Banjo, he never did anything that said ‘I’m a bear’,” Studio and Game Director Gavin Price recently told Official PlayStation Magazine. “He was basically a man in a bear costume!”

That’s one area in which Yooka-Laylee will differ from its progenitor. “We wanted them to stand out on their own,” Price continued. “The bat’s going to be the crazier, cheekier one, and the chameleon’s more sensible.”

As an example, he mentioned that Yooka will have some of the changing camouflage abilities that real chameleons have. Playtonic is approaching this by making Yooka’s textures change depending on what he eats in the game, so eating a large creature in a mountainous area might allow the character to take on the appearance and properties of a rock.

Source: GamesRadar+