Yooka-Laylee

Yooka-Laylee is the result of the ambitious project, through the efforts of both the video game community and veteran game developers, to "revive" a video game genre which has been dormant since the end of the 90s with a modern take on it collectible-based 3D platformer. When first announced, by its title alone it was possible to guess the direction the newly founded Playtonic Games wanted to take with their first game. Yooka-Laylee is a play of words with "ukulele". The reference to music instruments and the title formatting makes it easy to associate with Banjo-Kazooie, the main source of inspiration. Despite being a new company, Playtonic is actually a group primarily formed by game industry veterans, ex-Rare members who worked in the Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong games from 1994 to 2001. The game received a positive reception from the community, given the success of its funding raiser. Fans of collectible platformers and curious players helped the funding of a type of game which hasn't been relevant for some time. The developers behind the game had a strong background on platformer games, some of those being considered all-time favorites by many to this day. This game had the perfect formula and the horizon was bright... hypothetically. The game was an experiment, and as an experiment it was prone to unforeseen results. Yooka-Laylee has plenty of inconsistencies and bad decisions which previous games from the same genre and developers did not suffer from, despite having everything to be a worthy homage to the lost platformer style.

Since it's unfeasible to write down a full rundown of all problems (some of them are small details and even personal nitpicky), I will dissert about the major points which make the game not as great as it could be. It's unfortunate that the game's flaws sum as you play, so the more you progress, more problems you notice, worsening the whole experience. It's the inverse of the popular "it becomes good after 10 hours" line of thought, leaving a bitter taste for those who expect the game to be more enjoyable or "fix itself" over time.

Firstly, the level design. Level design is a factor of great importance for platformer games. It's the field of experimentation and application of the mechanics and laws of the game world and characters through the player's control and actions. It sets the progression and provides the feedback to the player regarding their pace, skills and overall ability to deal with the platforming. In collectible-based platformers, there is an extra peculiarity. The level should be able to apply the game's collectibles within the level design while maintaining all the previously mentioned aspects intact and working. In Yooka-Laylee there are five worlds to explore, a lower number of worlds when comparing to Banjo-Kazooie games, Donkey Kong 64, Super Mario 64 [スーパーマリオ64] and Super Mario Sunshine [スーパーマリオサンシャイン]. I selected these games specifically since they are also collectible-based (at varying degrees) platformers, and because I will make some comparisons of aspects found in Yooka-Laylee to these games, pointing out their differences and similarities. Going back to the five worlds, while the apparent low number, these worlds are bigger than most from other 3D platformer games. A key feature in Yooka-Laylee is that each world is expandable after acquiring the necessary number of collectibles, and it's in this very feature where a major flaw resides, directly affecting the level design in Yooka-Laylee. When you first arrive at a new world, you are presented with an area to interact with, and bonus areas and content appear after expanding the world. This sounds like a nice concept when written down. If the player is enjoying the minor version of world, they will surely enjoy even more the world once it's expanded, as the options of things to do and see will increase. The first world, Tribalstack Tropics, is a jungle/ruins-themed world, a popular and common choice of theme for first world of platformer games. The initial area pre-expansion is a big round chunk of land, with a nice presentation and plenty to interact and collect in a substantial level from the get-go. After the expansion, big vertical temple ruins structures appear on the outer boundaries of the land, doubling (or even tripling) the amount of territory to explore. This is the only world in the game where I appreciated the concept of world expansion, and later I would realize that was the only part the developers managed to correctly apply the feature. The problem lies in the way the idea was implemented and how each world was designed in pre-expansion form. The second world, Glitterglaze Glacier, opens a new area in its expanded form, the Ice Castle, which you can reach in the pre-expansion version only to bump into its closed locked doors. Capital Cashino, the fourth world, has some new attractions and appendages to its big rectangular single room world. The third world and fifth world, Moodymaze Marsh and Galleon Galaxy, are inherently poorly designed given their linear exploration. These worlds are groups of "corridor" islands floating on seas that your character cannot touch, those being the swamp and poison "space water", respectively. The before and after expansion versions are similar, the only difference being that more mini-islands appear after expanding, though the pre-expansion version of Galleon Galaxy is so barren and empty to the point of barely having anything to do until expansion. The carelessness with Galleon Galaxy makes me wonder why they bothered with the world expansion feature in the first place.

The world expansion feature brings a implication to the progression of the game which is quite backwards for collectible-based platformers, something also found in Banjo-Tooie and Donkey Kong 64: discontinuity, or segmented level progression. When you explore a level in a platformer, it's up to the player to reach and check everything the level is offering, with the character abilities at their dispose. In BT and DK64, like in Yooka-Laylee, it's not possible to fully explore a new world because the character lacks abilities and mechanics to reach certain locations unless they advance to other new areas, hence the discontinuity. Note that segmented exploration is not the same as backtracking, which is not the case here. In Yooka-Laylee, the worlds immediately presents the player with things they cannot do. Instead of increasing the exciment of going into the level with more to explore, the pre-expansion world leaves a bad first impression, as if it's lacking places that were cut, instead of presenting a full location which receives bonus areas to explore. As mentioned, this is only successfully applied in Tribalstack Tropics, where at first you don't really know what's coming after the expansion. In the other worlds there are obvious indications that something is missing there, such as the locked castle door, the "under construction" casino signposts, and the few number of islands in the swamp and space seas. This makes the world less engaging to explore until you expand it and breaks the game progression. The worlds don't have much to offer yet, so checking the very few and limited things you have to do with a lackluster level composition is really disheartning. Discontinuity in excess in collectible platformers only brings frustation and turns the exploration in a chore.

Like in the BK games, the duo of characters you control start with some very basic platforming movement, like running and single jump, and gradually receives new moves as you find a specific NPC responsible for teaching your characters new moves and abilities to reach new places, execute new puzzles and progress through the game. In YL, Trowser, a snake in trousers (thanks Rare) is the ability teacher NPC. Differently from Bottles and Jamjars from the BK series, there is a single Trowzer in each world, and instead of giving a single move he makes available three or two new moves. Even though giving the player the option to choose from a catalog of abilities sounds interesting, this is counter-intuitive to the purpose of gaining abilities and level progression. Bottles and Jamjars gave abilities that made sense to the context of the world and location they were, and you could test your new move at a nearby part of level designed just for testing the new ability (subtle or not), be it a switch used for ground-pounding, or a small lake for swimming. This is non-existant in Yooka-Laylee, given that Trowzer is not only in an easily accessible location of the world (there was the exploration challenge of going after Bottles and Jamjars for new moves), as there is no level feature around him where the abilities can be tested. Though when encountering Trowzer in the hub level, Hivory Towers, there were specific puzzles for testing the single ability he teaches you in the cutscene, as it should be. While functioning as intended in the hub world, having Trowzer function as a shop owner selling abilities elsewhere was a bad decision because there is a lack of proper application of the moves you are learning, weakning the sensation of character improvement. The player must decipher the new ability through the dialogue full of gags and jokes, and it's not possible to fully understand the application of the new ability at first through dialogue and description only (e.g. Slurp Taste).

Speaking of the abilities themselves, a good amount of them are barely used in the puzzles and exploration, with some of them being way too focused for very specific sections rather than being useful for any kind of situation (Lizard Lash, Sonar Shot, Sonar Explosion). Relating that fact to the level design, there are a lot of sections made only for a specific ability rather than naturally blending it within the overall level design. While such decision is fine as long as the puzzle is challenging and creative within itself while using the ability, that wasn't the case most of the time. It's as if the character abilities were designed before the level design, and some abilities didn't really match any level design so they were forced into it. This hurts the exploration, making several areas and sections very direct, soulless and artificial, instead of experimenting with abilities and making open-space creative solutions to platforming and puzzles, something that Banjo-Kazooie excels at. Speaking of hurting exploration, Flappy Flight is the ability which single-handedly breaks the game and defeats the purpose of platforming. Flappy Flight allows you to fly from any spot at any moment to any place, as long as you have power meter. Flight is not seldom seen in platformers. BK series, Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine had flying too, however the way the mechanic was implemented was completely different in those. Flying in Yooka-Laylee is dependent of a resource which replenish itself after 5 seconds and you can fly anywhere, anytime. You gain this move in mid-late game, but it affects plenty of platforming sections since you can simply complete them or correct mistakes by flying through everything. Flying should be limited and based on valueable resource. It feels as Playtonic didn't give much thought at how Flappy Flight would be used and how it defeats the point of platforming and punishing the player's errors. Another special ability feature are transformations, where your character transforms into another being, like a flower or helicopter, granting a unique ability for each world. Transformations were not interesting at all in YL, and like certain normal abilities they also seem like an afterthought that was forced into the level design instead of blending within it and giving a reason to explore the level again as the transformed being.

The level design and character abilities, along with overly long and static boss fights, minor enemies' lack of variation and bad placement, awful kart sections based in collecting a certain number of gems through the run and make it dependable of speed variation only known via trial and error, and a handful of repetitive, bland, irritating and shallow platforming sections form up the problems with this game. While my critic seems too harsh, I enjoyed YL more than I disliked, as it was the same type of game I've waited and never got to see happening since my childhood. Banjo-Kazooie is one of my favorite games, so I was obviously looking forward at a game made by the same people involved with BK after all these years, this time with more creative freedom and time than ever before to develop a game. Yooka-Laylee has wacky characters, dumb humor dialogue with grunting noises as voice acting, great soundtrack from David Wise and Grant Kirkhope, and some interesting platforming action, things that I appreciate. This is the game I've wanted fifteen years ago, which unfortunately suffered from some design decisions which were perfected or almost flawless in the previous games from the same developers, hence my overall disappointment. Nevertheless, I am certain this is a game the people behind it cared about. Extra time, gathering more opinions from people who were familiar with the past games, avoid mixing plenty of ideas which do not sinergy well with each other would have helped them remediate most of the problems. If Playtonic can take their time to reflect upon what has been done, realize how and why they took the direction they did with certain things, rethink if that really was the best option among others, and take all the criticism to heart, I believe they will be able to improve and fix most issues in their next game. They have hinted multiple times through in-game dialogues their intention of making a sequel, I only hope they will get there someday and make the worthy homage to collectible-based platformers happen. As long as they don't pull another Banjo-Threeie and the sequel never happens, there is always the possibility.