Hello and welcome to the first ever post-game-release Playtonic community update!

Yooka-Laylee has been in the wild for two whole weeks and we’ve been positively overchuffed by the response from fans and backers around the world! We’ve very much enjoyed reading your feedback, lurking on your livestreams and absorbing your lovely comments, so thanks again for the support! It’s been emotional.

Thanks to you lot, some 20 developers remain off the streets, mostly fed and in a stronger position than ever to continue creating colourful, personality-plump adventures!

But first… we’ve got some spit ‘n’ polish to deploy.

In the days since launch – and as we work with speed towards the Nintendo Switch – the dev team has been frogmarched back down into the development mines to uncover our next big game update, which will add significant improvements and introduce some of the most requested features.

That means stuff like the optional ability to skip dialogue faster, bypass cutscenes or reduce those pesky gibberish voices, which should please the speedrunners among us. We’ll also be adding a sprinkling of design polish throughout the adventure and by popular request, changes to how the camera operates (gif the image on this page a look).

You can expect a more detailed breakdown of the game update in the coming weeks, as we continue to tinker around with the coding furnace. Until then, here’s a bit more of what we’ve been up to…

Plus Two

Freshly decanted from the employee snare-barrels, this month we release Matt Griffin and Chris Woods to run wild amongst the Playtonic team!

Audio man Matt is known for making various Lego games noisy, from Marvel, to Batman, Hobbit and more. A sly and streetwise sound designer, Griffin immediately signalled his cunning to the team by opting to start during Yooka’s release week, smirking with satisfaction as he munched away at the launch day cake, before retiring to the pub to recover from a ‘tough’ start to his Playtonic career.

Operations manager Chris joins fresh from a background in compliance for the erm, Ministry of Justice. These days he lays down the law in the Playtonic office, enforcing our strict kitchen rules and judging us with a menacing gaze whenever rubbish isn’t placed into the correctly labelled wastepaper bin. Chris’s job is to take the heavy non-development weight off everyone’s creaking shoulders, thus freeing up the entire team to spend more time doing what they do best… eat cake (and make games).

Welcome aboard, gents.

Now Shipping

Pretty things, sir? Lovely, shiny stuff? You’ll be wanting to head over to our chums at Fangamer and Laced records for a bundle of brilliant bargains then.

This week Fangamer have added a brand new design to their spiffing roster of Yooka-Laylee tshirts and to celebrate they’re offering free shipping on all lizard-and-bat-related goods until May 3! Go on, stick your browser over there, sir.

Laced Records meanwhile have started shipping the very lovely Yooka-Laylee vinyl record pack! We’re told that if you purchase one of these, Grant Kirkhope will produce a personalised sonnet and read it aloud at your doorstep.

Community Highlights: Tongue wagging tunes

This month has seen Yooka-Laylee land in public hands for the first time, and naturally a cloud-based warehouse of silly videos. Our favourites include the tongue-based nonsense from Achievement Hunter, 8-bit remixes, Vendi’s biggest fan and this amazing performance from the Leeds International Festival orchestra: