It’s our Birthday!

Well, sort of. Or not at all – there’s been some debate about that. Call it our ‘official’ Birthday, a bit like the Queen’s, except less to do with the commonwealth and more to do with when we got around to ordering our desks from Ikea.

Most companies celebrate anniversaries with cake (for us that’s simply ‘a weekday’), although we prefer to mark the occasion by hiring yet *more* people, which means that the Playtonic team has more than doubled in size since our official ‘coming out’ in the February 2015 issue of Edge magazine.

Please say hello to Gary, Hamish and Damien. Go on, audibly mouth it at this JPEG:

Veteran environment artist Damien has worked on the Banjo-Kazooie, Conker and Perfect Dark series of games. He’s also just finished sculpting a range of Fighting Fantasy Miniatures for Ian Livingstone, which makes his LinkedIn page look extra impressive.

Talbot, another experienced artist of almost 20 years, is an animator by trade and has worked on the Banjo-Kazooie and Perfect Dark series of games, as well as the upcoming Sea of Thieves. He did the cut-scenes for all sorts of titles, including motion capping all the death animations in Perfect Dark Zero – without crash mats, because he’s well ‘ard.

Young Hamish Lockwood is an Australian. He’s also done some game design, which includes building levels for a host of indie hits such as Stealth Inc and Mike Bithell’s Volume. He’s not worked on Banjo-Kazooie or Perfect Dark, but to be honest I think we’ve hired enough of them for one month.

The exciting trio join the Yooka-Laylee team during a crucial development window, as we strap in and soar towards our final destination. Speaking of development…

LABOUR UPDATE

Lots of stuff going on at Playtonic Towers. Many things. A plethora of gubbins. Would you like to see some of them?

Despite the fact that it’s OUR birthday and you’re supposed to give US a present, we’ve prepared a few tantalising Yooka-Laylee teasers, which should be enough to keep you going until such time as we’re ready to fire entire gameplay into your face via a WMV pillow cannon.

David Wise: you like him. We like him. He’s done a new challenge tune. Here’s what it sounds like:

Lovely, isn’t it? Very cheerful. This particular piece is designed to accompany a section of the game starring our latest character reveal, Kartos. During their adventure, Yooka and Laylee will have many encounters with this humble minecart, and together they’ll hit the tracks in search of paper-shaped golden nuggets.

Father of Kartos, Mr Kev Bayliss explains: “In true Playtonic fashion, we wanted to make this character as fun as possible. He’s old school, so we wanted him to look old fashioned, rather than modern. He actually looks like a bad DIY project by myself, and I’m sure I’ve seen some of his body parts lying around in my shed at home!

“Yooka will be taking advantage of Kartos and his services, as he is for ‘hire’ at various stages in the game. And why not? After all, his slogan is ‘Mein Kart ist Ihre Kart’ after all!”

KICKSTARTER BACKERS: FILL IN YOUR SURVEY!

If you backed our Kickstarter and haven’t filled in your Backerkit survey, do so now! The cut-off date for this information is March 1, 2016, after which we’ll begin the process of sending out physical rewards to backers.

If you can’t find your email survey invite you can recover it at https://yooka-laylee.backerkit.com/. For further troubleshooting please contact BackerKit support at support@backerkit.com.