Greetings, internet friends and welcome to the sort-of-monthly Playtonic Labour Update, serving as both an insightful update on the progress of the Playtonic team, and a rare break for us from the punishing development mines (don’t worry: we’ll be pushed straight back down the dev shaft as soon as we’ve pressed the submit button).

This month the Playtonic team exhibited at the EGX expo in Birmingham, where attendees were offered the opportunity to be the first members of the public to sample a short demo of Yooka-Laylee. It was an excellent few days, topped by some humbling media coverage (BBC! Shortlist!) and best of all the lovely things visitors said about our game.

In case you missed the hoo-ha, the brummy bash was also the platform for our latest Yooka-Laylee video, featuring a parade of major supporting characters and a very special guest… Yacht Club Games’ Shovel Knight!

As our own Chris Sutherland explained, the guest appearance emerged from a mutual admiration between Playtonic and the Californian studio: “We’ve always been fans of Shovel Knight and thought it’d be great to have some guest star characters from the rest of the indie community. It’s great for indies to be able to do that. There’s no kind of big barrier, you don’t have to go through seven levels of approval, you just go: yeah, we’re going to do that.”

It was also very nice of Yacht Club to supply both the 3D model and voice of their titular warrior. You can look forward to meeting and assisting him in Yooka-Laylee early next year!

You will have spotted all kinds of new and familiar characters in the same video – plus an aural glimpse of a new Grant Kirkhope tune – but be assured there’s still much, much more you don’t know about waiting to be discovered in the final game.