Yooka-Laylee Kickstarter concludes with £2.1m raised
Nearly £2m more than asked for.
Yooka-Laylee, the upcoming spiritual successor to N64 platforming classic Banjo-Kazooie, has concluded its £175k crowd-funding campaign with a whopping £2.1m raised.
Just over £2.09m was raised via Kickstarter, with another 30k added to the pot via PayPal. The game will now go into full production for a release in the tail end of 2016.
Yooka-Laylee squeaked its £2m stretch goal with around 24 hours to spare. This will unlock free post-launch DLC and allow yet more polish for the main game.
Around £50k was added in the wake of this week's Microsot conference, when it was revealed that Banjo-maker Rare was now working on a new IP, and only releasing ports of its old games.
Speaking to Eurogamer at E3, veteran composer and fellow ex-Rare employee Grant Kirkhope said that he had been pleasantly surprised by the game's success, but that it had vindicated his confidence for the 3D platform genre.
"I've worked with those guys for years," said Kirkhope, who now lives in the US. "Myself and them [The UK Playtonic team] are massively impressed and humbled."
"Work starts now," writer and editor Andy Robinson added. "Yooka-Laylee's success has been well beyond any of our expectations. Now it's heads down. We'll obliviously keep up with fans via social media, but hopefully the next time that the public see the game it will be much more advanced."
We had a quick hands-on session with the indie game's latest build, shown off appropriately on a laptop perched on the E3 show floor next to a free power socket.
The game itself was largely similar to the build we played a month or so ago - which you can see below - but already it featured more advanced scenery.
