Yooka-Laylee is the new 3D platformer arriving April 11th, from the developers behind Banjo-Kazooie. Playtonic Games formed in 2014 as a team of seven to create a new studios to produce the game. After a successful kickstarter campaign that raised over £2 million, exceeding the original goal of £175k, the game arrives this month.

Described by the studios as the spiritual successor of Banjo-Kazooie, which players took control of a bear and his bird friend that lived in his rucksack. You can check out our gameplay footage of Banjo-Kazooie below, to get a feel for the popular 1998 Nintendo 64 game which has sparked the revival of Yooka-Laylee and the Platforming genre.

Local multiplayer games splitscreen or not, have always had a special place in my heart, whether I’m playing with friends, family or the team at work. The type of games revert back to my childhood, where if I wasn’t playing Zoombinis or Discworld, I was huddled around a Nintendo 64 at my cousin's house playing Mario Karts or flying around outrageous maps in Looney Tunes Space Race on the PS2. What really stuck out for me in all these games, is how universal they are. We played games together as a family, including very competitive games of Micro Machines and I’ve been wanting to see a comeback in 3d platformers that offer just that, a versatile game, suitable for both adults and children.

Yooka-Laylee feels like it will revive those games, where a younger audience can play alongside in the Yooka-Laylee co-op as the B Team. The B Team is a team of bees, which act as an aid to Yooka and Laylee. With a second controller, the B Team can do all sorts of wonderful things, like...

• Pause and hold platforms for Yooka and Laylee
• Get out of reach Quills (in game currency)
• Grab and hold onto and dispense butterflies for energy