The spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie is just about ready for the Nintendo Switch. After a year of anticipation, and technical delays, Yooka-Laylee‘s Nintendo Switch version is in the final stretch and developer Playtonic Games has explained their struggles with the Unity engine in their latest Switch Progress Update.
After having launched on Xbox One, PS4, and PC in April, players were excited to see the 3D-platformer on the handheld console. Development wasn’t that easy, however, as the Unity engine proved problematic for the developers. With the release of the latest Unity engine, the developers are getting closer and closer to a launch date:
“We’ve encountered some final technical hurdles and had been waiting for the arrival of Unity 5.6 in order to fix them. Although this has now been released, it has unfortunately introduced other issues which we are working with Unity to resolve before we can submit to Nintendo and lock in our release timeline.”
The long wait will hopefully result in a Switch version of the game that runs just as well as it does on other platforms. Though it seems as though Playtonic Games is now in a race against the clock. They’ve got to put out the game soon before players lose interest, and before other platform’s versions are too heavily discounted. At that point it would be hard to justify paying full price for Yooka-Laylee on the Switch when a player could pick it up for $5 on another platform. Though there’s a case to be made for being able to play the game on the go.
Yooka-Laylee is available now on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. You can check out DualShocker’s review of the game here. You can check out some of the gameplay of Yooka-Laylee running on the switch, from Playtonic’s tweet, below.
In a move that absolutely nobody has been asking for, we have a Switch progress update for you!https://t.co/lhTqDDP8J0 pic.twitter.com/kwbWzB6sRE
— Playtonic (@PlaytonicGames) September 25, 2017