Yooka-Laylee is an upcoming 3D platformer/collect-a-thon from the creative talent behind one of my favorite platformers - Banjo-Kazooie. Even though the name might give you an impression that the entire game is a practical joke, it has already managed to garner £2,000,000 from Kickstarter and the early gameplay videos seem to be incredibly promising.

It was originally slated to arrive by October 2016, but as you might imagine given the scope of the project there have been some delays, and the new release date is now scheduled for the first quarter of 2017. All of this was announced through the recently posted E3 2016 gameplay trailer, which you can find right below alongside a brief explanation from the Playtonic team:

"As well as revealing the first gameplay in over a year, this video also confirms that, after long consideration and knowing through dialogue with our fans that they value quality and polish above all, we’ve made the difficult decision to lock the release of Yooka-Laylee to Q1 2017.

While we felt confident we could ship the game in October as originally projected in our Kickstarter, the Playtonic team has decided that it would prefer to add a few extra months’ polish to the game schedule."

I personally have no issues with waiting, and if the release version of Yooka-Laylee manages to be as colorful and care-free as the trailer than it will be worth every second spent. That aside, I hope this is the beginning of a great platformer resurgence, because that is a genre I haven't really been able to enjoy since my childhood given how underrepresented it is these days. The only "high budget" platformer I can even think of in recent years is Ubisoft's Rayman, and that is a mostly 2D affair, a far cry from the 3D classics of old.

Yooka-Laylee will be available for PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Wii U. If you're interested in learning more about it, or just want some more lovely screenshots, head over to the official website.