Yooka-Laylee is Getting a Sequel Called "The Impossible Lair"

Yooka-Laylee had a fantastic premise of bringing together the Rare talent who created Banjo-Kazooie and letting them do what they do best. But a good idea doesn’t always mean perfect execution, and while Yooka-Laylee certainly captured a lot of the nostalgic magic that many for us still pine for, it also reminded us that not everything ages well… and sometimes an idea that seems so right can still go wrong. Not a bad game, not a good game, it was just sort of… a game. It happened. And so while I can say I probably shouldn’t be surprised they’ve announced a sequel, I have to admit I kind of was if only because I kind of forgot the game existed at all.

Have a trailer.

You better bee ready for Capital B's most dastardly challenge yet! Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair is coming to Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One and Steam in 2019!

The game looks to double down on nostalgia by referencing games that predate even the N64 era the first game was designed to emulate. The stages are looking torn straight out of the Sonic/Donkey Kong/Rayman playbook, being 2.5 and full of places to explore, while the overworld has a top-down look that can’t help but herald back to 2D Zelda games.

It’s a “new” direction for them, but not a bad one, and probably something their fans will appreciate. Plus I kind of like the framing device of the whole game building up to one “impossible” level they have to get strong enough to overcome.

In any case, the game is going to apparently launch a lot sooner than we might have expected, sometime this year. Probably around the end of the year, if I had to guess: can’t really beat a holiday launch, I’m told.