The Yooka-laylee team discuss character design and how you nearly had a tiger for a hero

With a whirlwind Kickstarter campaign that saw Yooka-Laylee reach its funding goal in little under 38 minutes, the 3D-platformer resurrectionist from Playtonic Games continues to charm the pants of all and sundry with its chameleon and bat buddy duo. And while Yooka and Laylee and well on the way to becoming a beloved duo, it turns our the green-skinned Yooka had a very, very different design in the game's earliest design stages. In the latest issue of Official PlayStation Magazine, managing director and creative lead Gavin Price and character art director Steve Mayles reveal all...

Gavin Price: Yeah I think... design wise it’s more about the moves that they’ll let us do. Like the chameleon’s going to have eating things and those having a massive effect on his appearance and his characteristics and his properties, while the bat... you kind of get the basic platformer movesets when you use a biped and a bird together anyway; so things like your double-jumps, your jumps, your ground-pounds and all that kinds of stuff; they’re kind of like your bread and butter moves, but these animals... yeah, there’s going to be tons of different moves that really take advantage of the exact type of animals that they are, whereas in the past, as much as I love Banjo, he never did anything that said “I’m a bear” really. He was basically a human in a bear costume! (Laughs) But visually... Steve can tell you more about that, he did the visual side... (to Steve) what was your kind of... inspiration?

The latest issue of Official PlayStation Magazine, with Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 on the cover, is out now. You can buy it here or subscribe to future issues.

Dom has been a freelance journalist for many years, covering everything from video games to gaming peripherals. Dom has been playing games longer than he'd like to admit, but that hasn't stopped him amassing a small ego's worth of knowledge on all things Tekken, Yakuza and Assassin's Creed.