After becoming fully funded 40 minutes after its Kickstarter campaign kicked off, Banjo-Kazooie spiritual successor Yooka-Laylee has been on quite a roll. Growing well beyond its modest initial concept, the game has added new music, a multiplayer mode, and even a Nintendo 64 shader mode.
Yesterday, developer Playtonic Games introducted Yooka-Laylee’s first support character in a Kickstarter update. Named Trowzer, the character is described as a “business-snake whose career never took off.”
“Trowzer thinks of himself as the best salesman ever, but with his downbeat appearance and 1980’s mobile phone, life never took off for him”, Yooka-Laylee creative lead Gavin Price explains on the Playtonic Games website. “He’ll take your money and count it (he’s an Adder…) and because he knows best he’ll even demonstrate the moves you just bought for you to replicate … if you can follow his jiggling.”
On Trowzer’s design, character artist Steve Mayles says “I didn’t want him to be a snake in the traditional sense, and when Gav suggested he should have shorts on (do I have to add shorts to all of my characters?!), a great idea for this was his body could curl back up through the other leg hole. So he’ll move with a certain springiness, which will be fun to animate.”
Those of us who enjoy wordplay will be pleasurably cringing at the puns used in describing Trowzer (an attribute of Yooka-Laylee as a whole), and will also likely notice that the name of the character flirts with innuendo. For those who don’t see it — don’t worry, it won’t be explained here.
Yooka-Laylee still has quite a way to go in its Kickstarter campaign, which ends June 16. To date the game has collected over $2.3 million, well past its initial goal of $270,041. To back the project, head over to the Yooka-Laylee Kickstarter page.
