Those of you who didn't back the project may not know, but Yooka-Laylee's Toybox recently became available for those who backed at the appropriate tiers. For those of you very not in the know, Yooka-Laylee is the product of Playtonic Games, a game development company that is pretty much all the best parts of old Rare, and the game itself is basically a modern Banjo-Kazooie.
The Toybox is a small sandbox environment made up of pre-alpha gameplay and basic assets that give an opportunity to really explore what the developers hope to bring to the overall experience once the game releases. The environment largely lacks detail, completely on purpose as this is meant to be a gameplay showcase more than anything else. Now, as for my experience with it?
It's honestly quite a bit of fun. When it starts, you get some basic controls of move, jump, ground pound, spring jump, jump, double jump, glide, roll like a wheel, and attack with a tail spin. Your goal is essentially to run around the environment and find 100 Quills so that you can get the one Pagey the Toybox has to offer. There is another collectable to nab while you explore, the platforming is fun, objects in the environment were easy to interact with, swimming feels fine, and there are even a few rooms that showcase enemy movement, different environments under foot, and particle effects. Combat was nice and basic like you would expect from a platformer, and it felt just right.
To top it all off, there was a nice little secret for the final game revealed that is already plastered all over the internet.
The one con may be that the Toybox was small. 30 minutes on the low end, at max an hour if you accidentally miss something or have a hard time finding the last secret. Otherwise it served its purpose in giving a feel for what Yooka-Laylee will be, and I have to say, I'm excited. This is the only Kickstarter I've backed to date, and I can tell it will be completely worth the investment come Q1 2017.
