Today at EGX Rezzed Chris Sutherland and Gavin Price of studio Playtonic Games took to the stage for their dev session entitled "A rare reunion: Rebirth of the 3D platformer".
Sutherland, Price and everyone else in their small group formed Playtonic 4-5 weeks before the presentation and all of them had worked at Rare during their heyday of the 1990s when they produced some of the mostly fondly remembered classic 3D platformers of the day - games that are still looked upon favorably even today. Sutherland said that they had formed with the goal to bring something like those beloved games into the modern age.
As for details about the game named "Project Ukelele" there were few really big ones. We got to see the silhouettes of the characters who will play parts in the game but the audience were told that if we saw anymore than that too much would be given away. They also showed off screenshots of the hub world (linked below) and another world (at the end of the article).
Sutherland promised that there would be no microtransaction or free-to-play stuff in the game, nor would there be any in-game advertising (although amusingly the presentation DID have some mock advertising thrown in). Other than that we were told to expect a lot of what the Playtonic guys were good at - collectables (one called 'pagies'), special moves to learn, humour on par with that of Banjo-Kazooie, inanimate objects with big googly eyes and more.
Mostly though they emphasised that Project Ukelele was going to progress depending on feedback given to them by the fans waiting for the game. They plan to have a Kickstarter for the game in May and are currently taking feedback on their forums and social mediums for what tiers people would like to see.
It's excited me, I'm going to be keeping an eye on this. I hope it turns out to be just what that part of me that's still a 7-year-old child would love to play.
