First announced in February, Project Ukulele is an upcoming game being created by Playtonic Games, an indie studio comprised entirely of Rare Ltd. veterans. Meant as a spiritual successor to cult hit Banjo-Kazooie, the game will feature non-linear gameplay, collectable items, and unique skills for each of the two playable characters. Playtonic revealed the game’s first in-engine screenshots this past weekend at EGX Rezzed, in addition to opening up about some of the game’s development.
“We honestly weren’t expecting as big a reaction as we got,” says Playtonic team member Gavin Price. “We’ve had tons and tons of emails–a massive fan response. But it’s good; we want that pressure; we’re really happy with that reception.”
As a new indie studio, Playtonic has little money to fund the game themselves, at least to the full scale they want to give fans, which is why they’ll be taking Project Ukulele to Kickstarter for funding. “Up until a few weeks ago it wasn’t really on our radar,” Price admits. “But since we’ve had such a massive response from people, we’re thinking that the game has to become a lot bigger, a lot broader; we want to do a lot more with it now to make people happy. […] We don’t want to force tiers and stretch goals on fans. We’d love to hear if people would like to voice characters, if people want to have early access to the game, perhaps–and this is just a pipe dream–if we can have a boxed N64 copy of the game to really play off the game’s nostalgic feel. So it’s about finding out what people want from us from the Kickstarter campaign and then creating it with that in mind.”
Project Ukulele will be heading to Kickstarter for funding this May. You can watch Playtonic’s full EGX presentation below.
