Team 17 Worms in on PS4 Platformer Yooka-Laylee

It feels like eons ago that Yooka-Laylee double-jumped onto Kickstarter and took crowd-funding by storm. The platformer holds the record for the highest earning British game on the site, but its mere £2 million tally has been overshadowed somewhat by the successes of Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night and Shenmue III. Still, with the world itching for an old-fashioned Nintendo 64 collectathon, this is clearly going to be a big success when it releases in October 2016 – and that's prompted developer Playtonic Games to recruit publisher Team 17.

The important distinction is that the Worms maker has not been roped in for additional funding – it's merely handling all of the boring bureaucracy that comes with multiformat releases. "From the very start we said that we'd welcome only a partner that could genuinely improve the creation of our game, while respecting the independence and creative autonomy of our development team," a spokesperson said. "For Playtonic, it means that our team can now focus 100 per cent on making Yooka-Laylee, without fussing over the boring-but-necessary business stuff."

We suppose that the partnership makes logistical sense, what with the developer's Burton on Trent office being a reasonable drive away from Team 17's headquarters in Yorkshire. Of course, the biggest question is whether this will result in a wide-scale retail release. "To clarify on one point: there are still no plans currently for a physical release," the company concluded. "Although Team 17 has plenty of experience in boxed retail, the plan today remains for Yooka-Laylee to launch as a digital game." If freakin' Flockers got a Blu-ray, then this darn well better.