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Yooka-Laylee [GOG, Steam], the 3D platformer from Playtonic Games has been released with day-1 Linux support, here's some initial thoughts.

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Disclosure: My key was provided by GOG. The developer and publisher didn't respond to my key requests before release.

Yooka-Laylee is the 3D platformer throwback to games like Banjo-Kazooie that was funded thanks to Kickstarter back in 2015. It's actually made by some of the original team from game developer Rare, who created some really great games.

I can confirm that it does seem to work fine on Linux and I haven't encountered any obvious issues so far. I tested it with the Steam Controller with the SC Controller driver/UI and apart from the mouse pointer staying on the screen it felt really great.

You're initially greeted with what seems like an unskippable cut-scene, nothing I pressed could move me through it any quicker or skip it at all. The characters aren't voiced, so instead they just make babbling noises in place of real words as the speech bubbles fill the screen. Thankfully, general in-game speech can be sped up and skipped, just not cut-scenes it seems.

The evil "Capital B" has stolen all the books, including one of yours. The pages of your book fly out and spread themselves across the lands. The majority of the game seems like it revolves around collecting pages from the book to progress to each new section. To unlock new worlds, you need to collect pages, or "Pagies", which allow you to unlock Tomes. These Tomes can be expanded to make their worlds bigger by spending additional Pagies on them.

It certainly seems like an exciting 3D platformer, with vibrant colours, a big world to explore and so far I've had zero issues with it.

Expect some more thorough thoughts when I've had time to play, since I did not get any advance on this. So far, so good. It seems like a game that would have fit perfectly on the Nintendo 64 and I'm loving it. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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syxbit Apr 13, 2017
I've played a little so far. I'd agree with the nostalgia glasses. Some of the nostalgia is great. But some is not. In particular the voices. Man are they annoying after a few minutes of playing.
Also, I prefer the Banjo IP. I wish they'd just bought back the rights from Microsoft...
chui2ch Apr 20, 2017
Just got done completing the game 100% with all achievements on Linux.
Zeroedout May 13, 2017
Will we be getting a Linux port report for this game? I'm considering buying it but not if Unity isn't optimized well enough.
eldersnake May 14, 2017
Quoting: ZeroedoutWill we be getting a Linux port report for this game? I'm considering buying it but not if Unity isn't optimized well enough.
Well I'm only one dude, but on open source AMD drivers on my 380X, 16GB RAM and a stock Kaby Lake G4560 Dual Core (4 cores HyperThreading) the game runs fine on max details @ 1080p. I was expecting to have performance issues due to what some people have said even on the console version, but I was pleasantly surprised. If Liam doesn't mind me sharing a link to my own site, I touched on it in my review of the game: http://www.thelinuxrain.com/articles/yooka-laylee-review

No benchmarks, but when I call a game smooth, it's not usually chugging in 20-30 FPS or anything.
Darkdisorder78 Aug 17, 2017
Any force feedback?
Zeroedout Sep 6, 2017
Quoting: Darkdisorder78Any force feedback?

Thanks but I already bought and beat it. Interestingly and annoyingly the graphics would go to <20 fps after looking at certain things on max details. Like it runs fine until looking at the snow outer area of world 2, then everything slows down to 20 fps.

Simply changing the graphics to minimum and back would often fix the issue.

This is with a GTX 760 and amd-fx6350.

Very fun game though.
Zeroedout Sep 6, 2017
Quoting: eldersnake
Quoting: ZeroedoutWill we be getting a Linux port report for this game? I'm considering buying it but not if Unity isn't optimized well enough.
Well I'm only one dude, but on open source AMD drivers on my 380X, 16GB RAM and a stock Kaby Lake G4560 Dual Core (4 cores HyperThreading) the game runs fine on max details @ 1080p. I was expecting to have performance issues due to what some people have said even on the console version, but I was pleasantly surprised. If Liam doesn't mind me sharing a link to my own site, I touched on it in my review of the game: http://www.thelinuxrain.com/articles/yooka-laylee-review

No benchmarks, but when I call a game smooth, it's not usually chugging in 20-30 FPS or anything.

Thanks but I already bought and beat it. Interestingly and annoyingly the graphics would go to <20 fps after looking at certain things on max details. Like it runs fine until looking at the snow outer area of world 2, then everything slows down to 20 fps.

Simply changing the graphics to minimum and back would often fix the issue.

This is with a GTX 760 and amd-fx6350.

Very fun game though.
batmanm0b1e Mar 16, 2018
I was just wondering how you guys got your 360 controller to work with this gamer in Linux. Mine doesn't work. If you can help me out Thank you
chui2ch Mar 16, 2018
Quoting: batmanm0b1eI was just wondering how you guys got your 360 controller to work with this gamer in Linux. Mine doesn't work. If you can help me out Thank you
I am on Ubuntu, and I use the Steam OS ppa and the Steam OS xpad driver. I also go into big picture mode and enable xbox controller as a steam controller. Let me know if that does not work for you.
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