We were delighted that soon after the launch of Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair, we spotted a dedicated speedrunning community forming around the game. We’d dip into streams now and then, sharing links around the office and enjoying the show, sneaky time-skipping glitches and all!
We resolved not to patch any of the innocent glitches out, because a lot of joy seemed to stem out of the players who were actively seeking ways to “break” the game. It wasn’t hurting anyone.
Getting over the world
We became aware of different types of runs for Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair too. A particularly interesting category doesn’t involve 2D play at all – it’s a speedrun based on collecting all the Tonics from the Overworld.

The game designer behind the Overworld, Hamish Lockwood, offered some thoughts:
“I’ll always remember just after Impossible Lair released, I saw a video of a player swimming out of bounds on the overworld, up into the sky so you could see the whole overworld at once. I was thinking “damn, this looks like a horrible bug” but then the thought evolved into “this will be great for speedrunning!” and they certainly didn’t disappoint. I love seeing creative uses of systems for skips, like using the bomb explosions to get over fences or throwing objects at the Overworld bees from a distance. Speedruns are entertaining, but I think especially so for the people who worked on the game.”
Yookathon 2020
We were really happy when Hedweg, a familiar face in the Playtonic speedrunning community, contacted us about Yookathon, a speedrunning event dedicated to both of our games!

We decided to take part, and chucked the lovely Chris Sutherland into the mix for some support and encouragement. The event encompassed varying types of speedruns through both Yooka-Laylee and Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair. It was a lot of fun watching the various tricks and skips that speedrunners employed on their quests to become the quickest.