Recently, we played the first two hours of Yooka-Laylee — our first opportunity to grab video of the game in motion since the Toybox demo last year. A few moments stand out from our time with the throwback platformer. Among them: our first encounter with Shovel Knight’s Shovel Knight.
The cameo, first teased by Playtonic Games back in September, features a heaping helping of Playtonic’s signature fourth wall-breaking dialogue. It also offers our first chance ever to hear Shovel Knight’s speaking voice — albeit in the stilted, pitch-adjusted style of the classic Rare platformers that inspired Yooka-Laylee.
To unlock the encounter, players will have to spend Pagies (one of the roughly four trillion collectibles in Yooka-Laylee) to expand Tribalstack Tropics, the game’s first world, into a larger version of itself. From there, Shovel Knight can be found quite easily; his appearance is even highlighted by the flyover camera after the stage.
For more on Yooka-Laylee, watch below for 10 minutes of new gameplay from Glitterglaze Glacier, the game’s second world.
