Ideas for worlds

[LDK777]

One of the major feedback items I see a lot, both on these forums and elsewhere, is simply that more worlds would have been better. I loved all 5 worlds and never thought they were too big or dull or anything like that, but I think 10 medium sized worlds would have been far more compelling than 5 gigantic worlds.

So I figured let's start a thread with world theme ideas, many of theme are pretty standard but feel free to add your own ones:

Standard fair, while they are extremely common, they are still fun and worthy of inclusion:

Lava World
Desert World
Beach/Water World
Underground/Cave World
Factory World

More interesting ideas:

Ancient Rome style themed world
Pirate themed world
War themed world (ala Conker's quest)
Grand Theft Auto style world
Zombie/Resident Evil style world
Olympic Style Games themed world

[Yavga]

I want a candy graveyard world

And a golden chocolate factory

And the insides of a computer

Andandand human body world done right

And much more!

[Scrubber]

I'd start by saying I don't want any repeats. So in Tooka-Laylee NO jungle NO casino NO snow NO swamp NO space.

I'd like to see:
A human house
A super market
A volcanic world
A beach
Inside a monsters body
A farm or zoo
A prison

One thing I don't want to see is stupid Mario world's like things made out of cake and biscuits etc

[yooka-dragon]

LDK777 :

There is already a pirate world : Galleon Galaxy


I think the best 3 new worlds should be :

World 6 : Gobi's Valley 2 HD with a camel trnsformation

World 7 : A factory farm England with a melancholy atmosphair with gray sky clouds like the coast of Hivory Towers. To me the Factory theme is not enough explored in Hivory. The farm theme too. Haystack transformation.

World 8 - The last : An Haunted lava world with a necromanciant and Horrify dimension. To me Moody Maze Marsh is NOT the hauntined level i expected. A Dragon transformation.

Yavga i'm agree wihth you : Where is the world Graveyard ?

[Alucard]

How about this world:

Could you imagine a world set in a cinema with popcorn and all that stuff and with three cinema halls and each hall has got his own theme but all are kinda like low budget b-movie horror films. The main characters must watch to the screen with 3-d glasses to get warped in to the running trash movie (similar to witchyworld with the three different themes inside the park or click clock wood where you have 4 different entraces to all the seasons). The first cinema hall could have a movie which is set on a farm surrounded by trailerparks and swamps and of course with cow abducting aliens and the second cinema hall could have a movie set in a shopping mall with zombies. The third and last cinema hall could have a movie set in the 1950s with an area where you must climb up an giant art deco styled skyscraper with an angry primate at the top(boss fight). All these movies are references to old trash/b-movies.

[EekumBokum202]

I like worlds that aren't fully conventional, or worlds that play with certain archetypes of your standard video game worlds. Rusty Bucket Bay from Banjo-Kazooie is one of my favorite worlds in that game because, while it does have that "Eternal Engine" thing going on with the gears and propellers inside the ship, the setting of a grimy, polluted bay is one you don't see too often as a video game level, and even though it's one of the most difficult levels in that game, I find it's all the more memorable because of that!

I also liked Terrarium of Terror from Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, it's got a floral theme, but also an outer space theme, and even a bit of a "haunted" theme in some places!

I'm not nearly as creative as these, but I DID just think up this one idea for a haunted beach level! Like, there's this ghost ship, right? And it gets shipwrecked on this beach that used to be sunny and pleasant but has since been abandoned with everything dark and grim. There are some beachside attractions that are either abandoned, haunted, or occupied by people who refuse to leave the beach, and the boss would be this skeletal pirate or ghost octopus or something... Now I'm just spitting nonsense, but I like coming up with off-the-wall ideas for levels that defy convention!

[Scrubber]

[FailureFactory]

Let's see, what are Rare's level archetypes and have they already been done in Yooka-Laylee?

Ice stage (DKC, DKC2, DKC3, BK, BT, DK64, YL) - Check

Industrial (DKC, DKC3, BT, DK64, YL more or less) - Half-Check

Jungle (DKC, DKC2, DKC3, BT, DK64, YL) - Check

Pirates (DKC2, BK, BT, DK64, YL hinted at) - Quarter-Check

Swamp (DKC2, BK, YL) - Check

Spooky (DKC2, BK, BT more or less, DK64 more or less, YL more or less) - Half-Check

Cave (DKC, DKC2 more or less, DKC3, BK, BT more or less, DK64, YL more or less) - Half-Check

Castle (DKC2, DKC3 more or less, BK hinted at, BT hinted at, YL more or less) - Half-Check

Lava (DKC2, BK hinted at, BT, DK64 hinted at) - Not yet

Personally, I feel the ice theme has been done to death, and cave levels (unless they have a secondary theme) are rather boring. The one classic recurring theme I can think of that YL didn't even hint at yet is a lava world, although those - like caves, are a bit bland to me on their own. I'm a tad disappointed at how the spooky level in YL was treated, with the spookiness demoted to being a secondary, barely flashed-out theme. My other favourite theme are industrial levels, and I feel neither YL's hub nor the marsh level sufficiently explore that either.

[dotEXE]

The thing with the worlds is - they went into developing the game with the "expanding world" innovation as a core design goal. I have a few thoughts on that right away:

1) Yes, it was innovative. I have to applaud this before I complain about it. It was a unique idea, it was a first shot at doing this, and it hadn't been done before in a platformer.

2) Now... this principle meant that the already big worlds would get huge. I'm fine with huge worlds.

3) It meant that they were double-designing content for each world. Instead of having 10 non-expanding medium worlds you end up with, as mentioned, 5 huge ones that feel somewhat samey.

4) The expansion of worlds is, in the end, unfortunately more or less unnecessary.

I played through each world as much as I could, then expanded it and went back in. Then I'd go as far as I could again, then move onto the next world. This was a limitation I placed on myself for no reason. Despite playing this way, I see absolutely no compelling reason that a player should not just immediately expand a world when they find it.

One of the inspirations for world expansion was a discussion about how they imagined a world in BK/BT with a lake. They imagined you would play the world as normal, and eventually the lake would be drained revealing an entirely new underside world. This didn't happen in Yooka Laylee. You play an ice world, expand it, and get more ice. You play a jungle temple world, expand it, and get more jungle temples. I was sort of expecting that the expansions would be thematically different from or dramatically change the base world. There was a lot of speculation on the forums about expansive temple interiors like Targitizan's Temple and those didn't happen.

So where am I going with this? A major guiding design goal of the game was sort of... arbitrarily bolted on. It didn't really serve a unique purpose in the end, the massive amount of extra content didn't add variety to the game, and in truth there's no compelling reason for the player to play an UNexpanded world.

I still love the game, but I think the expanding concept ended up hurting the design more than helping.

[Hopix]

How about this:

At the centre of the map, a large, explorable factory, think Grunty's Industry's. Surrounding the factory is an arctic wasteland of reasonable size. The keep warm in the wasteland, the factory generates heat by using a geothermal generator centred in the middle. Below the generator is a giant tunnel bored into the ice and rock leading down into a magma chamber.
Also, in the tundra surrounding the tower, there is a cave network which links parts of the map together.

[Scrubber]

[Alucard]

Damn I have soo many ideas so I decided to make a small list:

CINEMA world like I have posted before -> very rundown grindhouse cinema, spiderwebs in every corner, old carpets on the floor, arcade hall, 3 main halls with each have another horror movie theme.

MEDIEVAL world -> since Yooka-Laylee have characters like the knights of hamalot there should be a medieval themed world.

ANCIENT MYTHOLOGY world -> ancient greece/rome, temples with those iconic pillars

RESORT or TOURIST BEACH world -> polluted beach, a giant hotel, a drilling rig, kinda like a mix between rusty bucket bay and treasure trove cove.

CIRCUS world

BATHROOM WATER world -> giant bathroom, blue and white tiles very shiny/bright, each pool have a function (sink = whirlpool, bathtub = swimming pool, spa etc.), pipes are connected and enterable and behind is a dark and rusty outflow world similar to clankers cavern, goofy characters.

[JSPro]

[Meinhard1]

Personal wish: a harbor with a lighthouse

Also DKC:TF had some great underused game environments:

Mangroves
Autumn / Germanic
Savanna

Also World 5 sort of made a fresh fusion of "factory" and "jungle."

Would love to see a 3D world in the vein of any of these.

Also really liked classic haunted theme of banjos MMM, had some great tropes like the hedge maze, cellar, and church.

[FailureFactory]

[FailureFactory]

I really like the "tourist beach" idea, but I think the theme should be altered a bit to be more different to Spiller's Harbour. Here's my take:

RACKET'S RESORT
A run down hotel/camping site next to a Loch Ness style lake. Comes complete with bickering british couple at a tent, mystery hunters, a creepy castle with scottish ghosts, some roach-NPCs running the hotel, some not-so-ghostly scotsmen, trash washed ashore, grimy fishing boat, crabs, maybe a small fish factory, underwater caves, and of course Messy, the lake's monster... Yes, everything's possible at "Racket's Resort"!

[yooka-dragon]

The beach theme is already used in Galleon Galaxy Sorry for you guys.

The Hotel Theme is avery good idea, a haunted hotel so ? Near a lake ? Germany Autumn Fall is a theme not used again.

The lava Theme will be used. Maybe a mixed between Desert Theme and Lava Theme ?

Or maybe a mix between lava and haunted theme.

There a a lot of possibilities the question is how many levels there will be on the DLC. 2 or 3 ?

[FailureFactory]

[Yavga]

Dream/nightmare world, with all kind of weird, out of place things.

To see how that would look go download "#21 the world" you're in for a bizarre experience. Kinda neat.

[dotEXE]

I assumed the DLC would be 1 world, but I hadn't considered 0. I'd be curious to see what the DLC is at ALL if it's not a world though.