A Midlands-based independent game studio and publisher, founded by veterans of Rare and best known for the Yooka-Laylee platform games.
Playtonic is an independent British video game studio and publisher. It makes colourful 3D platform games and is best known for Yooka-Laylee (2017), Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair (2019) and Yooka-Replaylee (2025), with Super Yooka-Laylee Kart, a racing game, announced. It also runs a publishing label called Playtonic Friends, launched in 2021, which has released games by other small studios, including Lil Gator Game, Demon Turf, Blossom Tales II, BPM: Bullets Per Minute, Cattle Country and Dunk Dunk. Its website lists these games alongside its own.
The studio says it aims to make popular, enjoyable games for long-time fans and new players across many platforms. In a graduate-recruitment profile it says it wants to keep an indie spirit while supporting its staff, to help people find fulfilment and control over their careers, and to take more creative risks as it grows. It owns its own characters and worlds, which gives it the freedom to make games it believes in.
Playtonic was founded in 2014 by six former Rare staff, Steve Hurst, Steve Mayles, Gavin Price, Jens Restemeier, Mark Stevenson and Chris Sutherland, who had worked on Donkey Kong Country and Banjo-Kazooie. Composer Grant Kirkhope joined later. The studio is in the English Midlands near Burton upon Trent, within reach of Derby, Nottingham, Leicester and Birmingham. A 2021 profile said it had about 40 developers and planned to grow in other parts of the UK.
The studio describes its culture as relaxed and empowering, with flexible working, support for staff welfare and self-improvement, and chances to work across genres and on several projects. Team members are encouraged to help create characters and worlds from scratch and to share ideas across the studio. These are the studio's own descriptions, so ask at interview how that works day to day. Its first game was funded through what it describes as Europe's biggest video game Kickstarter, which shows how closely it has worked with its fans.
A game studio of this kind employs programmers, artists, animators, designers, audio staff, producers and QA testers, plus a publishing team that works with outside developers. The company's website has a team page, a careers page, a news section and a merchandise store, and its Playtonic Friends games are listed beside its own.
Website: playtonicgames.com
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