Best games you can play this week – chameleons and crawling

April’s gaming calendar continues to deliver some interesting-looking titles, including a revival of a somewhat neglected genre, a dungeon-crawler to play with your friends, and a super-powered thief.

Yooka-Laylee

Release date: 11 April 2017 (Xbox One, PS4, PC, Switch)

Old-school 3D platformers are few and far between, but Yooka-Laylee is set to change that this week. Beginning as a pie-in-the-sky Kickstarter project, Yooka-Laylee garnered some serious attention from gamers who managed to provide more than enough funding for the game. It’s a throwback to the collect-a-thon games of yesteryear, much like Super Mario, Sonic, and it’s most obvious inspiration, Banjo-Kazooie.

With some quality pedigree in the development team (with some members being a part of the original Banjo-Kazooiestudio, Rare), Yooka-Laylee is looking to be a love-letter to long-time gamers and to remind the new generation of the colourful jumping days of the 90s.

Crawl

Release date: 11 April 2017 (Xbox One, PS4, previously available on PC)

Crawl takes the formula of a local multiplayer game and flips it on its head. Crawl pits up to four players against each other in a unique dungeon crawler where three people control monsters and one person controls the warrior in a tense 30 minute match.

While one person acts as warrior exploring the dungeon, collecting gold and buying power-ups and spells, everyone else controls the monsters and traps in the game. Everyone is vying to slay the warrior for the chance to be the one exploring the dungeons. Outside of that there is plenty to unlock from evolving monsters to more items. Crawl is a new way to play at home with friends, enemies or frenemies.