'Yooka-Laylee' Keyboard Controls: How to play on PC without a control

Impact

Yooka-Laylee, the spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie from Playtonic Games, is out on several platforms, including PC. Typically PC versions will include keyboard and mouse support for players who aren't interested in using controllers or gamepads. However, Yooka-Laylee's keyboard and mouse support is quite lacking. Here's everything you need to know if you plan on doffing a controller for Yooka-Laylee's keyboard controls, from personal experience. 

Yooka-Laylee PC Keyboard Controls: How to use a keyboard and mouse in Yooka-Laylee

When you launch Yooka-Laylee without a controller hooked up, you'll automatically be able to use the keyboard and mouse to control the game. There is no special setup involved. Simply use the keyboard's arrow keys to move through menu items, "Enter" to select menu items, and "Escape" to go back to the previous screen. You can cycle through the various startup menus to get started in-game, but you'll be in for a somewhat unpleasant surprise. 

Unfortunately, if you go into the Settings menu, you will not find a menu for key bindings for the keyboard and mouse control selection. You cannot edit the keys for certain actions, and there is no way to tell in-game which keys do what. According to some fans, like Redditor elmapuddy, there's no real way to substitute certain keys, either. 

The game was clearly meant to be played with a controller, as Playtonic Games indicated even about the pre-release Yooka-Laylee Toybox Demo, and unfortunately even button labels in-game still retain controller button images. There is no imagery depicting keyboard buttons within the menus or the game itself. 

Hopefully, this means a patch will be incoming soon to fix this rather jarring issue, but know for now you can play with mouse and keyboard. It just won't be optimal by any means. 

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