Yooka Laylee & Shipwreck Creek. Part Two: Tonic Trouble

In Yooka Laylee & Shipwreck Creek part one, I introduced everyone to the Yooka-Laylee property, as well as an overview of my designs for the Shipwreck Creek area that holds the Tonic Trouble dark ride.

My rendering of an overhead view of the Shipwreck Creek "land" including the queue for the "Tonic Trouble" dark ride. My intent was to clearly show the elevated queue pathway into the ship as well as communicate the overall vibe of the space.

Today, We are going to begin working through the queue for the Tonic Trouble dark ride.

First of all, I want to point out some problems I had to solve before I go into the design:

Step 1: Decide what kind of ride this will be.

Step 2: Decide a ride system and manufacturer that could conceivably provide what is needed for it to exist.

Step 3: Design the ride vehicle and figure out the overall concept behind the ride.

Step 4: Figure out some broad concepts in sketches that help me get ideas down and fleshed out.

I knew I wanted this to be a family dark ride, but when I listened to the music, I wanted a vehicle that would give me some flexibility to do some fun things, as opposed to a strictly tracked system moving at one rate of speed through show scenes. I decided on the Dynamic Attractions Dark Ride vehicle system, which allows for many range of motion effects on the vehicle itself as well as variable speeds.

Dynamic Attractions Dark Ride Vehicle Specifications

Not wanting to constrain myself to actual real-world proportions in this design, I am merely using their ride system as a form of conceit, or set of guidelines, as opposed to rigid constraints in a set of blueprints to literally build it. My strengths are in overall design and big picture concepts, not so much the granular engineering product.

With that in mind, I knew the ride vehicle needed to have a personality. In the Yooka-Laylee game world, many inanimate objects live and talk and have big googly eyes on them. I knew I wanted at least two rows of seats, and I wanted the ride vehicle to be red. That's what I started with when I did these small sketches. These were some of my initial ideas of show scenes. Many of these scenes are taking levels from the games and putting the ride vehicle through them.

Preliminary Sketches showing the original vehicle design and first concepts for show scenes

While the pipe idea above that people outside could see into was really cool, if the ride ever broke down at that spot, it would be a tight fit evacuating people off the ride safely. One could argue "Well, you just make the space larger inside to accommodate walking paths" but that just didn't seem as interesting either sitting in the vehicle or outside looking in.

The remaining sketches I ended up implementing into the final design in one way or another, as you'll see when we continue on. 

I gave the ride vehicle a name and a personality and a reason to exist in the world. I named it Hooly, which means "in a slow or gentle manner" and honestly fits quite well with the other weird names of characters in this property. I thought it would make sense to make him part of a fleet of touring vehicles for the Bee CEO character, Capital Bee at his headquarters, Hivory Towers. That's the setup for the ride vehicles and the reason there would be this kind of infrastructure at all, in my mind.

As we go on I'll get into how I setup that people are even able to get to this part of the experience from the queue inside Yooka and Laylee's ship, but it will all make sense, I promise.

Here is a rendering of the Hooly ride vehicle. A bit simple, but sometimes that's all you need. 

This ride vehicle fits in well with the established world and its other characters

Here is the attraction sign and logo, which sits elevated directly in front of the queue entrance building. In my mind it has a sandblasted and carved wood look,  followed by paint for letters and characters.

The Main Attraction sign! Look how fancy the main characters are! In my mind, the tonic spins as well.

Now, we finally get to start working through the queue itself to get on the ride. I'm excited as we begin. Here's some music to help put you in the space:

What will be in the next few posts is the full storyboards of the attraction from the beginning queue entry, all the way to the unload and exit, as well as an overhead map showing each portion. 

We finally enter through Yooka and Laylee's ship into some hidden caverns. Where will they lead?

Just for clarity, that map portion underneath the storyboards there shows the areas included in the storyboard, for the most part. 

These map cutouts underneath all the storyboards that I will be posting are taken from a larger overview map that reveals everything in the show building. 

Please come back for Part Three where we will continue our storyboards into the further reaches of the ride experience of Yooka-Laylee's Tonic Trouble!

-C