Yooka-Laylee Exclusive Mode – What is it, How to Increase FPS

Fans launching Yooka-Laylee on PC have found themselves curious, as they game offers two different launch options. When starting up the newly released indie game, players can choose to simply play Yooka-Laylee, or launch it in Exclusive Mode. But, what is Exclusive Mode, and why is it important for players to know and understand? In this article we’ll do our best to explain Yooka-Laylee Exclusive Mode, what it means, and how it can potentially increase your FPS in Yooka-Laylee.

What is Exclusive Mode?

When you run a game in Exclusive Mode, you basically give that application full control of the screen’s output. This means that the computer only focuses on rendering that application and the content included within in. Exclusive Mode is usually labeled as Full Screen mode in most games.

A good way to think of Exclusive Mode is this – when running in Exclusive Mode, the computer focuses on rendering the application itself, and nothing else. When running in non-Exclusive Mode (or Windowed mode) the rendering is sent to the windows manager, which then manages where the content is displayed on the screen. This uses more resources, as it has to render the application’s content on top of the OS’s system.

Why Does Yooka-Laylee Have This Option?

Long story short, Yooka-Laylee is built with the Unity engine, which doesn’t offer a way to play games in Exclusive Fullscreen Mode unless they are launched with a specific command line. By ticking the Exclusive Mode option, you’re basically activating a specific command line, which forces the game to load in with Exclusive Mode activated.

Why Bother With Exclusive Mode?

While modern machines and OSes have minimized the impact created by running games in non-Exclusive Mode, there can still be a pretty impactful effect on older hardware. Running the game in Exclusive Mode (Fullscreen) allows your computer to focus solely on rendering the game’s graphics and content, which can make for a much smoother experience overall.

We’ve seen some reports of players experiencing FPS (frames per seconds) issues with Yooka-Laylee on PC. This is because the game natively launched in non-Exclusive Mode, which is basically windowed mode, which uses more resources on your computer. The majority of users may not see an impact from this, but those with older hardware could notice some kinks when trying to play the game at all Ultra settings.

Ultimately, the use of Exclusive Mode is entirely up to you and your system. If you have a high-end computer, then chances are you’ll be fine running the game in regular non-Exclusive mode. But, if you want to milk every last inch of FPS out of the game, you’ll want to make sure you tick the second option whenever you launch Yooka-Laylee from the Steam client.

Now that you understand Exclusive Mode, and what it means, be sure to head back over to our Yooka-Laylee game hub for more helpful articles like, how to find all the Butterfly Boosters and how to find all of Trowzer’s locations. We’ll have plenty of helpful content coming in the next few days, so check back often for updated material and information!