If you cast your mind back to 2017, you might remember Playtonic’s Yooka-Laylee arriving on the scene. In it, you steer a bat-and-chameleon team as a playful nod to Rare’s Banjo and Kazooie, exploring a 3D world packed with platforms while you gather quills and pagies along the way. It was a charming game, even if it didn’t quite nail everything. As we said in our original Eurogamer review: “Playtonic’s homage to Banjo is a lighthearted, irreverent platformer hampered by inconsistent controls and a slight lack of brilliance.”
Jump ahead to 2025, and Playtonic is trying to address those issues by bringing Yooka-Laylee back in a refreshed edition known as Yooka-Replaylee, a version I got to preview at Gamescom.
As expected, the original’s playful, comedic spirit still comes through clearly. Clara Lost, for example, shows up with her bony outline, and in my time with Yooka-Replaylee, I had to pull her out of a cauldron so no bandits would try to turn her calcium-rich body into dinner (and honestly, I can’t picture it tasting great). The escape required a little fire breathing and tail-whirling to scare those troublemakers off. That’s very much the Yooka-Laylee vibe you’d expect. Still, this time the team has tightened up its bright, lovable platforming with moves that feel smoother overall. Rolling and jumping now blend together in a more natural, unified action, making climbs up risky platforms feel noticeably more fluid. Roll, jump, flutter—and off you go!
Once Clara was safe, I climbed the top of a temple in Tribalstack Tropics to grab Shovel Knight’s treasure, using that same approach. The actions are simple and straightforward, with the duo performing small hops that transition neatly into bigger powered jumps.
One of the most meaningful and welcome upgrades in this remaster is that rolling doesn’t drain stamina anymore, which makes moving around feel far less restrictive. At the same time, the bulbs needed for Yooka to breathe ice during this stretch have been placed in a more helpful way for the climb (though I did lose a bit of time trying to handle a tilting platform, mainly because I kept forgetting I could freeze it in place—definitely a “me on too little sleep” moment, not a weakness in the game).
At this stage, even after only a short taste, I can easily imagine younger players—maybe even a bit younger than I am—enjoying hours with Yooka-Replaylee. For context, I’m thinking of kids around my own’s age range—12 and 10. There are collectibles to hunt down, secrets to uncover, opponents to take on, and a splash of colors that feels like a cheerful kaleidoscope. While the experience stays fairly straightforward overall, it genuinely made me smile and laugh.
The main question now is whether Playtonic has added enough to bring people back into the world of Yooka-Laylee. The studio has included more pagies to collect, smoother animations, and—most importantly—refined the controls, which together make for a more satisfying package. Still, with Nintendo just releasing its massive, earth-shaking (very literally) Donkey Kong Bananza, I can’t help wondering whether Yooka-Replaylee has quite enough fresh appeal to set itself apart from the broader platformer crowd.
That said, if Playtonic prices Yooka-Replaylee fairly, it should be a very enjoyable revisit for fans of the original—while also serving as a mild, welcoming entry point for anyone new to solo platform games. And honestly, that’s more than okay.