If you cast your minds back to 2017, you will remember Playtonic’s Yooka-Laylee first making its way onto the scene. Players were given control of a bat and chameleon duo in an homage to Rare’s Banjo and Kazooie, who together could make their way through the 3D platform-riddled world collecting quills, pagies as such as they went. It was a charming little number, but it had its niggles. As our original Eurogamer review noted: “Playtonic’s tribute to Banjo is a gentle, irreverent platformer let down by spotty handling and a slight shortage of genius”.
Fast forward to 2025, though, and Playtonic is looking to address that by re-releasing Yooka-Laylee in a spruced up package known as Yooka-Replaylee, and I was able to take a quick look at it at Gamescom.
As you would expect, the original’s whimsical and comic charm is still there. Characters such as Clara Lost of course pop up with her bony form, and during my time with Yooka-Replaylee I needed to liberate her from a cauldron to ensure no bandits attempt to make a meal out her calcium rich body (I mean, I can’t imagine it being all that tasty, anyway). This involved a spot of fire breathing and tail spinning to rid those blighters from the area. So far, so Yooka-Laylee. But, what the team has done this time, is given its cute and colourful platformer controls that allow for a much freer flow. Rolling and jumping melds into one more fluid and natural process, making those climbs up perilous platforms overall a much slicker experience. Roll, jump, flutter and away!
After freeing Clara, I climbed up to the top of a temple in Tribalstack Tropics to get Shovel Knight his treasure by doing just that. The mechanics were simple and easy to execute, with the duo performing small hops to larger powered up jumps effortlessly.
A more notable and welcome change for this remaster, though, is that rolling no longer drains stamina, again adding to the efficacy of getting around. Meanwhile, the bulbs that allow Yooka to breathe ice during this section were more readily placed to assist with the climb (though I did spend too long trying to negotiate one tilting platform, purely because I forgot I had the power to freeze it in place, but that was definitely a ‘me on too little sleep’ issue rather than the game itself).
Right now, and after only a short time with it, Yooka-Replaylee is something I can absolutely picture children perhaps a little younger than my own – who are 12 and 10 – whiling away some pleasurable hours with. There are items to collect, secrets to discover, baddies to bop and the colours are a kaleidoscope of joy. Even though overall it was relatively simple, it made me chuckle and smile.
The question now is has Playtonic done enough to entice players back to the world of Yooka-Laylee? The team has added more pagies to collect, refined animations and of course made adjustments to its controls, and all of these make for a pleasing package. However, in a time when the likes of Nintendo has just released its bombastic, earth-shattering (quite literally) Donkey Kong Bananza, I am still unsure there is quite enough fresh meat here to allow Yooka-Replaylee to fully stand out from the platforming crowd.
That being said, if Playtonic prices it right, Yooka-Replaylee will surely be a welcome return for fans of the original, or even serve as a gentle entry into the world of solo platform gaming. And, there’s nothing wrong with that.