It certainly feels like 2025 has been a great year for revisiting classic platformers.

Everyone from Bubsy to Mario and even Sonic, it’s now the turn of Yooka Laylee in a fascinating return to a franchise that originally launched back in 2017 to pay homage to another classic – Banjo Kazooie.

Yooka-Replaylee is a stunningly vibrant remaster of Playtonic’s original and that was my immediate take away when booting up – just how rich and striking the color palette is comparatively. Just look at the differences in key art for starters!

But the thing I most appreciated about this re-up of the game is they haven’t just gone for a whole new lick of paint – they’ve added new content too.

Right from the word go, I felt something was different. I don’t remember this, I said to myself and turns out that’s because it wasn’t in the original game. So there’s something here for returning players, even if you 100%’d the original. But yes, Yooka-Replaylee has added new story – the opening gives a bit more context before the original’s more cold opening – and even new areas to roam around.

But what it also does is remove the need to learn new moves and just…adds them to your arsenal. A bold shift and change, no doubt, but it brings the game closer to more modern releases and a little less like the classics it was inspired by.

In return, Replaylee gives new challenges and pagies to find, dialogue, and even an all new collectible currency. It’s masterfully done as Yooka-Replaylee feels incredibly faithful and respectful of the original but is also wonderfully modernised with great quality of life updates, better controls, and it overall just feels like a better game.

Playtonic are treating their poster franchise with a level of respect you only see from the likes of Nintendo or PlayStation, it’s a really rare to see a publisher go all out to make a game look so polished and colourful, and it really does an excellent job of reintroducing the series to players to set it up for future success.

But yes, for those who don’t know or remember, Yooka Laylee was designed as something of a spiritual successor to Banjo Kazooie. With Rare and Microsoft not really making the time to revisit the series, a group of ex-developers on the games spun off and made their own studio – Playtonic – took to Kickstarter and blew the internet up in the process.

Following the rocket like success of the series, Playtonic started building their own publishing label and released some cracking little titles like Lil Gator Game and Demon Turf, and they even released a critically acclaimed sequel to Yooka Laylee – The Impossible Lair – that took a 2.5D approach!

But the question has always come back to when we’ll see the … uh…bat and dinosaur combo as the game follows that classic 3D platforming style of collecting lots of shiny artifacts, tackling tricky platforming sections, fun characters and witty, hilarious dialogue that feels so pure and comforting.

I think that’s just the warm and wonderful feeling you get playing Yooka-Replaylee is that it just feels like a game for anyone. Whether you play with your kids, you’re revisiting in later years, or you want to showcase something fun to the family. As mentioned, it’s genuiinely rare to find something like this outside of a Nintendo game but Playtonic have got the production values, as well as the level of care, attention and quality behind it.

On Steam Deck, this runs smooth as butter as well, so even if you don’t want the full 4K experience – which is absolutely worthwhile – this is also the perfect game to snuggle up on the sofa with and play during these cold, lonely winter nights.

Yooka and Laylee play together through the adventure, but each offers different ways to achieve goals, like licking up butterflies and other creatures for health and coins, rolling around on the ground to get to places more quickly or floating between platforms to get to hard to reach destinations.

You’ll swirl your way around enemies, jump on heads, smash through boxes to find hidden areas and just generally find your way around each of the game’s sizeable playground, sandbox esque areas to gather as many collectibles as you can and hit the beautiful 100% mark.

But Playtonic have just tried to enhance and enrich the game as much as they can, like adding more cosmetics for the duo and adding new tonics to mix up the gameplay in fresh and unique ways.

Everything just feels smoother, better, more enjoyable and bulkier than it was before. Even all the new content added actually enriches the experience rather than bloats the game and the quality of life updates just make everything respond and react more quickly.

This is a high quality reimagining for the duo, on a level that brings it shoulder to shoulder with other great remakes and remasters we’ve seen. Playtonic haven’t gone for a clear cash-grab here, they’ve really put time, effort and energy into this re-release and it shows and reverberates throughout at every stage.

Highly recomended whether this is your first time or third-teenth.

Verdict

Yooka-Replaylee is more than just your classic remaster, it really enhances and enriches the game to a level that puts many other publishers and studios to shame. From all the new content which feels authentic and welcome, to the quality of life improvements peppered through, the slick feeling of control, the enjoyable world filled with rich humour and stunning visuals and that infectious soundtrack, Yooka-Replaylee is an excellent reimagining for the duo and reminds us all of just what incredible talent still resides at Playtonic. We hope this isn’t the last we see of this wacky, wonderful world.

Pros

Yooka-Replaylee is out now on PC, PS, Xbox and Nintendo Switch 1/2

Played on PC

Code kindly provided by Playtonic for review purposes