What is Yooka-Replaylee?

Following the wave of many revival projects during Kickstarter’s early years, Yooka-Laylee from Playtonic promised a grand return to the style of 3D collectathon platformer many cherished from the N64 days. But despite much promise, the original release had a few issues.

Years later, and after learning from projects like the fantastic Yooka-Laylee & The Impossible Lair, Playtonic is back at it again with Yooka-Replaylee, a ground-up remake of the original Yooka-Laylee. Using the original game as a base, Playtonic revisits the buddy duo’s Banjo-Kazooie-inspired first adventure.

Does this golden jiggy complete the puzzle? Or is it a bad banana? After adventuring alongside Yooka and Laylee for many hours, I walked away excited for the buddy duo’s future 3D platforming adventures.

This game was reviewed on PC

Publisher/Developer: PM Studios, Playtonic Games
Release Date: October 9th, 2025
Price: $29.99
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, PC

Turning the Paggie – Premise of Yooka-Replaylee

• Yooka and Laylee unlock their original abilities after freeing the legendary One-Note, unknowingly helping Capital B reclaim its scattered pages across Hiveory Towers.
• The story remixes the original game with witty 90s-style banter between the duo and quirky NPCs across five vibrant worlds.

The game begins with Yooka and Laylee recounting one of their most legendary adventures, talking to the nightly One-Note. This legendary book was something the buddy duo discovered while exploring an underground area, and upon freeing it, they are given access to all their abilities from the original Yooka-Laylee.

But Capital B wants the One-Note to control everything, capturing the book and, in the process, spreading its 300 pages throughout Hiveory Towers. Yooka and Laylee set out to collect all the pages, blissfully unaware that they are giving them to Capital B in the process.

The story is a charming, streamlined remix of the original game’s narrative. My personal highlights were the 90’s Rare-inspired banter Yooka and Laylee have with the many NPCs throughout the game’s five worlds. Laylee’s sass is paired with Yooka’s more level-headed nature, leading to fun conversations. Talking to Trowzer, a ridiculous but charming-looking salesman, features some of the game’s strongest comedic moments.

Hearing him ramble off about making sales while pulling out an oversized 90’s phone, all the while Laylee insults him and Yooka tries to be the level-headed nice one, made me smile a few times. This continues with the lovable pixelated Rextro, the friendly Tonic-vender Vendi, and the enjoyable conversations between Dr. Quack and Capital B.

It’s a well-rounded cast of characters that both honors 90’s Rareware character tropes while going a little beyond with originality, of their own.

A Dressed Up Lizzard – Controls & Character Abilities of Yooka-Replaylee

• Yooka and Laylee’s full moveset returns, including gliding, rolling, tongue grabs, and Laylee’s sonar blast for revealing secrets and stunning enemies.
• Gameplay now uses a regenerating stamina wheel instead of an energy meter, making movement smoother and more responsive than the original.

Speaking of unlocking abilities, Yooka and Laylee’s moveset returns from the original Yooka-Laylee. The buddy duo can jump and team up to glide. Other helpful moves include Yooka’s rolling and tongue ability, while Laylee can use a sonar blast to reveal hidden objects and stun enemies.

The biggest improvement over the original Yooka-Laylee is how great it feels to execute the duo’s vast moveset. No longer tied to an energy meter (now tied to a large stamina wheel that regenerates over time), and everything feels responsive. This contrasts with the original Yooka-Laylee, where many actions felt sluggish and slow.

Adapting to the World – Transformations in Yooka-Replaylee

• Each of the game’s five transformation forms adds variety to Yooka-Replaylee.
• By collecting Policues (atom-looking objects), these forms are unlocked and can be used in different ways: exploration, puzzle solving, or even leveraged for the world’s boss encounter.

While Yooka and Laylee’s moveset is equipped to explore the game’s vast five worlds, the duo can transform into one of five forms to help complete challenges and access those elusive Pagies.

You unlock these transformations by collecting Policues (atom-looking objects). They are quite creative and turn the buddy duo into thematically fitting forms for each world.

My favorite forms were the pirate ship and a school of parana’s. The former led to one of the game’s best boss encounters. Meanwhile, the latter had me play through a 2.5D underwater challenge, evoking memories of water levels in Donkey Kong Country.

Putting in the Missing Jiggy – Paggies & Game Progression in Yooka-Replaylee

• Game Progression is tied to Paggies, a main collectible that unlocks checkpoints in the Hivory Tower’s hub-world. You do not need to collect every paggie to complete the main story. This gives players freedom in how much they engage with each of the game’s five worlds.
• Every World has 150 Feathers, and they can be used to upgrade Yooka & Laylee, while also unlocking costumes.

By using both their varied moveset and colorful transformation abilities, Yooka and Laylee venture across five varied worlds, with collecting Paggies being the duo’s end goal. These golden pieces of paper unlock checkpoints in the Hivory Tower’s hub world, with each gate requiring a specific number.

Similar to games like Super Mario 64, game progression is very flexible. You don’t need to collect everything to see the credits roll. This represents a significant quality of life improvement, as players can spend as much time as they want in each given world.

Alongside Pagies, there are several collectables. Every world has 150 feathers, which can be traded in for health/stamina upgrades and world-themed costumes for the duo. Alongside feathers, there are golden coins to collect.

Gotta Pay ‘Em All – Gold Coins & Tonics

• Yooka-Replaylee features Tonics, game modifiers that players can equip. They change up aspects of the game (visuals, difficulty, etc) to make the game as easy or as challenging as the player wants it to be.
• Gold Coins unlock full costumes and outfit parts for Yooka and Laylee, including nostalgic cameos and Rare-inspired outfits.

These can be used to purchase tonics, which are equipable modifiers. They can change how the game looks, add additional difficulty to the game (like giving you fall damage or turning a one-hit point mode), and more.

Tonics have been a mechanic for all the Yooka-Laylee games, with their biggest impact being in the challenging Impossible Lair. Their return in Yooka-Replaylee is Playtonic’s way of adding accessibility options. Simultaneously, it was not directly impacting the game’s core level design/gameplay.

Alongside Tonics, Gold Coins can be used to buy full costumes and outfit parts for the duo. They are quite nice, including cameo outfits and homages to rare legends of old.

Quite the Odyssey – Gameplay/Level Design of Yooka-Replaylee

• Yooka-Replaylee offers densely packed worlds filled with collectibles and layered challenges, rewarding exploration with smooth, responsive controls.
• Inspired by Super Mario Odyssey, each path to a single Paggie unfolds into multiple mini-adventures, making every action feel meaningful.

Yooka and Laylee’s adventure has them overcoming countless challenges. Each world is brimming with things to find and collect, leveraging the game’s fantastic controls to great effect.

Casually exploring the game’s worlds reminded me of Super Mario Odyssey. So much so that Yooka-Replaylee feels like Playtonic looking at that experience and applying that Nintendo polish to the skeleton of Yooka-Laylee. Where’s in the original Yooka-Laylee, it took a while to collect just one Paggie. The path leading to that one Paggie leads you to several small adventures.

For example, climbing up a large spiral mountain led me to explore an isometric dungeon with various challenges to complete. Then, I came across a set of red coins to collect on the climb up, leading to another paggie to be collected. Lastly, I helped a canon shoot something in the distance at the very top of the area, earning me yet another Paggie.

I always felt rewarded for doing anything in Yooka-Replaylee, and this across the entire package.

Life in the Mines – Kartos’ and Rextro Levels in Yooka-Replaylee

Yooka and Laylee aren’t the only characters playable. Rextro the pixelated Dinosaur and Kartos the talking minecart return in Yooka-Replaylee, each offering reworked gameplay.

Rextro Levels in Yooka-Replaylee

• Rextro’s arcade-style levels in Yooka-Laylee channel the charm of Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, offering bite-sized, puzzle-focused platforming challenges.
• Each level features a collectible Play Coin, which rewards players with a valuable Paggie upon completion — a clever incentive that ties directly into progression.

With Rextro’s levels, they take on a Captain Toad: Treasure style approach, where you use his extended chomp ability to solve puzzle-focused platforming levels. Each level has a Play Coin to collect, with each one granting Yooka & Laylee a Paggie. The game has a couple of these levels, and they were all enjoyable.

I enjoyed how Rextro’s chomp ability was utilized, both in minor combat encounters and navigating these short levels. Some of the challenges include using your chomp to send back incoming projectiles and moving blocks around while avoiding incoming fireballs.

Kartos Levels in Yooka-Replaylee

• Kartos’ minecart levels return in Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair, echoing the gem-collecting thrills of the original game — but with significantly improved controls.
• They’re a standout feature that blends classic minecart chaos with modern design sensibilities

Regarding Kartos’ levels, they are similar to the original Yooka-Laylee stages, where you collect gems to collect paggies. The main difference is that the overall controls have been massively improved, with canon fire and well-timed jumps exhibiting a great level of responsiveness.

The level design is slightly more open, with each level having alternate paths that lead you to additional gems to collect. Getting everything in one of these levels feels satisfying, as they reward you with three paggies instead of just one or two.

It’s Tail Time – Boss Encounters in Yooka-Replaylee

Every world has one major boss encounter to take down, with each one feeling different. One had me use my rolling ability up a ramp, smashing into a wall’s set of teeth. Moreover, another boss had me ride Kartos the minecart and shoot at a Kinect-looking creature along the rails.

They were all fun to fight and were a nice reward after exploring the world.

A Refined Lizard – Presentation

• The game’s visual identity is more than just eye candy — it’s a love letter to fans of Donkey Kong Country, Banjo-Kazooie, and the golden era of 3D platformers.
• With its polished animation and whimsical world-building, Yooka-Replaylee stands as a shining example of how to modernize a beloved retro aesthetic.

Maintaining the iconic Banjo-Kazooie-inspired art style, Yooka-Replaylee shines. Every world contained bright colors and areas filled with fun-looking landmarks to discover.

From the opening Tibal Tropics level featuring colorful plant life and ruins to explore, cosmic galaxies to sail across, and the ever-expanding, varied Hivory Towers to explore, every location stands out and feels unique. This is supported by a lived-in world with many unique-looking NPCs spread throughout the world.

From cute characters reminiscent of Rareware’s origins to new character designs standing out, it was a treat discovering new faces to converse with.

The animation work is the final standout, as all of Yooka and Laylee’s moves look smooth and well-animated. Overall, I just loved how cartoony the entire game looked, and it’s a great modernization of the iconic Rareware art style established with games Donkey Kong Country and Banjo-Kazooie.

A Nostalgic Bop – Music of Yooka-Replaylee

• Orchestrated remixes of fan-favorite tracks like Tribalstack Tropics and Glitterglaze Glacier, now enhanced with full orchestral arrangements that add depth and cinematic flair.
• New original tracks, especially the upbeat Rextro themes, channel the whimsical energy of Super Mario Odyssey and bring a playful charm to the retro-inspired levels.

Composed by the talented team of Grant Kirkhope, David Wise, Steve Burke, Matt Griffin, and Dan Murdoch, Yooka-Replaylee honors the charming score of the original Yooka-Laylee while adding some new compositions to the mix.

The returning tracks are redone with a full orchestra, adding more weight to the game’s overall sound. I was particularly impressed with the Tribalstack Tropics and Glitterglaze Glacier remixes. The ocestral flair reminded me of fond memories of Banjo-Kazooie’s levels.

The new tracks add to the experience, with the Rextro tracks evoking memories of Mario Odyssey. The bright, boppy nature helps make the retro Dino’s misadventures memorable experiences.

Rolling Around – Performance

Playing Yooka-Replaylee on my Lenovo Legion gaming laptop, containing an AMD Ryzen 9 6000 Series CPU, AMD Radeon 6850M XT GPU, and 32 GB of RAM, the game ran at max settings at a smooth frame rate. Outside of some stutters early on, I maintained over 100 FPS during my entire adventure.

Closing Thoughts on Yooka-Replaylee

As someone who enjoyed their time with the original Yooka-Laylee, I was eager to see how Playtonic applied lessons learned from Impossible Lair and other modern platformers into this revisit of their original adventure. With a strong presentation, fantastic controls, improved gameplay, and a combined combo of improved progress and level design, Yooka-Replaylee is a fantastic experience.

It is the realization of what the team at Playtonic set out to create back in 2017, and I’m eager to see what the team has in store for their next adventure for Yooka & Laylee.

Note – A code from the publisher was provided for the purposes of this review.

Score – 9 out of 10

Pros:

• Strong Presentation
• Improved Level Design and Gameplay from the original Yooka-Laylee
• Kartos and Rextro Levels are fun and add variety to the game
• Tons to see and collect, with a strong progression system
• Boss Battles are fun and varied
• Runs great on PC
• Strong Quality of Life/Accessibility Improvements over Yooka-Laylee through Tonics
• Can easily get around the game’s world via warping around checkpoints

Cons

• Boss encounters can be too easy