Yooka-Replaylee Preview: The platforming duo is back and ready to take on Astro Bot and Donkey Kong

Back in 2017, the platformer Yooka-Laylee rewound the clock with its colourful graphics and many collectables that brought us back to the Nintendo 64 era of 3D platformers. Now the developer Playtonic is once again looking to the past as they are remastering Yooka-Laylee under the new title Yooka-Replaylee.

While we were supposed to play the game for ourselves at Gamescom, unfortunately our preview fell through due to hardware issues. Luckily, we did manage to get an interview with Ross Bullimore, the design director on the title.

Like many of the developer's employees, Bullimore started out at Rare, and has been with Playtonic since 2015 when the British studio started its development on Yooka-Laylee thanks to a successful Kickstarter that raised over £2 million. With it being ten years since they started, a lot has obviously happened since, and Bullimore told us that the team has introduced plenty of improvements to make the game feel more contemporary.

"We've gone through and upgraded the game to better fit modern players sensibilities. With the first project, we were very much trying to make a game that was true to the N64 platformers that we had worked on before. Whereas for this one we wanted it to appeal to a broader audience, and we think modern gamers have got demands for features in games that weren't in those originals. So we've upgraded a lot of stuff."

Bullimore explains that the main improvement is in terms of the controls, which in Yooka-Replaylee are much more reactive and precise. Besides this, Playtonic has also added a host of quality-of-life features, such as an in-game map and warp points that lets you fast travel.

New players are not the only ones who might enjoy Yooka-Replaylee. As the name suggests, returning players will also have a reason to replay the game, as the open areas are now filled with even more collectibles and activities than before.

"For the original, we did have quite a lot of feedback from people that felt that in some areas the world were a bit empty. Now there is around twice as much content, so wherever you are in the world, there's now plenty of stuff to do. There are twice as many pages, which is the main collectible in the game, as there were previously, and we've added new types of collectibles as well. We have also added cosmetics as a new feature, so that you can dress Yooka and Laylee."

While the level design remains relatively unchanged, Playtonic has made some adjustments, mainly to the way that certain mini-games functioned.

"We've gone through and redone the mine cart levels, and we've completely redone the arcade games from the original too, as we were never particularly happy with how they turned out. That's now a whole new retro adventure with a completely different art style and gameplay in those arcade games."

When the original Yooka-Laylee released back in 2017, the 3D platformer market was pretty much only dominated by Mario and smaller indie titles. Since then, we've seen major players jump on the rising platform as well. For Playtonic, the renewed competition and success of other 3D platformers was another motivational factor in giving Yooka-Laylee new life, Bullimore explains.

"Games like Astro Bot and the new Donkey Kong show that other companies have also got faith too that there's a market to make these games. And I think that people who played the original game are now of an age where they've maybe got children and they want to play these kind of games with them. A more experienced gamer can enjoy the game in one way, but then a younger gamer can also enjoy it, perhaps in a different way.

"We've had some very young children playing it. They weren't necessarily completing the challenges, but they just enjoyed going around the world, jumping and looking at stuff. It's just got that broad appeal where there are both quite tricky challenges, but also some easier stuff for other people. And it's nice to see other 3D platformers out there. They're really great games and they're selling well, which just shows that, hopefully, we can keep on making these kind of games."

Yooka-Replaylee is set to on October 9, 2025 for PC, Nintendo Switch 2, PS5 and Xbox Series S/X.