Yooka-Replaylee

When a number of former Rare employees founded their own game studio back in 2015, they toyed with the idea of ​​making a sequel to Banjo-Kazooie, which they had been behind when they were employed by Rare. Although they couldn't use the name, as Rare had the rights to it, they could use their vast experience to create a game that could just as well have been a sequel to the Rare classic. The result was the game studio Playtonic and the game they dreamed of making was the 3D platformer Yooka-Laylee, which was released in the spring of 2017.

We are now writing in 2025 and to mark the 10th anniversary of the founding of Playtonic, the same creators have now delivered a thorough remake of the game that helped define the studio they are today. Yooka-Replaylee is a tribute to the original Yooka-Laylee and is a classic 3D platformer that takes me back 25-30 years - for better or worse. But mostly for the better.

You play as the duo of the lizard Yooka and the bat Laylee, who are hunting for the evil Capital B, a big villainous bee who has stolen The One Book - the book to rule them all, you could say. Everything that is written in that book comes true, so it would be pretty bad if a villain like Capital B got his hands... or wings, on that book. In fact, he has stolen all the books in the whole world so that he can rewrite the universe.

Fortunately, a full 300 pages from the big book managed to tear themselves free before Capital B got hold of it, and these are now spread across a number of large and extensive worlds. The pages are mostly hidden behind puzzles, some of them have been captured by Capital B's henchmen, while others have just landed in hard-to-reach places around. Yooka and Laylee now embark on a great and dangerous adventure to find all 300 pages.

Our two friends travel through a handful of quite large levels/worlds and they are simply filled to the brim with puzzles, challenges, lots of funny characters to solve tasks for, a wide variety of mini-games, and bosses to defeat. Everywhere there are hidden coins, hidden quills, hidden ghostwriters, mysterious glowing creatures to catch, and the missing pages from the book. Finally, there are also some game coins for some old arcade machines that are placed around, so you can play some fun little arcade games with the dinosaur Rextro at the centre.

In this remake, the levels have actually been filled with even more things than before. Firstly, there are now 300 saved pages, compared to 145 pages in the original game from 2017. Several of the challenges around the levels have been redesigned, there are new enemies and new hidden goodies to find, and the levels have generally been given a serious overhaul, although they are heavily based on those from the original game.

One of the problems in the original game was that the worlds were actually so large that they were difficult to find their way around and it took a long time to move around, but the remake has solved that with Mark the Bookmark, a bookmark you can wake up - Mark is always asleep when you meet him - and the various bookmarks act as fast travel points that you can use if you want. It's a good addition, which you can also ignore if you prefer to play in the way the original game was designed.

In addition to the traditional 3D platform gameplay, there are, as mentioned earlier, plenty of mini-games around. In addition to the quite entertaining arcade machines, you can also save a skeleton from being boiled alive by cannibals, help a cloud with urination problems, participate in quiz shows, race in old mine carts together with Kartos (the mine carts' answer to Kratos) and much more in the hunt for the missing pages. The mini-games are simple and sometimes quite quickly over, but they are enjoyable and create good variety for the game.

Despite its friendly appearance, Yooka-Replaylee is not a particularly easy game, especially not for the younger players in the family. However, there is a way around this, with 35 different so-called Vendi Tonics that you can buy. These can both make the game easier, but also more difficult if you want a steeper challenge. For example, there are tonics that remove all hearts, except for one, from your energy meter and another that gives enemies more energy, and if you want it easier, there are other tonics that give three extra hearts to your energy and that make enemies only need one hit to die. Finally, there are also tonics that give enemies big funny googly eyes, one which gives the graphics an 8-bit look, a CRT look, or make the graphics black and white. There are many fun tonics that you can unlock and in addition there are more than 100 different clothing items for your awkward partners, so there is plenty to play with here.

Yooka-Replaylee may not be terribly different from other games in the genre, but perhaps the most important thing is that it exudes joy of play, inventiveness, and just good energy from start to finish. Even though the camera can tease a little and some of the challenges are a bit frustrating, you can't get mad at this game. It's about exploring, about playing and you're pretty much constantly discovering new things. It's hard not to smile at the dry humour or when our two characters get into a good verbal ping-pong with Shovel Knight and point out that his humour is just as flat as his pixel graphics.

We've already touched on this a bit, but Yooka-Relaylee has been updated in a number of areas compared to the original. In addition to the things we've already touched on, Yooka and Laylee in this new version have access to their full move set from the start, they've also had new moves added, the controls have been tightened up, the story has been rewritten a bit (with fun references to the first game), and the arcade machines are now also gathered in an arcade hall, where you run around and play them as you unlock them in the different levels.

The graphics have also been heavily updated. This applies to new in-game textures, new menus, a new interface, lots of new objects in the environment, and grass, snow, and mist on the ground which now react to our two heroes when they move around - especially the way the mist moves looks quite convincing - the snow, not so much. The graphics are just as playful and happy as the rest of the game, the colours are vibrant and the many different characters are well designed and won't scare anyone.

The sound is also excellent, with good voices and a soundtrack that comes from David Wise, who was behind the soundtrack for Donkey Kong Country and Grant Kirkhope, who has made music for Banjo-Kazooie and they have created a classic soundtrack that fits very well with the light tone of the rest of the game. In this remake, the soundtrack has been re-recorded by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra in Prague, but the original soundtrack can be opened up via these tonics as previously mentioned.

Yooka-Replaylee is a truly complete remake and it's a wonderful taste of the past. The joy of playing oozes throughout, however, today's gamers may be frustrated by not being held by the hand and constantly being led in the right direction with directional arrows. Still, Yooka-Replaylee is about exploring, playing, and having fun and not getting to the end as quickly as possible.

Yooka-Replaylee is an oasis of play and joy in the crowd of grey action role-playing games and Dark Souls clones that we get in abundance and even though there are still some issues with the camera and the game doesn't revolutionise the genre, this is one of the best games you can get in 2025 if you miss the old classic 3D platformers from a bygone era.