Yooka-Replaylee Demo Impressions

Playtonic is planning its return of the iconic Yooka-Laylee video game with Yooka-Replaylee, which is a complete remaster of the original title. Recently, Playtonic Games released the official Demo for the remaster, and we have been playing it for a bit.

In case you aren’t too familiar with Yooka-Laylee, the game draws heavy inspiration from Banjo-Kazooie, both in spirit and design. It’s a vibrant 3D platformer filled with quirky characters, sprawling worlds, and plenty of collectibles to chase down. What makes this connection even more meaningful is that several members of the development team at Playtonic Games previously worked at Rare, the legendary studio behind Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong Country. Their experience shaping those iconic titles shines through in Yooka-Laylee’s whimsical humor, nostalgic tone, and classic platforming gameplay.

From the moment you step into the game, the graphical improvements are immediately noticeable. Yooka-Replaylee retains the familiar charm and core elements fans have come to love, but now presents them with significantly enhanced visual quality.

The demo for Yooka-Replaylee may be brief, but it effectively showcases the core mechanics and overall tone of the game. As I played, it frequently brought to mind Astro Bot, particularly in how it handles movement and gameplay flow—an encouraging comparison given that both titles belong to the same genre.

Yooka-Replaylee not only comes with gameplay and visual improvements, it comes with new challenges and the improvement of the Rextro Arcade mini game. Rextro Bytes Back is a new mini-game in Yooka-Replaylee and improved on what was in the original version. The updated mode comes with eight arcade machines, and this time it features a playable version of the dinosaur.

Other improvements that I thought were needed were the camera controls, because in the original, I found that to be a great negative. There are even new collectibles to search for in this remake, and there’s now a tracker for which challenges you aim to complete. 

In the demo, I thought it was very engaging and not something that would get you too frustrated. 

Overall, based on the demo, Yooka-Replaylee’s enemies are visually better, gameplay mechanics feel great, and performance for me on PC via Steam was smooth not really any hiccups. Cutscenes are great and maybe even better.

Fans of the original game are likely going to be happy when the full release comes out. Playtonic added more to what is already a classic and throwback 3D Platformer. This might as close as we’ll get to a new Banjo-Kazooie game in the modern era. 

Yooka-Replaylee is set to launch in 2025 for Xbox, PlayStation 5, PC via Steam, and most likely Switch 2.