Yooka-Replaylee – The Definitive Collectathon Revival

• DEVELOPER: Playtonic Games
• PUBLISHER: Playtonic Friends, PM Studios, Inc.
• PLATFORMS: PC, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2
• GENRE: Platformer
• RELEASE DATE: October 9, 2025 
• STARTING PRICE: TBA
• REVIEWED VERSION: PC

I can’t even begin to describe the fun I had playing Yooka-Replaylee. As someone who missed the boat on the 2017 original, this definitive, remastered, and enhanced edition is a perfect platforming experience. Although the core loop of collecting 300 book pages is admittedly repetitive, the game shines through its diverse worlds, mini-games, challenging bosses, and varied enemies. It’s a beautifully animated adventure that always encourages you to be on the move, constantly upgrading your skills and enjoying really great art style and graphics.

Uncover New Worlds and Abilities

As mentioned, the core story sends you on a quest to recover Pagies, or stolen magical book pages, from the villain called CEO Capital B across a series of imaginative worlds. The narrative also touches on the connection between protagonists Yooka and Laylee. Unlike some platformers, Yooka-Replaylee keeps its storytelling simple. Instead of long dialogue sequences (like those in Ruffy and the Riverside), it relies on brief, animated cutscenes and short character chats. In other words, gameplay remains center stage, with the story naturally progressing as you unlock and explore new areas.

You’ll encounter a vast array of characters throughout your journey. At the start of each world, certain characters offer shops where you can purchase cosmetics, new abilities, and gameplay perks, like increasing your maximum health or adding a challenge, such as taking damage from falling. This system requires you to manage multiple currencies:

1. Coins – The most common currency, collected everywhere on the map and primarily used for cosmetic items.
2. Feathers – These come in different colors corresponding to each world and are essential for purchasing new abilities and character upgrades.

The game also features a unique game-within-a-game element: an arcade console you can find in every world. The game has completely revamped the infamous Rextro’s arcade levels, replacing them with a new mode called “Rextro Bytes Back.” This new challenge introduces isometric puzzle-style gameplay and a playable dinosaur character.

World Built for Exploration, Not Frustration

The control system itself has been completely redone from the ground up for more precise and snappier character movement, with animations tweaked to remove “dead space,” allowing moves to flow seamlessly into each other. Further streamlining the experience, the rolling move no longer uses stamina, and standard jumps have been adjusted to cover the distance previously requiring a double jump.

The game grants you immense freedom in how you traverse the world and approach challenges. As a chameleon, Yooka can adopt special stances, such as steel to resist being blown away, and use his unique ability to fire projectiles like cannon shots or elemental attacks (fire and water) to solve puzzles. Coupled with abilities like flying, rolling, and temporarily going invisible, you have multiple ways to attempt every challenge. The sheer variety of movement ensures you’re never restricted in how you explore the expansive world.

The combat system is straightforward and fluid. Your protagonists have a comprehensive move set, including basic attacks, special moves, and a useful smash down ability to handle various enemy types. The enemies themselves, such as exploding robot ducks or simple-minded Yetis, are varied but deliberately easy, often serving as fun distractions rather than proper challenges. Each world features boss battles that are enjoyable as they require you to quickly adapt to a pattern or mechanic, but they’re your classic type of bosses you’ll often find in platformers.

True Collectathon Where No Two Challenges Are Alike

Since the gameplay revolves around collecting the Pagies, this is, fundamentally, a proper collectathon. However, the act of collecting is never the same. What makes this game so much fun is the huge variety in how you earn each page. For example, you might have to solve a creative puzzle (like a memory game), or perhaps you’ll need to find a hidden button to unlock its cage. This constant shift in requirements ensures you’ll never get bored during your collecting quest.

Beyond the Pagies, each map features other key collectibles, notably the Ghost Writers, the necessary Molecules and many other things. Collecting these Molecules is particularly fun, as they allow you to transform into different useful formations. For example, in the snow world, you can turn into a snowplow to clear massive snowball. Also, fast travel points are scattered generously across the map. Additionally, you can spend Coins to reveal the exact locations of every Page on the map.

All the worlds all interconnected via central intermission areas, which themselves are linked to one another. This unique design allows you to fast-travel and quickly jump between zones, easily reaching whichever world you want to explore next:

1. Hivory Towers: The central corporate headquarters and hub world.
2. Tribalstack Tropics: A lush, tropical island environment with dense jungles and ancient ruins.
3. Glitterglaze Glacier: A frosty, icy biome featuring slick terrain and winter-themed puzzles.
4. Moodymaze Marsh: A swampy, murky marshland with sticky mud and quicksand traps.
5. Capital Cashino: Casino-themed world with neon lights and slot machines.
6. Galleon Galaxy: A space-themed world that introduces zero-gravity platforming and futuristic machinery.

Polished Presentation, Persistent Progress

The game delivers a visually appealing experience with 4K visuals, updated lighting, and sharper character models, improving the original’s colorful open worlds. Beyond the graphical upgrade, a new collectible currency called Q.U.I.D.S is available. This currency can be spent on customization options and an expanded Tonics system for ability upgrades.

I experienced no FPS drops or graphical glitches, but I did stumble upon a few game-breaking bugs. These mainly involved the map markers failing to load or the game crashing unexpectedly. The great news, however, is that the game features a reliable, constant auto-save, so you never lose your progress when an issue occurs.

Yooka-Replaylee is definitely not a game you’ll complete in one sitting. While the core loop of collecting pages varies, the sheer amount of necessary backtracking and collecting can eventually feel repetitive or even boring before you reach the final boss. While backtracking is minimized thanks to the convenient teleportation system, there is a minor annoyance with collecting. Even after items have been claimed, you can still touch them when you come back later in their transparent state, which offers no reward besides giving you coins.

Really Fun Platformer

In the end, I was deeply impressed with the stunning graphics, smooth performance, and overall fun factor. The game offers tons of collectibles for 100% completionists, but it respects your time. You don’t need to fully clear every world to progress; you can collect roughly half of the available Pagies to move forward, letting the rest add up naturally as you keep playing, If you’re a fan of platformers looking for a quality and fun experience, Yooka-Replaylee is absolutely worth picking up.

Review copy provided by the publisher

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