Playtonic Announces Super Yooka-Laylee Kart, Built by the Team Behind Diddy Kong Racing

The custom ruleset that turns every racer invisible, strips out weight differences, and makes the whole thing a pure test of memorization and line-taking reveals what Playtonic is building. Super Yooka-Laylee Kart is not a Mario Kart competitor chasing spectacle. It is a precision arcade racer built by people who made Diddy Kong Racing when the genre was still being figured out.

Rare Pedigree, New Track

Playtonic announced Super Yooka-Laylee Kart at Day of the Devs during Summer Game Fest 2026. And here's the thing: Martin Wakeley and Kevin Bayliss-the people who actually designed and art-directed Diddy Kong Racing-are both at Playtonic working on it. Studio head Gavin Price told IGN that a kart game was actually their original plan before Grant Kirkhope (yes, Grant Kirkhope) convinced them to start with a 3D platformer instead. After shipping Yooka-Replaylee in 2025, they finally had the room to build the racer they'd been sitting on for years.

Skill-First Is the Whole Pitch

Lead software engineer Chris Sutherland-another Rare veteran-posed the design question to IGN this way: what would a modern kart racer actually look like if you pushed player skill, mastery, and expression further than the genre currently does? Based on previews from IGN, Shacknews, and SmashPad, the answer is something that feels way closer to 1993's Super Mario Kart than to anything you're playing right now. Shacknews caught that bunny hops are shorter, power slides handle differently, and the physics will absolutely punish you if you clip a tree at full boost. The pre-alpha build is rough-no mini-map, steering feels overtuned-but Playtonic confirmed both are being fixed before launch.

The Custom Rules Are Where It Gets Interesting

The game supports up to eight players online and in local split-screen, and the custom race options are where this gets genuinely interesting. Gavin Price described one setup to IGN that actually made me sit up: invisible racers, shrunk down to mini size, speed cranked way up. It's basically F-Zero in first-person. The IGN preview also surfaced a grand prix mode where the rules actually shift between races-there's a round that strips out weight and handling differences entirely, leaving nothing but pure track knowledge and driving technique. Price confirmed they're planning to let the community build rulesets after launch, potentially feeding them into daily leaderboard contests.

The Rage Meter and the Visual Approach

Two other things are worth noting. The Rage meter charges when you eat repeated hits, then unlocks comeback abilities-it's a structured answer to item spam, which has been slowly killing the genre for actual decades. And on the visual side, Kevin Bayliss told IGN they built full 3D models but ran them through a filter to get that rendered sprite look from Donkey Kong Country. Not lo-fi for lo-fi's sake-this is a specific technical callback to what Rare actually built back then. GameSpot also reported the game includes a full story campaign alongside multiplayer.

Platform and Release Window

Super Yooka-Laylee Kart is coming to Steam, with console versions announced for later. No release date yet. Playtonic is planning multiple open multiplayer beta tests before launch, with sign-ups running through the game's Steam wishlist. Right now it's early pre-alpha, so if you want in on testing, that's where to watch.