Playtonic Finally Gets to Make the Kart Racer They Always Wanted To
Super Yooka-Laylee Kart showed up at Summer Game Fest 2026 and the pitch basically writes itself. Playtonic, the studio stacked with former Rare developers, is making a kart racer. A significant chunk of those devs worked on Diddy Kong Racing. Yes, that one.
The backstory is kind of great
Here's what most people don't know: a karting game was supposed to be Playtonic's first title. Not Yooka-Laylee. A kart racer. Grant Kirkhope, the composer behind Banjo-Kazooie, talked them out of it and pushed them toward a 3D platformer instead.
So they made Yooka-Laylee, then Yooka-Replaylee, and now they're circling back to the original idea. The kart racer was always on the list. It just got delayed by about a decade of platformers.
Gavin Price, the studio's founder and creative director on this project, started a small team roughly a year ago to see if the concept was even feasible. They built a prototype, it worked, the game got greenlit. Clean origin story.
What it actually looks like
The visual style is doing something I haven't really seen. Characters are 3D models rendered with a 2D sprite shader from a separate camera. Mix that with Mode-7 style racing, a 2D fighting game aesthetic for the characters, and modern post-processing and lighting, and you get something that looks like a 16-bit game with good shadows. It's pulling hard from Nintendo's 16-bit and 64-bit eras, which makes complete sense given who's building it.
Eight racers compete simultaneously. The build shown at Summer Game Fest was pre-alpha, so take everything with some salt. It was missing a mini-map and in-track signage. Both are confirmed to be in development, so not a concern yet.
The custom rulesets angle
Invisible Racers mode. Same-character mode. Grand prix with fully custom rulesets. Playtonic is planning multiple open betas specifically focused on the custom rules stuff, plus community-shared rulesets, hosted tournaments, and daily contests with leaderboards.
That's a lot of infrastructure to announce for a pre-alpha. Could mean they're serious about the competitive and community side of this. Could also mean they're using the betas to figure out what actually works. Probably both.
The pedigree is legitimate
Chris Sutherland is lead software engineer. He's a Rare alum. He also voiced Banjo on the Diddy Kong Racing character selection screen, which is a ridiculous piece of trivia to just drop in conversation. Kevin Bayliss is on the team too, another former Rare developer who worked directly on Diddy Kong Racing.
Between Donkey Kong Country 1 and 2, Banjo-Kazooie, Grabbed by the Ghoulies, and Diddy Kong Racing, the people at Playtonic have the resume for exactly this kind of game. That doesn't guarantee anything. But it's not nothing.
Should you care yet
It's pre-alpha. I'm not going to hype a pre-alpha kart racer into something it isn't. But the pedigree is real, the visual style is doing something distinctive, and the community ruleset focus suggests they're thinking past the initial weekend of play.
If Diddy Kong Racing lives in your memory as the kart racer that was actually good, this is the one to watch.
Source: Ign