Donkey Kong Bananza is an absolute (barrel) blast to play. It’s hard to believe that it has been 26 years since Donkey Kong 64, but, after all that time, the loveable ape is back for a ground-breaking adventure on Nintendo Switch 2. Quite literally.
Far off the shores of DK Island, a mysterious material called Banandium has been discovered on Ingot Isle. After learning that it can form into edible banana-shaped Banandium Gems, a never-endingly ravenous Donkey Kong teams up with a gang of prospector monkeys to start mining for the tasty treasure. Their early success is cut short when VoidCo appear and hoover up the Banandium Gems for themselves, triggering a seismic event that pushes Ingot Isle beneath the surface.
It is up to Donkey Kong to go fist-to-fist with these unknown baddies to recover the Banandium Gems that they have stolen, in a quest that swaps out his usual vine-swinging jungle hijinx for pulverising destruction that will take the big ape deep underground.
After bashing my way through Donkey Kong Bananza’s 20-minute timed demo, it’s hard not to be excited about what’s to come. Not least for the fact that we are only three months away from being able to experience the full game.
Donkey Kong is a complete goofball this time around, and I love it. The character animators have clearly had a tremendous time making the big guy as expressive as he can possibly be, from hungrily sticking his tongue out when he spots a Banandium Gem to looking fierce when carrying concrete chunks, puffing his cheeks out to hold his breath while swimming or playfully beating his chest when you shake the controller. I’d rarely stop playing a game to simply watch a character’s infectious behaviour, but Donkey Kong’s antics were constantly smile-inducing. He was having a blast, and so was I.
There’s both simplicity and fluidity to Donkey Kong’s moveset. You can punch upward (X Button), forward (Y Button) and down (B Button), perform a Dive Punch (press and hold the B Button in midair), Hand Slap (R Button) to collect nearby items, and even tear up terrain (ZR Button) to hurl at your enemies or spin around on. The terrain that you can spin and hurl has different properties. From what we’ve seen so far, damp dirt can stick on other surfaces, gold is highly explosive, and boomrocks are needed to destroy stronger materials like concrete. This introduces a puzzle-esque element to the game in needing to work out how to overcome obstacles that you are confronted with… or, simply punch your way around the problem.
Donkey Kong Bananza is playful by design, placing you in a sandbox and leaving you alone to smash your way through it to see what you can discover. I won’t be the first to say that the experience has Super Mario Odyssey DNA mixed in with destructive physics that first wowed me in the Red Faction series. The resulting combination is joyful and uniquely Nintendo, but you can certainly notice parallels to the moustachioed plumber’s adventure in how the game is structured. Not that there’s anything to particularly criticise for that.
I can admit that the collector in me spent far too long sidetracked in the opening tutorial area, punching my way through dank mining tunnels hunting for any secrets, much to the bemusement of nearby primates. Aside from the chaos of rock splinters peppering the screen, there’s clearly a reward in everything that you do. The gold that you accumulate is essentially your extra lives, with a value deducted whenever you happen to let Donkey Kong meet an untimely end. Meanwhile, the Banandium Chips that you gather can be traded for bananas at any Chip Exchange, whereas Fossils can be traded for fashion items at any Style Shop.
Away from the confines of Ingot Isle’s mining tunnels, I felt unshackled once I reached the Lagoon Layer. This open-ended playground is how the majority of your experience with the game will be, where, aside from a signposted main goal tasking you with removing a Void Stake to progress to the next underground layer, you are free to play however you wish. Whether that be smashing your way through your surroundings to recover every Banandium Gem, tackling Challenge Courses or bumping into characters like Cranky Kong.
Music, away from the game’s stirring soundtrack, also seems like it will play an important role in your adventure. That can be seen from tuning forks being used as checkpoints to “Teeleport” to (an Eel appears and swallows Donkey Kong whole before carrying him to your selected location), to Odd Rock, a purple VoidCo-plastered nuggle who accompanies you on your quest. Donkey Kong can whistle to encourage Odd Rock to sing, their music-making creating a path that leads you in the right direction towards your objective or breaking seals containing metallic VoidCo contraptions. I’m certainly interested to learn more about where that all leads.
With so many distractions, it was evident that there was too much to see and do within the time-limited demo. That’s good, though, because that means that there are far more surprises waiting to be discovered in the full game. I won’t be able to stop thinking about Donkey Kong Bananza until it’s in my hands, but I can be thankful that we all don’t have long to wait.
Donkey Kong Bananza will be released at retail and digitally on the Nintendo eShop for Nintendo Switch 2 worldwide on 17 July 2025.
