Donkey Kong Bananza is positively bursting with bold ideas. Some bright and colourful, some wildly creative, and some completely bananas. After three hours with the game, its brilliant sense of adventure has made a vast impression. This is the game you’ll want to buy a Nintendo Switch 2 for. It’s the game that probably should’ve launched with the console, alongside Mario Kart World, to really show off its capability.
Since Nintendo revealed more about Donkey Kong Bananza in a recent Nintendo Direct, the excitement around the upcoming game has grown exponentially. Pauline is on board! Music plays a major role! Donkey Kong can transform into a giant ape, complete with his bum hanging out! Excitement can do a lot for a game, but it can also create sizeable expectations. Based on my time with the game, it feels very likely Donkey Kong Bananza could meet and exceed the hopes of its audience.
The game’s opening wastes no time in making this clear. You’re simply introduced to Donkey Kong and his new terrain, the mining realm of Ingot Isles, and you set about pursuing DK’s one desire: gathering lots and lots of bananas. Within Ingot Isles, bananas are represented as crystalline fruits with magical powers. As you collect them, you’ll unlock special abilities on a skill tree, improve DK’s abilities, including his platforming skills.
The novelty of Donkey Kong Bananza comes from its platforming elements. In each layer of the Ingot Isles, you’ll encounter all sorts of terrains. There’s a watery, rocky level filled with roaming bubbles and scuttling enemies. There’s jungles, and mines, and lava pits. Each world you travel through feels like its own realm, with a diversity of enemy types, and unique ways to travel.
Read: Donkey Kong Bananza: Everything you need to know
Donkey Kong is able to smash the ground and obstacles to advance. He can dig up or down through various terrains, terraforming the landscape as he goes (with changes reflected on the game’s map). He can grab a rock and use it as a surfboard of sorts, spinning his way across the world. He can climb across vines, fly in bird form, and even hop into a mine cart for some on-rails shooting action.
Across multiple stages, the most compelling part of Donkey Kong Bananza has been this variety. Nintendo has become well-known for innovating on tradition, expanding on the platformer genre in bright, exciting new ways. While the bones of Bananza will be well-familiar to platformer fans, there is also such a bounty of cool ideas in this game that familiarity won’t really give any advantage.
One moment, you’re smashing your way through a mining colony (each fist landing with a satisfying punch), and in the next, you’re taking to the skies and shooting egg bombs with mysterious origins. (It’s best not to think too much about logistics here.)
It’s not only the vast options for exploration that make Donkey Kong Bananza so compelling. It’s also got lovely, measured collectible gameplay. Much like Super Mario Odyssey, in each stage of this game, you’ll find an array of bananas which can be earned by completing tasks. Sometimes, these tasks are ‘climb up this cliff’ or ‘smash this ground’ but other times you’ll need to complete dedicated mini-games.
Delightfully, some of these are callbacks to other Donkey Kong games. There’s puzzles using barrels and vine traversal, and others that ask you to collect as many coins as possible within a time limit. Whichever puzzle you uncover as you roam, it’s a neat little distraction from life in the overworld, and inspires you to keep on exploring, to find more challenges, and more bananas.
Eventually, this quest will lead you into the clutches of VoidCo., a gang of evil mining monkeys who seem bent on destroying the natural world for their own ends. Stages in Donkey Kong Bananza are gated by boss battles, with various evil constructs set against Donkey Kong (and eventually, Pauline too). To defeat these beasts, you’ll need to transform into various “Bananza” forms (the aforementioned bird form, and a big ape form) to unleash powerful smashing attacks.
These are a bit about timing, and a lot about punching. Donkey Kong isn’t the most artful hero, so you’re free to charge ahead with fists flailing, smashing ground and throwing rocks with reckless abandon. There’s a sense of chaos in these boss battles, and that’s what makes them so wild and fun. You might destroy the terrain to advance, but there’s plenty of joy in doing so.
Not all boss battles will be the same, it’s worth noting. In my preview of Donkey Kong Bananza, I experienced a few of the smashing variety, and one major battle against a living smelter. In this particular boss, Donkey Kong is mine cart-bound. So, you’re encircling this smelter, made completely of tiny rocks and glittering shards, waiting for its defences to drop so you can throw bombs to smash its body to bits. Like other bosses, it’s high energy – and there’s a dance between causing damage, and avoiding it yourself, that keeps you absolutely locked in.
And of course, for your troubles, you get a bright and shiny banana cluster at the end of it, to make it all worthwhile.
In these loops, from boss battles to exploring colourful worlds and terrains, and taking on various mini-game challenges, Donkey Kong Bananza has proved to be a rich, layered platforming experience. You always want to go further, and faster. Nintendo has owned the platformer genre for decades, and it’s so clear to see why.
Even when you recognise the format or the layout of a world, Bananza keeps you roaming with consistent surprises, defying expectations at each turn. It’s also not afraid to get a little bit weird and alienating, with odd elements of musical theatre in the journey, and bizarre characters to guide you onwards.
Several hours into Donkey Kong Bananza, it’s been an entirely endearing adventure, with plenty of jazz in its funky little footsteps. Charting a number of worlds, each different and charming in its own right, there’s no doubt in my mind that Donkey Kong Bananza has the stamina to remain as exciting and imaginative for its entire run.
We’ll have much more on this game closer to its launch on 17 July 2025. As previously announced, Donkey Kong Bananza is a Nintendo Switch 2-exclusive game.
