Donkey Kong Bananza Represents the Apex of Creativity that the Games Industry Needs and Deserves More Of
Donkey Kong Bananza marks a bold new direction for the Donkey Kong franchise. Bananza is simultaneously nothing like anything has Nintendo put out before while also feeling like the right kind of game for Donkey Kong. It’s delightfully new yet honors the old to create something truly special. // Image: Nintendo
When we all watched that big Nintendo Switch 2 Direct in April of 2025 unveiling many of the new console’s new titles, we all expected a Mario platformer to show up. And why wouldn’t it? It had been nearly eight years since the release of the previous 3D Mario game, Super Mario Odyssey (four years if you want to count the Bowser’s Fury expansion to Super Mario 3D World’s Switch port) and Mario has historically jumped onto new platforms within a year of their release. It just made all the sense in the world for Nintendo’s one-more-thing announcement of the Direct to be an exciting new 3D Mario game that would take advantage of the unique capabilities of the Nintendo Switch 2 hardware.
But there was a major folly in this expectation: people were trying to predict Nintendo.
Nintendo, through all their faults and occasional anti-consumer practices and behavior, is a fun video game publisher and developer to follow because of how unpredictable they are. When everyone expects Nintendo to zig, they usually opt to zag - and zag hard. It would be easy, perhaps even safe for Nintendo to simply follow up Super Mario Odyssey, their 30-million-copy seller, with a sequel that gets similar accolades and propels the Switch 2’s sales into the stratosphere in a similar way that Odyssey did for the original Switch. This would have been financially lucrative for the company as well. Mario games historically sell incredibly well and often take up a slot or three on a system’s top ten best-selling titles. As a brand, there is arguably no higher benchmark of consistent quality than Mario - even normies that don’t follow video game news or reviews at all can comfortably purchase a Mario game with their new Nintendo console and rest assured that they’ll get an enjoyable gameplay experience out of it.
But in spite of what would have been a cinch for Nintendo, they opted to take a different path. Donkey Kong, an IP that Nintendo hasn’t worked on internally since 2004’s Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, would be chosen as the heavy hitter to end the Switch 2’s debut presentation. That initial trailer proudly featured an updated design of gaming’s greatest gorilla and showed off some impressive level diversity, charm, and the game’s core hook: environmental destructibility. It was weird, it was different, it was unexpected, it was…Nintendo. In retrospect, there couldn’t have been a more perfect game to headline the Nintendo Switch 2.
Making something akin to Super Mario Odyssey 2 really would have hammered in the idea that the Nintendo Switch 2 was nothing more than a direct sequel and expansion of what was offered on the original Nintendo Switch. By making something entirely different - something that doesn’t resemble anything quite like what Nintendo put out on its 2017 hardware and undoubtedly something that would not have run well on the Switch 2’s predecessor, Nintendo communicated that the Switch 2’s bump in power wasn’t just something that allowed for sequels and follow-ups to games from the previous generation. Alongside Mario Kart World’s diversion from Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’s established formula, Donkey Kong Bananza communicated to the many people tuning into that Nintendo Direct that the Nintendo Switch 2 was going to offer experiences that were new and weird and unlike what had come before. The Nintendo Switch 2 was going to feature new kinds of games that will give the system its own distinct identity.
Even if Donkey Kong Bananza has similarities in direction, style, and structure to 2017’s Super Mario Odyssey, the game proudly marches to the beat of its own DK bongo drum enough to feel like a bold departure from whatever safe evolution of 3D Mario that people had envisioned in their minds. Donkey Kong Bananza is different both from Nintendo EPD’s previous output and from previous Donkey Kong titles.
Donkey Kong Bananza is as much of a triumph as it is because it represents Nintendo at their very best - a developer capable of delivering expansive, flexible gameplay ideas wrapped in an endlessly charming package. For the type of experience that it is on the hardware that it’s on, Donkey Kong Bananza feels as polished as it could possibly be - and a lot of that is due to Nintendo’s willingness to give developers the time and resources they need to make games with as much creativity as possible. Donkey Kong Bananza supposedly began development shortly after Odyssey’s release in 2017 and even started life as an original Switch game before moving development to the Nintendo Switch 2 to ensure a smoother and more satisfying gameplay experience.
Like with the excellent Super Mario Bros. Wonder, another game whose development was also given immense time, resources, and flexibility, you can feel the amount of time, inspired creativity, and love that was poured into Donkey Kong Bananza. From the game’s stellar animation to its thoughtfully crafted levels, Donkey Kong Bananza is a game that feels like one of an exceptionally small number of games that prioritizes fun factor and gameplay above all else. It’s a special occasion whenever a game captures your imagination and wonder so much that it makes you remember why you fell in love with video games in the first place, and Donkey Kong Bananza manages to do just that. While I’m not without a few criticisms of the game, my most critical takeaway from Donkey Kong Bananza is the fact that it’s a type of game we need more of in the world. I don’t necessarily mean that in the sense that I feel we need to see more banana-collecting adventures featuring expressive gorillas that punch through terrain (though I’m certainly not against such a thing becoming more common). Rather, I mean that Donkey Kong Bananza stands as a shining beacon of what the games industry can be: a delightful experience that isn’t afraid to walk its own path and be as creative as possible.
In a media landscape where it feels easy to become cynical of the homogenization we’ve seen in various game genres that make many games’ mechanics feel similar to one another, Donkey Kong Bananza and games like it are essential reminders that games - heck all media - are at their best when they’re not interested in being safe. They’re at their best when they’re not necessarily financially lucrative. They’re at their best when they’re not trying to be adjacent to their peers. They’re at their best when they’re okay with being weird.
Donkey Kong Bananza is more than just a fantastic video game. It’s a vision of what all games could and should be: fun for everyone and uninterested in conforming to normalcy and what has been done before.
Being the first major game from Nintendo after the system’s launch, Donkey Kong Bananza makes for a fantastic showcase of what the Nintendo Switch 2 is capable of. While performance sees some hitches during hectic boss fights, the visual accomplishments of Bananza are a significant step above what’s possible on Nintendo’s preceding hardware. // Image: Nintendo, Nintendo World Report
Some context is required to fully understand and appreciate how well Donkey Kong Bananza balances honoring the old and embracing the new. Being Nintendo’s longest-lasting video game IP, Donkey Kong has had…kind of a strange legacy. While undeniably being one of Nintendo’s most iconic and widely recognized characters, the Donkey Kong IP has endured inconsistent phases of relevancy.
Donkey Kong’s legacy is perhaps most closely associated with the arcade era of the early ‘80s. 1981’s Donkey Kong was such an immense success that it effectively altered the trajectory of Nintendo as a company. The game was an unprecedented international success for the company, so much so that Nintendo opted to go all-in on developing video games both for arcade hardware and for original proprietary consoles. While the titular gorilla saw a few popular arcade sequels, Donkey Kong’s other primary character - one whose name ultimately landed on Mario - became the subject for his own arcade game: Mario Bros. When transitioning over to their first home console with the Famicom / Nintendo Entertainment System, Nintendo decided to make their killer app for the system to be a reimagining of the Mario character in the form of 1985’s Super Mario Bros.
The immense popularity of Super Mario Bros. forever solidified Mario as the household name that would forever be the most closely associated IP with Nintendo. While Donkey Kong still remained as a recognizable Nintendo name, he was ultimately shafted from becoming the company’s mascot in favor of the mustachioed plumber.
Not all was lost for our well-fashioned gorilla, though - but it would take some time for that to become evident. While Mario received multiple new games throughout the life of Famicom / Nintendo Entertainment System and the early lives of the Game Boy and Super Famicom / Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Donkey Kong only ever saw console parts of his arcade titles. More often than not, these NES console ports were greatly inferior to their source material, giving Donkey Kong fans very little to chew on throughout the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. This would begin to shift throughout the new decade as Nintendo chose to outsource their flagship character to the then-emerging superstar, Rareware.
Rare had already started making a name for themselves with the likes of Snake Rattle ‘n’ Roll and Battletoads, but 1994 would be the year that Rare became the household name that they would be over the coming decade. Not only did they make a splash in the arcade fighting game space with their original IP, Killer Instinct, but they would also get the keys with the innovative and groundbreaking Donkey Kong Country. In what was effectively a reboot for the still-young franchise, DKC faced a particular challenge: it needed to stand apart from what Nintendo had accomplished with Mario. Nintendo had excelled in making Mario the definitive platformer in the business when it came to making thematic, obstacle course-like levels. In order to carve its own identity, Donkey Kong Country needed to accomplish a completely different mission than what Mario platformers accomplished over the last couple years up to that point.
Donkey Kong Country solved this problem by having two primary focuses. Focus #1: provide exceptional visuals that look like no other video game. Focus #2: emphasize an atmospheric approach to the construction and tone of levels, with an overall more difficult gameplay edge that makes it more challenging compared to other platformers. By abiding to these two focuses, Donkey Kong Country succeeded in reintroducing DK to the mainstream. With a new character design in hand alongside a plethora of new characters, catchy music, and a charming visual aesthetic, Donkey Kong was both reunited with veteran Nintendo fans while also being introduced to a whole new generation of players.
Most crucially, Donkey Kong Country just…felt different from other 2D platformers. Graphics and atmosphere went a long way towards making the game have an aesthetic unlike anything else in the market, and the level design was solid and challenging to boot. Donkey Kong Country did everything it needed to do to reimagine the Donkey Kong IP in a post-arcade context, and this success would continue throughout the ‘90s. Rare would expand upon Donkey Kong Country with two sequels on the Super Famicom / Super NES, along with three Donkey Kong Land titles on Game Boy, which effectively served as handheld companions to the console platformers.
Nintendo also threw their hat into the ring with their internally developed Game Boy game simply called Donkey Kong (though, this game is now regularly referred to by the community as Donkey Kong ‘94). While the game initially presents itself as a remake / port of the arcade game, it eventually expands to be an adventure on a far-larger scale than what the arcade game depicted, and to this day, it’s remembered fondly as one of the very best games ever released on the platform. Things were going very well for Donkey Kong, but the 3D revolution of video games was coming. Nearly every 2D franchise would have to grapple with how to transition to being in 3D, and this was no exception for the Donkey Kong IP.
Rare thankfully helped lead the charge in pioneering the early 3D platformer genre with the likes of Banjo-Kazooie. After Mario and Zelda saw their 3D debuts on the Nintendo 64, Donkey Kong would follow suit with the ever-controversial Donkey Kong 64. Setting aside the often-debated quality of the game’s many collectables, Donkey Kong 64 successfully continued the tradition of Rare making their vision of Donkey Kong feel different from anything else on the market. Super Mario 64 was focused on offering different objectives using a complex moveset that is only as versatile as the player’s imagination and execution of Mario’s abilities. Banjo-Kazooie expanded upon the formula of gathering collectables in more open levels with the inclusion of the titular duo of characters learning new abilities throughout the adventure. Learning new skills and gaining access to new power-ups throughout Banjo-Kazooie naturally expands gameplay opportunities for the player. And with more gameplay opportunities come levels that bring more demanding challenges that test the player’s ability to apply everything that they’ve learned throughout their journey.
This design philosophy would be the blueprint that Donkey Kong 64 would inherit and further build upon. Donkey Kong 64 greatly expanded upon Banjo-Kazooie’s concept of learning new abilities by introducing multiple player characters, all of which have access to unique abilities and opportunities to get to different parts of levels. Some of these character-specific abilities are more arbitrary than others, and Donkey Kong 64’s design including multiple characters opens the Pandora’s Box that is the game’s excessive backtracking, but it can’t be argued that Donkey Kong 64 doesn’t offer a lot to do.
There are a lot of gameplay opportunities in this game, and while it did build upon Banjo-Kazooie’s design philosophy, it did enough differently from other 3D platformers from Rare and Nintendo to carve out its own identity (for better and for worse). Moreover, DK64 was also a solid realization of Donkey Kong’s new identity in 3D. The game was still graphically and mechanically ambitious along with an ever-present sense of atmosphere and scale that wasn’t like anything else on the platformer-filled console.
Following their Microsoft acquisition, Rare cancelled their racing game spin-off Donkey Kong Racing, and the Rareware era of the Donkey Kong IP was over. The keys to the franchise were now fully back in Nintendo’s hands, and it quickly became clear that the big N had no immediate idea of what direction they wanted to take the series in.
This awkward, experimental phase of the Donkey Kong franchise largely saw the character fall out of popularity. While the internally developed Donkey Kong Jungle Beat laid a strong groundwork that would be further realized with Super Mario Galaxy, it struggled to capture a large audience. This was both due to the fact that it was a late GameCube title - a console that itself struggled to make a big splash in sales, as well as the fact that the game required the goofy DK Bongo Drum peripheral to play. Other Donkey Kong games released throughout the 2000s were either experimental, got an underwhelming reception, or both. Games like DK: King of Swing and Donkey Kong Barrel Blast tried to continue the series’ legacy of innovation and setting itself apart from other Nintendo IP but failed to make for compelling game experiences.
If there’s anything that the Donkey Kong franchise has built itself on, it’s presenting gameplay opportunities that feel unlike anything else presented in its respective genre. Donkey Kong Bananza continues this trend, as the game’s movement options feel nothing like 3D platforming contemporaries like Super Mario Okyssey, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, and Astro Bot. // Image: Nintendo
Put simply, the Donkey Kong franchise was going through a bit of an identity crisis during this time. Was Donkey Kong supposed to continue to be an innovative platforming franchise? Or was it supposed to morph into something else? Just what was a Donkey Kong game at this point? Nintendo themselves seemed to struggle to find a good answer, and so they once again decided to outsource development to a second-party developer to lead the direction of the franchise. Retro Studios would bring the series back into the limelight with 2010’s Donkey Kong Country Returns not by barreling in a brand-new direction, but by reiterating and building upon what worked in the past. DKC Returns and its 2014 sequel, Tropical Freeze are both exceptional platformers that make for monumental case studies on how to modernize an older gameplay formula.
Retro Studios’ DKC duology was certainly different from other 2D platformers - a surprisingly crowded genre at the time of their release. While many of Nintendo’s other platformer offerings such as New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Kirby’s Epic Yarn prioritized creating inviting spaces for genre and video game newcomers to ease into their platforming, the modern DKC titles offered some genuine challenge, all while still providing exceptional atmosphere and vibes. These games truly excelled in their attention to detail. The typical jumping frog enemies in DKC Returns, for example, try to catch a nearby fly that hovers around them, giving the frog a contextual reason for jumping. Tropical Freeze made it so every platform in the game was a contextual part of a level’s environment.
The modern DKC games were exceptional, but as good as they were, they didn’t entirely answer the identity crisis that the Donkey Kong franchise was facing. These games, as great as they were, didn’t necessarily push the franchise forward in the way that previous efforts with the franchise did. Moreover, they looked at the past with previous Donkey Kong Country games, modernized their look and design, and polished them to make for fantastic games. These games looked to the past to inform what the present should look like - and such a design philosophy is an uncharacteristically iterative one for Donkey Kong. Nintendo could have easily continued putting out these high-quality modern DKC games, and no one would fault them for it. In fact, it seemed like a safe bet for Nintendo to greenlight more high-quality platformers and keep the franchise in people’s minds as the company moved on to new hardware.
But once again, there comes the major folly in this expectation. People were trying to predict Nintendo.
The series went dark after the terrific Tropical Freeze. Barring Switch ports of Retro Studios’ DKC games, Donkey Kong mostly returned to just being an accompaniment to Mario in his sports and party games throughout the Switch generation. It was unclear when or if the Donkey Kong IP would return in any meaningful way. Would it be another DKC game? Would it be another gimmick-centered game a la Jungle Beat, or would it be a return to Donkey Kong 64’s ideas?
Turns out, none of these options would come to fruition. Donkey Kong Bananza’s announcement left as much of an impact as it did because of how unexpected it was, because of how it defied pre-conceived notions of what a Donkey Kong game should be. Yet…isn’t that what’s defined this franchise more than anything else?
Donkey Kong has historically proven an ability to adapt to the ever-shifting landscape of video games. After Nintendo shifted their priorities from arcade cabinets to consoles, Donkey Kong adapted by becoming a 2D platformer unlike anything else Nintendo and other publishers were producing. After the 3D revolution of the mid-to-late ‘90s, Donkey Kong 64 adapted the formula to make for a collect-a-thon unlike anything else offered on the Nintendo 64 (for better and for worse). Despite releasing on the somewhat unambitious GameCube, Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat innovated in its unconventional control scheme to stand out from any other 2000s platformer.
This franchise has never shied from being willing to reinvent itself while still maintaining a cohesive identity, and I think that’s what makes Donkey Kong so interesting to discuss. Each era of the franchise has a different vibe and mission, and yet there’s somehow a cohesion to it all. Bananza would go on to continue this by being a game that has aspects of the arcade games, Country, 64, and even Jungle Beat integrated into its DNA while still also being an original game unlike anything the franchise has seen before.
This context is long-winded, I know, but I think it’s just essential to put into perspective just how much the Donkey Kong IP has accomplished to survive up to where it is today. Throughout all this time, the creativity and ambition of what’s been achieved with this franchise can’t be argued. There’s so much diversity among the core games of this franchise because of a willingness to evolve thanks to consistent creativity. This commitment to creative ambition is a key to Donkey Kong as a franchise - and it’s a key that unlocks a foundational aspect of Donkey Kong Bananza’s design philosophy: a fun-first 3D platformer that asks players to navigate its levels in a way that no other 3D platformer has offered before.
Even though Donkey Kong Bananza is a departure from anything else that has been attempted with this franchise to date, it still feels remarkably Donkey Kong in nature thanks to its willingness to evolve and adapt to the changing landscape of games. Over eleven years separate Tropical Freeze and Bananza’s releases - the games landscape, even within Nintendo’s own ecosystem, has changed so much in that time. It was perhaps inevitable that Bananza had to do something different to recapture the hearts of veteran players and grab the attention of series newcomers alike, and the means through which Bananza achieves that is through being a game unlike any other.
So, let’s (finally) talk about what makes Bananza so excellently distinct from other games that 3D platformers and why Bananza succeeds at feeling so different from its immediate contemporaries and makes for what I consider to be a modern Nintendo classic.
Not unlike the resurgence of 2D platformers in the mid-to-late 2000s, 3D platformers have seen something of a return to form over the last decade. Aside from Super Mario 3D Land and World, the Wii U and 3DS era was quite barren when it came to Nintendo-made 3D platformers, and given that Nintendo typically leads the industry in 3D platformer output, that wasn’t a great sign for the genre across the industry. PlayStation notably downsized their output of platforming titles during the PS4 generation. Series that had once defined the personality of Sony’s first three consoles like Jak & Daxter, Ratchet & Clank, and Sly Cooper had little to no presence on Sony’s eighth-gen console. While a few 3D platformers came from PlayStation during the 2010s, such as Tearaway and the VR-exclusive Astro Bot: Rescue Mission, the company was steadily becoming more interested in putting out large-budget action-adventure titles and multiplayer-focused games. Microsoft, although acquiring 3D platformer underdog developer Double Fine Productions, didn’t really output anything in the genre throughout the entire Xbox One generation.
The three major platform-holders were not making any strides in the 3D platformer genre, and indies weren’t doing too much with the genre circa the early-to-mid 2010s, either. Everything shifted in 2017, though - right around the launch of the original Nintendo Switch. Not only did Super Mario Odyssey give longtime 3D Mario fans the sandbox-style successor to Super Mario 64 and Sunshine that they’d been waiting for decades for, but the game genuinely kickstarted a new wave of 3D platformers that would reinvigorate the genre’s community over the coming years. From Odyssey to A Hat in Time to Kirby and the Forgotten Land to the Game Awards’ Game of the Year winner, Astro Bot - the 3D platformer has steadily risen back to prominence over the late 2010s and 2020s thus far. Not only have major platform holders like Nintendo, PlayStation, and even Microsoft put out games in the genre, but indie developers such as Evening Star with Penny’s Big Breakaway, among others, have populated a new wave of titles in the genre.
This resurgence in the genre has effectively created a new generation of fans of 3D platformers and, more crucially, a new generation of developers that are bringing fresh, new ideas to 3D platformers. Super Mario Odyssey’s innovative capturing mechanic helped diversify gameplay. Penny’s Big Breakaway’s focus on movement options leads to fast and complex level navigation. Donkey Kong Bananza brings yet another form of innovation through empowering the player to terraform the land to their liking via punching the ground. This single mechanic is transformative for Donkey Kong Bananza and makes the game not only stand out from other 3D platformers coming out during this new renaissance within the genre - it will likely inspire further innovation to future games and developers through the sheer creative expression that this mechanic naturally invites.
Punching terrain is more than just a satisfying means of getting around levels in Donkey Kong Bananza. It genuinely opens the door for players to find different ways to devise a near-infinite number of solutions to problems that the levels present. Like in games like Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, much of Bananza’s fun comes from using the game’s mechanics to create a solution that just works. // Image: Nintendo
Let’s take a step back and really look at what Donkey Kong Bananza presents in the broader picture. The easiest path for Nintendo to have taken with this game would have been to look at the series’ only other 3D outing - that being Donkey Kong 64 - and using that as a foundation to expand upon. But as we’ve discussed before, what makes Nintendo such an interesting developer to follow is that they almost never take the easier path. It could be argued that Bananza instead builds upon Super Mario Odyssey, Nintendo EPD’s previous 3D platformer, but Bananza has such a different mission than Odyssey that it’s hard to definitively to say that it builds off of Odyssey aside from general UI and UX stylings and control responsiveness.
Indeed, Donkey Kong Bananza makes it clear almost immediately in its introductory level on Ingot Isle that it has no issues charting its own path. After some brief establishing shots reveal the setting - one whose dark, murky, and mysterious vibe already stands out from anything previously seen in a Donkey Kong title -, the game shows a simple prompt: Punch. Upon pressing the Y button, the wall begins to crumble. The player punches again, then once more until the entire wall crumbles, leaving a cloud of smoke. Out of this cloud walks a freshly-designed Donkey Kong (proven to have been made for this game and not for The Super Mario Bros. Movie), whose eyes quickly swoon over the sight of a Banandium Gem in the distance. The camera rotates around DK, and the player is immediately given control of the titular gorilla. What follows is a section closely resembling the entire game’s vertical slice.
I’ve often aligned with game critic Tim Rogers’ description of a game’s vertical slice and his philosophy on what differentiates a good vertical slice from a bad one. Generally, a vertical slice refers to a section of a game that presents at least one instance of the game that contains every feature in a game. The shorter amount of time that a game is able to show off all of its features and mechanics, the better that vertical slice is at showcasing what the game has to offer.
The opening room of Donkey Kong Bananza is a fantastic tutorial in that it immediately gives players full access to Donkey Kong’s basic moveset from the get-go. While some players can simply walk up to the banana and punch it three times to collect it, other players can punch through the entire room, collect gold, and gut the room of all its terrain before making any progress. From here, the player can grab terrain, throw it, punch forward, upward, and downward, roll, jump, and combine any of these actions to move Donkey Kong around the room - all while the looming goal of a Banandium Gem is within reach. This opening room is a tiny crumb of the game’s overall content, but it does a fantastic job at representing what Bananza aims to accomplish throughout its entire runtime. Players can collect Banandium Gems to gradually power up Donkey Kong and gain access to a wider array of abilities while also being empowered to navigate environments through destroying as much or as little of the environment as they want to. This opening area isn’t entirely a vertical slice of the game as it doesn’t contain two primary features of the game that will be revealed in the following level, but it does serve as a fantastic introduction to informing players of Donkey Kong’s movement options that will be consistently available to players throughout the forthcoming journey.
The rest of Ingot Isle serves as a tutorial for showcasing different ways that the player can utilize punching the environment’s terrain to navigate towards their objective. A quick example is that of a gate placed above a conveyer belt of dirt. Players can choose to dig downward through the dirt, then punch forward to carve a way underneath the gate in order to progress. Alternatively, players can simply dig around the gate in order to progress as well. The inclusion of this navigational challenge so early in the game communicates to the player in no uncertain terms that there is never a single way to navigate a situation. Players can use the game’s mechanics in creative ways to overcome challenges in whatever ways make sense to them. This is an empowering assurance given to the player that is essential to the overall gameplay experience of Bananza.
Not unlike The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Donkey Kong Bananza is a game that is far more interested in presenting a toolbox to the player that they can then use to craft solutions to any problem that they come across. This quickly makes itself evident as the player enters the game’s first level: Lagoon Layer.
Seconds after discovering a treasure trove of Banandium Gems, the Void Company digs towards the planet’s core, causing Donkey Kong and his newfound ally Oddrock to fall deeper into the planet. Donkey Kong Bananza divides itself into multiple levels, with each level being a new sublayer and biome inside of the planet. Lagoon Layer is the first of these layers and in time, quickly presents itself as the setting for Donkey Kong Bananza’s true vertical slice of gameplay. After progressing through the level and meeting the game’s first Bananza Elder, the player learns that Oddrock is, in actuality, a young Pauline (who may or may not be a descendant of the arcade-era Pauline). Pauline ends up being more than just a fun companion to help add more emotional depth to the journey - she gives Donkey Kong access to the game’s titular mechanic: the Bananza system.
After completing a brief tutorial level, the player gains access to Kong Bananza: the first of five transformations that significantly alter Donkey Kong’s abilities and attributes. I was worried upon learning about the Bananza mechanic’s stupendously named “Bananergy” resource - primarily in the sense that I worried that the resource would limit the player from activating Bananza forms as frequently as they would want to. With the rate at which collecting Gold fills the player’s Bananergy meter, though, players will have nearly constant access to their Bananza transformations so long as they continue to engage with the game’s most prevalent mechanic of punching to destroy enemies and defeat enemies to collect Gold. This creates a consistently satisfying loop of navigating levels and destroying the environment and overcoming enemies to collect Gold, then use Bananza forms to navigate the levels in entirely new ways that make exploration of levels feel entirely unique to the player’s discretion.
When the player accesses their Bananza forms, Donkey Kong Bananza truly achieves its vertical slice of gameplay. It becomes evident as soon as unlocking the Kong Bananza form in the Lagoon Layer that you can see exactly what the mission for Donkey Kong Bananza truly is. Bananza fills its levels with things to grab, but the two most essential collectables throughout the game are the Banandium Gems and Fossils. Fossils incentivize being playful with the game’s environment, and thus commanding Donkey Kong’s intoxicating strength. It’s often effortless to just want to punch the environment for the sake of it, and the reason for this comes down to raw auditory and visual feedback that’s given to the player upon doing so.
It’s easy to say that destroying stuff in a game just unlocks something primal in our brains, but I think what makes destroying terrain so consistently satisfying throughout all of Bananza is the game’s impeccable audio design. Every type of surface has its own sound effect and crunch to it, that just makes the process of digging through levels feel visceral and meaty. Of course, the visual feedback helps too, with Gold practically exploding out of the terrain that the player punches. Seeing dirt and Gold equally fly across the screen as the player carves a path for themselves further realizes that visceral feeling that’s unlike anything in any other 3D platformer. Lastly, there’s a consistent breadcrumb trail of discovery through digging. Oftentimes while punching through terrain, players will stumble across treasure chests. These chests are actually randomly generated and spawn relative to how much terrain the player has punched through. This makes treasure chests appear abundantly enough to feel rewarding to see and open but not too common to dampen the elation that comes from seeing these boxes.
Treasure chests often reward the player with either more gold, minor collectables such as balloons (effectively serving as extra lives), and melon juice (which lets the player access Bananza forms without full Bananergy), but most crucially, they provide maps. Whenever a player acquires a map, a Fossil or Banandium Gem will become highlighted on the map and provide further guidance on everything there is to collect in a level.
Fossils, the first of Bananza’s two primary collectables, make for consistent rewards for digging and meaningfully inquiring about different parts of each level’s geography. Fossils are often hidden across each of Bananza’s levels in a way that encourages players to consistently investigate levels - and investigation is precisely what Bananza’s levels uniquely need. There is a vastness and verticality to many of Bananza’s levels that are unlike anything seen in previous 3D Mario games and certainly in any previous Donkey Kong game. Bananza stands apart from anything that has come before because of just how players have to navigate the levels presented to them.
The unlikely star of Donkey Kong Bananza is truthfully the challenge levels, which are more focused levels that only span a few minutes. These more condensed sequences test the player’s understanding and execution of the game’s various mechanics. Between navigation and combat challenges, these smaller levels make for some of Bananza’s best moments. // Image: Nintendo, TheGamer
Despite the game’s focus and commendable execution of its digging mechanic, the game’s actual level design shouldn’t be discarded. In fact, Donkey Kong Bananza makes for some smartly constructed levels that feel like a mix of Mario Galaxy’s more disconnected sections of levels being strung together, Odyssey’s mix of traditional platforming challenges, and an original injection of verticality and navigation between different layers within levels. It isn’t uncommon for Donkey Kong Bananza to have the player go between an upper layer and lower layer of a level, with each section bringing a different vibe to the overall level. Levels deliver a smart mix of being big enough to feel vast while having enough things to do in them to not feel empty. That said, the game needs to construct its levels in a way that makes collecting the game’s primary collectable, the Banandium Gems, consistently fun and rewarding, and for the most part, that’s what they accomplish.
Banandium Gems feel good to collect, and this is because of more than just the flashy animation of DK posing and eating the Banandium Gem in chunks - an animation that never gets old, mind you. Rather, Banandium Gems feel consistently good to collect because they’re the glue that makes each of these levels work. Banandium Gems are the primary means of the game testing players’ utility of different aspects of Donkey Kong’s moveset. Moreover, the inclusion of the Bananza transformations only add more options for players to find paths towards Banandium Gems. In the Feast Layer, for example, there’s a section of the level where the player may typically need to navigate a collection of conveyer belts and moving platforms to grab a Banandium Gem - but through smart switching between the Snake Bananza form to jump high and the Ostrich Bananza to glide in the air, the player can bypass the intended obstacle course.
Deciding whether to use Bananza forms, navigate across the moving platforms as conventionally presented, or to find another way to collect the same Banandium Gem is the primary fun that Bananza is often defined by. The design of levels is smartly constructed in such a way where, if a player wants to play the game as if it were a traditional 3D platformer with linear objectives with a single means of grabbing collectables, they can do that. But the toolset given to Donkey Kong is so expansive and prone to mixing and matching movement options to find unconventional paths around levels that there ends up being an unprecedented amount of options being given to the player to solve different problems. Donkey Kong Bananza is often at its best when it’s presenting players with possibilities to solve problems and trusting them to use whichever possibility they prefer to guide them towards solving such problems.
This becomes evident as soon as after acquiring the Kong Bananza in Lagoon Layer. Once this ability is given to the player, every search for a Banandium Gem effectively serves as a vertical slice of the game. Banandium Gems are placed in locations around levels, with the majority of them being acquirable in spaces that have multiple routes to get to them. Some Banandium Gems task the player’s ability to destroy a certain amount of a specific type of terrain; many others reward players for engaging in their curiosity and exploring oddities in the game’s levels. Banandium Gems are often used as a means of testing the player’s understanding of the game’s traversal mechanics - and the fact that so many of the game’s Banandium Gems are obtainable through resorting to alternative routes and strategies makes these mechanical tests inherently creative. Collecting a Banandium Gem is different than acquiring any other collectable in a 3D platformer. When you see a Power Moon in Super Mario Odyssey or a Jiggy in Banjo-Kazooie, there are a finite number and sometimes a single way to collect the shiny object in question. This is the case because these games are limited by having their controllable character bound by the level design and how they can use their abilities to navigate such level design.
This is what makes Donkey Kong Bananza so different from its contemporaries, past and present. Oftentimes in Bananza, level design is merely a suggestion. If a player chooses to use Donkey Kong’s toolbox of skills to climb walls, jump on platforms, rip off and throw pieces of the environment, and jump out of a mid-air roll all while abiding by the game’s structured level design, they can do that. But through creative use of the game’s digging and Bananza mechanics, players can often make paths to Banandium Gems entirely unique to them. Being able to conform the game’s level design to the player’s will as well as their ideas of how to get from point A to point B to collect the in-game goodie they have their eyes set on makes Donkey Kong Bananza a truly dynamic game.
This dynamism ensures that every player’s journey towards getting certain Banandium Gems will be a unique story instead of a shared experience. Two players can have different creative applications of the game’s movement systems, and through that encouragement of player creativity, those two experiences are as distinct from each other as they are equally rewarding. Grabbing collectables through using creative methods is precisely what makes for satisfying gameplay, and Donkey Kong Bananza provides as ideal of an environment as possible to incentivize such creative expression in the way players move around levels and complete the objectives they want to.
This isn’t to say that this approach doesn’t come without its flaws. While Donkey Kong Bananza has been the beneficiary of mostly positive reviews, the most common criticism of the game I’ve seen has been regarding the consequences of the game’s freeform approach to level design. More specifically, levels in Bananza don’t have the degree of personality and memorability that’s often seen in other 3D platformers because each level in Bananza has to be designed with destructibility in mind. Through allowing levels to be navigated in a myriad of creative ways, Bananza’s levels have to sacrifice having mechanical themes unique to them. Moreover, the way in which collectables have to be located in these dynamic levels can often make them feel scattered in random locations in levels for the sake of it, instead of collectables being breadcrumb trail of mechanical ideas provided to the player.
These criticisms are certainly valid ones, and I think such problems are a natural consequence of Donkey Kong Bananza trying to do something different that we haven’t quite seen in other games of its type. To its credit, I think there are instances where Bananza presents a mechanical idea unique to level that gradually gets built upon throughout the level. Namely, the Feast Layer’s use of the Salt terrain being used to dispel the green Muck that litters the stage is a clever and strong mechanical idea that consistently tests the player throughout the level. More mechanical sequences like this that throw a wrench in the player’s conventional means of traversing levels are precisely could be very well what’s needed to make Bananza’s level feel more cohesive and mechanically rooted. These problems are absolutely solvable in a potential sequel or expansion, and I hope those improvements are eventually made, because the foundation that Donkey Kong Bananza builds is as unique and rewarding as it is creatively ambitious and promising.
It’s true that the player will stumble upon certain Banandium Gems by accident or just by naturally walking through the level. But more often than not, Banandium Gems make for great mechanical stories. The Forest Layer features a Banandium Gem about halfway through the level before reaching the Eggshell Hotel - the setting where the player will attain the Ostrich Bananza and gain the ability to glide through levels. To reach this Banandium Gem, the player could choose to simply wait until they have the ability to glide and easily reach this far-off platform hosting the Banandium Gem. However, when I saw this Banandium Gem, I had gradually mastered the mechanic of using broken-off pieces of terrain to do a Jump Shot - this game’s double jump. By combining this technique with the Turf Surf - an ability where Donkey Kong rides along a rolling piece of broken-off terrain, as well as judicious rolling and punching while in mid-air, Donkey Kong can make incredible long, impactful jumps. In addition, there’s a level-specific mechanic in the Forest Layer where seeds that are thrown on wooden surfaces create a bridge-like vine that connects the location of the thrown seed and Donkey Kong’s location.
By combining this level-specific mechanic, Donkey Kong’s movement abilities, and judiciously lining up jumps, I was able to acquire this Banandium Gem in a way that felt fulfilling in multiple ways. In one way, getting this Banandium Gem was a reward for me understanding the game’s mechanics and navigating through the level according to that mechanical knowledge that I had cultivated up to this point in the game. Beyond that, getting this Banandium Gem at this point in the game in this specific way felt like a creative achievement - a piece of game design that merely asked me to solve a problem and trusted me to come up with a creative way to solve the problem.
I felt just as creatively satisfied as I was mechanically satisfied - and that kind of moment is special sauce that elevates Donkey Kong Bananza to being what I consider to be a modern classic.
Another kind of moment that leads to a similar result is when the game takes the player to a challenge level. Oftentimes throughout each level, players will get taken to disconnected challenges that effectively serve as smaller, linear levels that have three Banandium Gems in them. More often than not, these challenge levels have two Banandium Gems on the golden path toward the exit, with a third hidden somewhere in the level in a way that encourages the player to be investigative of potential secrets or alternate paths within the level. These challenge levels are a frequent highlight of the entire game because they fill a delightful role that the game’s main levels can’t satiate: a linear presentation of mechanical challenges. These challenge levels often have very little in the way of destructibility. Instead, these levels offer trials designed around certain abilities that Donkey Kong has. Sometimes, a course is designed around Donkey Kong’s climbing ability, while others test the different powers afforded by one of Donkey Kong’s Bananza forms. Other times still, these challenges can also take the form of combat arenas that test the player’s understanding of how to defeat certain enemies under a time limit.
These levels result in moments of tight, mechanical cohesion that are arguably not as potently explored in the game’s primary levels. These challenges often take the form of being execution challenges of the game’s various mechanics as often as they are brain teasers for how to find the hidden Banandium Gem. It’s another way that the game goes about creating a satisfying feedback loop for the player. The player gets to enjoy the elation of overcoming a short, tightly designed mechanical challenge to take a break from the exploration and creativity that’s needed for the game’s larger levels. These challenge levels are perhaps the most derivative part of Bananza, in that they’re an evolution of the challenge levels that were featured in Super Mario Odyssey. But iterating on this aspect of Odyssey is perhaps the best thing to directly take and build upon from Odyssey - that game’s challenge levels were some of the most polished bits of game design there, and that remains true here. Moreover, the challenge levels are consistently spread throughout each of Bananza’s levels to never feel like they take away from the game’s primary focus of offering larger levels ripe for exploration. As is, challenge levels provide a consistent and welcome change of pace for players more comfortable with traditionally designed offerings.
Each Bananza form that Donkey Kong can acquire unlocks more movement opportunities that gradually turn levels into open playgrounds. Whether gliding over level geometry with Ostrich Bananza, vacuuming up terrain with Elephant Bananza, or destroying everything in your path with Kong Bananza, each transformation invites new creative ways to approach levels (and some bangin’ songs that play when they’re activated!). // Image: Nintendo
There are two more bits of the game’s design that I want to discuss: progression and boss battles. Donkey Kong Bananza features a total of 777 instances of Banandium Gems to find (some Gems are worth a single Gem, while certain ones such as rewards for defeating bosses offer three or five gems at once). That puts this game’s total of Banandium Gems to be not far off from the total instances of Power Moons in Super Mario Odyssey. One of, if not the biggest criticism of Odyssey was that there were too many Power Moons. The inflation of celebratory rewards given to the player from games like 64 or Galaxy to Odyssey made the actual accomplishments made in Odyssey feel less impactful. Collecting 1 of Galaxy’s 120 Power Stars is more impactful than collecting 1 of Odyssey’s 880 Power Moons. And yet, despite Donkey Kong Bananza having only about a hundred fewer shiny collectables to grab, I haven’t seen the same criticism be given to Bananza. Why is this the case?
Put simply, Bananza shifts collectables from just being an intrinsic reward. In most 3D platformers, collectables are a simple means to progressing through the game. Collect enough Power Stars in Super Mario 64’s first floor, and you can access the basement. Collect even more Power Stars to get access to the castle’s second floor, and so on. Even Donkey Kong 64’s Golden Bananas were primarily only used to gatekeep players from entering new levels. In Bananza, Nintendo has taken a different approach - one that I think makes Banandium Gems far more valuable than if they were just needed for level progression. For every five Banandium Gems that the player grabs, they will acquire a Skill Point, which can be spent to expand Donkey Kong’s moveset or parameters.
Skill Points and Skill Trees are nothing new in game design - in fact, many became baffled at the sight of Nintendo using such a mainstream game design idea in such a flagship release of theirs. And yet, the implementation of a Skill Point system here is a novel way to solve the problem of Odyssey’s Power Moon issue. While there are still hundreds of Banandium Gems to collect in Bananza, none of them are actually needed to complete the game. If they choose to, players can avoid picking up a single Banandium Gem, and they’ll still be perfectly capable of rolling credits. So then, what’s the point of getting any of the game’s main collectables? Put simply, it’s for both the intrinsic and extrinsic reward of getting them.
Banandium Gems being the key that unlocks more powerful abilities for Donkey Kong makes each Banandium Gem, no matter how minor, feel meaningful to the player. Banandium Gems feel satisfying to pick up because of their intrinsic value - collecting one plays a “Oh, Banana!” voice clip, a flashy animation, and fills a spot on a checklist that makes the process of picking a Banandium Gem feel satisfying in and of itself. But the extrinsic reward of Banandium Gems is equally satisfying. Every Banandium Gem puts Donkey Kong one step closer towards becoming empowered to navigate levels at an even greater, more efficient rate.
Because of this, the presence of hundreds of Banandium Gems doesn’t cause each acquired Gem to not feel meaningful - since Banandium Gems ultimately result in players being given more options to use in movement, level navigation, or survivability, Donkey Kong Bananza’s collectables mean something. And because they mean something, they don’t get old to collect. But they also don’t get in the way for players that don’t mind the challenge of not having access to the skills that Banandium Gems help unlock. Banandium Gems and the Skill Points they give are just as much a reward for curiosity as they are a difficulty slider that allows and trust the player to give themselves as much or as little options as they want. And to give such a degree of trust and customizability to the player only reinforces the amount of player-driven creativity that the game encourages elsewhere in its game design.
Lastly, the other most common criticism I’ve heard placed against Donkey Kong Bananza is that regarding its boss encounters. More specifically, Bananza’s boss battles have been widely criticized for how easy and short they are, with many encounters taking less than a minute. This criticism equates the brevity of these fights as “being bad”, which I don’t feel fairly evaluates them as encounters. While I agree with the sentiment that the game could have done with more fights having multiple phases to feel more complete, dynamic, and climactic, I don’t think that the damage output Donkey Kong deals works against what these fights are intended to offer. Inherent throughout all of Donkey Kong Bananza is a sense of visceral, unrelenting strength coming from Donkey Kong. While monkeys in the opening level of Ingot Isle need pickaxes to dig through the terrain, Donkey Kong can effortlessly plow through the ground with his bare fists. If there’s anything Donkey Kong Bananza particularly excels at, it’s selling the power fantasy of being Donkey Kong. This gorilla is strong, and I think having boss fight encounters punctuate this trait of our controllable character is smart. Revealing boss’ weak points are primarily what boss fights amount to, as actually dealing the damage to them, especially with the powerful Kong Bananza transformation, makes enemy health bars quickly evaporate.
Bosses dying so quickly to Donkey Kong’s strength is another means of selling the power fantasy to the audience, and I think such a thing was prioritized above making longer, more mechanically difficult encounters. While the late game introduces more fights with more interesting and difficult mechanics to work around, I think prioritizing the raw power inherent to playing as Donkey Kong in this game was the right call with regard to making these fights feel like nothing that has been done in this series before. While boss fights in games like DKC Returns and Tropical Freeze are more typical explorations of pattern recognition and exploiting momentary weaknesses, the greater spectacle and power showcase of Bananza’s battles make for something new. Like other aspects of the game, the fights are different than what’s come before and they’re flawed in certain aspects, but I respect these fights’ willingness to try something unlike anything we’ve seen before in this series.
Bananza’s boss fights are emblematic of the game at large: ambitious, perhaps flawed in some capacity, but willing to experiment and try something creative for the sake of offering an experience distinct from other Donkey Kong and platforming titles. Like with the rest of the game, I find the boss fights to be imperfect but overall successful efforts to carve a new path forward.
There are many reasons as to why I don’t think we’re seeing as much creativity in the games industry today as we did, say, in the ‘90s and 2000s. As game budgets and development cycles have ballooned over the last few decades, it just doesn’t make financial sense to be creative - because to be creative is to be risky. When you have a game with a large budget and a long development cycle, the last thing you want is for it to flop and fail to make its money back. To compensate for this, large-budget games have developed a habit of streamlining and consolidating features for the sake of being more approachable. More approachability theoretically equates to less polarization and divisive features. And if your game is free of division, of anything that could put some people off, then your game is poised to be financially successful.
But it’s also poised to be boring, unremarkable, and derivative.
This is why I find Donkey Kong Bananza to be so interesting. Its creative approach towards its levels is flawed - I won’t pretend that the levels here are perfectly constructed. But it’s the fact that the game is trying to do something different, creative, and oftentimes unpredictable that kept me glued to the game throughout its 35-hour runtime. I greatly admire Donkey Kong Bananza because it takes massive swings and doesn’t care if everything it does is a hit. There are some misses with level and objective design that could be improved upon in future games, if Nintendo chooses to build upon this game’s formula. But those misses are made out of a genuine effort to create something creative and potentially divisive. It’s that willingness to create something that won’t exactly appeal to everyone playing it that I find admirable about Nintendo’s effort here.
Nintendo made a game that tries something that no other games are trying and a game that likely will not sell the tens of millions of copies that Bananza’s predecessor did - but they made it anyway. They made it because they sought to create a game that was an amalgamation of creative ideas. For the most part, those creative ideas land and work incredibly well. But there are a few consequences in the form of aspects of the game that don’t land so well - but that, in turn, makes the game interesting to talk about and discuss.
It reminds me of what video games are supposed to be: fun, interesting, challenging, and willing to make me think in new ways. Video games that forgo creativity for the sake of conformity and financial risk mitigation do so because they want to be products - not video games. Games lacking creativity and weird hooks to their game design are leading to an industry that often feels filled with homogenized, iterative content. Donkey Kong Bananza made such a big impact on me because it is a big, fat rejection of homogeneity and conformity. Bananza represents an unwillingness to take the safe route - while that brings consequences, it also leads to greatness and for an overall game experience that I won’t ever forget.
Donkey Kong Bananza honors its legacy in the most appropriate way. Just as the Country games reinvented the IP in a new era of console-exclusive platformers, just as Jungle Beat chose an unconventional control scheme on Nintendo’s most conventional home console, and just as Donkey Kong 64 brought forth variety and scale unseen in other N64 3D platformers, Bananza once again chooses to innovate when it would have been far easier to iterate and derive. Donkey Kong Bananza proudly choose to be creative and strange because doing so makes it a Donkey Kong game. In that way, Bananza is as perfect a modernization that the Donkey Kong IP could have possibly asked for.
Donkey Kong Bananza does a fantastic job at providing fanservice to series veterans that feels earned, tasteful, and still digestible to series newcomers. The many returning characters and big twists during the game’s finale are delightful respects to this franchise’s legacy, and their thoughtful integration into the game assures that their inclusion wasn’t an afterthought // Image: Nintendo
I’ve made it evident throughout this piece that I want more games to be like Donkey Kong Bananza. But what does that exactly mean? And why don’t we see more games like Bananza? And what’s the effect of there being more titles in the future like Bananza?
Donkey Kong Bananza struck a chord with me and made as big of an impact on me as it did because it felt refreshingly strange. From the bizarre yet cute Fractones to the fanservice-filled finale that honors multiple eras of this IP to the navigational toolbox that opens the door to boundless player expression, there’s a lot going on in Bananza and much of it lands because the game is bursting at the seams with ideas. And it’s the quality, quantity, and diversity of those ideas, either mechanical or aesthetic, that I find consistently fascinating. Through every level, with every collectable, and around every corner, I couldn’t help but be glued to the screen throughout my playtime with Donkey Kong Bananza.
As an adult working full-time on top of working on various creative projects, I have limited time and can only engage with so many games per year. As much as I want to, I’m unable to have hours-long play sessions with many games - even ones I greatly enjoy. And yet, my sessions with Donkey Kong Bananza crept into the hours despite them passing by like seconds - and a lot of this is due to the fact that I grew to become enamored by the game’s strangeness.
Video games have become afraid of being strange. In an industry that has become terrified of risk-taking because of how bloated AAA video game budgets have gotten, strangeness has seemingly become a poison. Why make something strange that might not sell many copies when you can make something normal that can sell a ton of copies? This is the mental framework that has tainted a lot of large-budget game development that many larger developers and publishers have tragically adopted. Instead of creatively exploring new ways to invite creative player expression in an underrepresented genre, it’s safer for many developers to simply capitalize on what’s popular and tend to what the current market is guaranteed to like.
This is precisely what Donkey Kong Bananza stands in proud opposition against. Bananza represents Nintendo at their very best in that it defies industry trends and treads its own path in search of creating a fun experience. Bananza effectively ignores what people expected Nintendo to do, it defies what peoples’ conceptions of what a Donkey Kong game is expected to be like, and it ignores what people are expressing what they want in pursuit of offering something that people will want but don’t know it yet.
Don’t let the gorilla on the box art fool you - Donkey Kong Bananza is one of the most human games in this moment. In a world where developers walk on eggshells to make a game with mass appeal to avoid the threat of professionals getting laid off by corporate overlords, in a universe where creative ideas have practically migrated entirely to the indie sector of game development, Donkey Kong Bananza is a game that shouldn’t exist but does. Bananza is a shining beacon of what the environment of the games industry can and should be: a fun-filled exploration of new ideas packed to the brim with charm, polish, and clear love from the developers. Bananza is a strange game and it’s one that won’t click with everyone - but it doesn’t have to, and it shouldn’t feel obligated to. The only interest Donkey Kong Bananza has is creating a fun-filled video game experience that will leave a smile on your face. Through creativity and fun, Donkey Kong Bananza advocates for the sheer value of play.
Play is at the core of video games’ essence. We all started playing video games because we wanted to have fun. We came to this hobby because we understand the unique challenges and triumphs that naturally come about from playing video games. An essential part of play, however, is variety and evolution. No one wants to play the same way for their entire lives - they want the fun that they seek in life to evolve over time. In order for this evolution to take place, the play experience can’t just be iterated upon and cater to what’s already popular. It needs to provide something different, something strange, something that may not land with everyone that tries it. This is exactly Donkey Kong Bananza does, and because it does this, it will undoubtedly inspire future generations of developers to evolve the play experience even further in the future.
Fun is the very core of why video games exist in the first place. But fun cannot consistently exist if it is never challenged and if no one aims to take fun to new heights. As I discussed in 2024 in a piece about games made with fun-first game design philosophies, the most fun experiences are the very ones that inspire future generations to make fun experiences themselves. The games that seek to break conventions and provide fun in brand new ways are often the ones that we refer to decades from now when discussing momentous titles. We still talk about games like Super Metroid, Super Mario 64, Final Fantasy VII, and Resident Evil 4 not because they iterated on what came before and catered to the market’s pre-conceived interests, but because they sought to evolve the type of fun that only video games can provide. And this evolution could only be achieved through creativity, experimentation, and ambition.
I happily include Donkey Kong Bananza in my growing list of games that I feel that the games community, the games industry, and the entire world deserves more of. Without games like it that advocate for new ways to play, games and the unique fun they deliver would erode and decay. We need to not only support but celebrate the creativity we see - whether that’s through signal boosting visibility on innovative indie games to praising the few examples of creative games in the AAA space, we can, should, and will see more creative ambition take hold in this industry. Through celebrating the strangeness and creativity in games like Donkey Kong Bananza, we will lead ourselves to a greater landscape of games - one where creativity overtakes conformity as being what leads a game to assured success.
Once that happens, video games will collectively become better and more fun for everyone. They’ll also be bigger, faster, and stronger too!
Thank you very much for reading! What are your thoughts on Donkey Kong Bananza? Do you think this game represents what game development and creativity should look like in this industry? As always, join the conversation and let me know what you think in the comments or on Bluesky @DerekExMachina.com.
