Just moving around the world feels fantastic, so exploring every inch doesn’t feel like a chore. The controls are nice and responsive and the jumping distances are easy to judge, thanks to a double-jump, glide and clever animations. The animations are just lovely. You can see Laylee struggle to hold up Yooka as you try clear a gap by gliding, the bat flapping its tiny wings and straining against the weight of the chameleon. You can also roll into a ball to gain speed and clear hills, causing Laylee to hop on top of Yooka and run like Donkey Kong on a rolling barrel.

Combat is simple, with roll used to knock enemies, or a tail whip slap to put them down quickly. There is potential for that to build out too, with the chameleon and bat acquiring more powers as the game moves on, and those aforementioned berries no doubt being weaponised later on. I didn’t really get the grasp of the upgrade system in the preview, however, as many of the abilities were already unlocked so I could play around with them.

Even in this early, pre-alpha stage it’s impressive what the small studio at Playtonic has managed to create with that $3.1 million Kickstarter cash. If the rest of the game is consistent, it could be something special indeed, perhaps even tempting some of the big studios outside of Nintendo to have a crack at the 3D platforming genre.