Yooka-Laylee And The Impossible Lair Update Makes The Game Easier

Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair is a good sequel to the original N64 throwback, with one central issue: its titular Impossible Lair. While its challenge isn't insurmountable, it stands in stark contrast to the difficulty of the rest of the game, which is why developer Playtonic Games is introducing two new modes for it in the latest update, which goes live on April 14.

The Impossible Lair is now split in two. The "Not So Impossible Lair" is the new standard mode, offering you the ability to save your progress at checkpoints. Each of these checkpoints registers how many bees you have in your bee shield (effectively how many hits you can take before dying), letting you practice certain sections repeatedly without having to worry about reaching the same point consistently. Playtonic notes that you can ignore checkpoints entirely too if you want to replicate the experiences from launch.

The "Impossible Lair" variant is an even tougher challenge than originally presented, with no checkpoints and no bee shield to protect you during its grueling run. That means you have to make it through the lengthy stage without taking a single fault, which should please fans itching for a new challenge.

In addition to these difficulty changes, Playtonic is also adding a new chiptune, 8-bit soundtrack to all 2D stages in the game, which can be accessed from the in-game menu. The new tracks are also going to be available to stream on Apple Music and Spotify. It'll be out on April 14, the same day as the update.

Although Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair builds positively on the original game, it still stumbles in some areas that keeps it from hitting those same highs as older classic platformers. In our 6/10 Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair review, we said, "The Impossible Lair is definitely a better attempt at capturing the magic of platformers than Yooka-Laylee's first crack at it, but it's still not remarkable. If you're itching to return to a bygone era, then The Impossible Lair might scratch it. Just don't expect much beyond that."