GMTK Digest (July 2025)

Banana republic

Hello GMTK supporters! Hope you've been enjoying the sunshine. Here's a run down of what's come out, what's happened, and what's worth reading and watching!

New releases

Donkey Kong Bananza - Played

Weirdly, Nintendo waited until mere days before launch to reveal that, yes, this is the new game from the core Mario team. The expert designers behind Super Mario Odyssey.

But you can tell as soon as you start playing. Snappy animations, charming graphics, a focus on exploration, and more collectibles than you can count. This time it's all about finding gigantic bananas, as well as fossils, coins, and gold. So much gold. Gold in the thousands. Gold with decimal places.

Why's it not a Mario game? Because it leans on the brawn of Donkey Kong. The game is all about smashing, crashing, and bashing stuff. The entire world is a destructible playground of rocks and dirt, and you can carve through it all by hammering on the punch button. And challenges revolve around breaking stuff, over jumping. Destroy this house under the time limit. Throw this rock at that bomb. That sort of thing.

So far (I'm about 3 worlds in), it's really fun, charming, and imaginative. But it's also a bit too manic at times. You tear through these levels so quickly that it's hard to truly know them. I have no idea where's up, where's down, where's the start and where's the finish. It's all just rocks and concrete slabs that explodes with a flurry of button presses. It's a long way from the intricate level layouts of a typical Mario game.

But, hey, let them cook. I'll be happy to play more as I slowly pick up bananas and work my way to 100% completion.