Platform games task the player with directing their character to jump, climb, run and avoid obstacles. Getting their name because of levels constructed of platforms from which you have to jump, these games usually introduce hazards to make the forward progress more hazardous. Although often played with just a joystick and couple of buttons the timing and duration of the button presses and joystick direction requires considerable skill. When combined with Simulation genre the character responds to the physical mechanics of the game world in such a way that players need to spend time learning to use their instincts and relations to progress.These are commonly considered Action games, but platformers (as they are often called) can also be combined with Fighting or [link to search/genre/Rhythm/ Rhythm games to create a wide range of ways (and reasons) to traverse levels. Although Platform games are usually simpler to understand. However, when combined with Open-World or Puzzle genres they can present a larger and more complex challenge to players.
Towerfall
Platforms: Mac, Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita and Xbox One
Genres: Action, Fighting, Platform and Shooting
Players: You can play with 6 players in the same room, but you can’t play it online.
Costs: Purchase cost. In-game purchases.
Each player selects a pixelated knight and fights to eliminate opponents by shooting them with arrows or jumping on their heads. The arena is a single shared screen. What makes it so competitive is the limited resource of arrows and the ability to dodge...
Where Cards Fall
Platforms: iOS Apple Arcade
Genres: Adventure, Narrative, Platform and Puzzle
Duration: Between 10 hours and 12 hours to complete.
Players: This is a single player game.
Costs: Purchase cost.
Where Cards Fall, from the same developer as Alto's Adventure, is an adventure where you build houses of cards to advance. In a beautifully hand-drawn world, you need to create pathways with the cards through the dreamlike...
The Pedestrian
Platforms: Mac and PC
Genres: Platform and Puzzle
Duration: Between 3 hours and 4 hours to complete.
Costs: Free-to-start.
The Pedestrian is a puzzle game where you control a stick man navigating a series of road signs around a virtual city. It sounds a little odd and quite simple, but by layering its interconnected sign-based puzzles it creates an experience that is both...
Spring Falls
Platforms: Mac, PC and iOS
Genres: Platform, Puzzle and Simulation
Duration: Between 1 minute and 3 minutes to play a round.
Spring Falls is a puzzle where you erode a geometric landscape to let water flow down the mountain and help plants grow. Along with the low-pressure puzzle play, the game offers a calming experience with soft visuals, ambient music and interactive...
Crossy Road Castle
Genres: Action, Fighting and Platform
Duration: Between 1 minute and 10 minutes to play a round.
Players: You can play with 4 players in the same room, but you can’t play it online.
Crossy Road Castle, is the follow up to the simple frogger Cross Road game. You play pixilated animals racing to the top of various towers that change every time you play.
Combo Postage
Platforms: PC
Genres: Action, Platform and Puzzle
Duration: Between 5 minutes and 10 minutes to complete.
Combo Postage is a jumping and stacking game. You play as Sue at her summer job as she dodges, tapes, and stomps boxes with a high-tech tape gun. Run into a box to tape it up then stomp to seal. It’s simple, hectic fun and as you realise you can line...
Lair Of The Clockwork God
Genres: Action, Adventure, Narrative and Platform
Duration: Between 10 hours and 11 hours to complete.
Lair Of The Clockwork God is an adventure played with two characters from different game genres. Ben is a die-hard, old-school LucasArts Adventure fan, one foot stuck in the 90s. Dan is younger, running and jumping platform character, he's hip, he's...
Twelve a Dozen
Duration: Between 15 minutes and half an hour to play a round.
Costs: Free-to-start. In-game purchases.
Twelve a Dozen (originally called just, Twelve) is a running and jumping game where you solve mathematical based logic problems to help Dot save her family. While many games use learning as a gate to the reward of some fun, Twelve integrates the maths...
Kissy Kissy
Platforms: Mac, Nintendo Switch and PC
Genres: Platform
Duration: Between 5 minutes and 10 minutes to play a round.
Players: You can play with 2 players in the same room, but you can’t play it online.
Kissy Kissy! is a running-around game where you build defences against getting kissed by the grannies. You play Tiger and Bee, onesie-wearing grandchilden who don't want to be kissed
Toodee and Topdee
Duration: Between 2 minutes and 10 minutes to play a round.
Toodee and Topdee is a platform puzzle game where you control two characters to complete single-screen levels. The twist is that each character exists in a different plane. Toodee is a top-down block-pushing world, while Topdee is side-on platforming....
It Takes Two
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One
Genres: Action, Adventure, Narrative, Platform and Puzzle
It Takes Two is a running, jumping and exploring game that tells a story of a young girl, Rose, who's parents are divorcing. The girl creates two dolls to represent her parents, which unexpectedly come to life. The game proceeds to share the girls...
Balan Wonderworld
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X
Genres: Action, Adventure and Platform
Balan Wonderworld is a running, jumping and exploration game where you control two characters Emma and Leo in the imaginary place called Wonderworld. The world is populated with people’s memories: happy helpful characters but also restless worries and...
Monument Valley
Platforms: Android and iOS
Duration: Between 2 hours and 3 and a half hours to complete.
Monument Valley and Monument Valley 2 are puzzle mazes made from optical illusions. You interact with each level to change the pathway and get your character to the exit. Its striking, calm visual theme is used to build atmosphere and slowly reveal a...
Alto’s Adventure
Platforms: Android, Mac, Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and iOS
Genres: Action, Platform and Racing
Duration: Between 1 minute and 20 minutes to play a round.
Descend beautiful mountains, dunes and canyons on a snowboarding journey full of serenity and secrets. All you have to worry about is tapping to jump to avoid chasms, rockfall and other hazards. It’s simple and moreish due to the stunning landscapes...
Super Mario Maker
Platforms: Nintendo 2DS/3DS, Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Wii U
Genres: Action, Creative and Platform
Duration: Between half an hour and 1 hour to play a round.
Players: You can play with 4 players in the same room and up to 4 players online.
Super Mario Maker is a game-making system. It’s simpler than tools like Dreams or Roblox, but still offers a huge array of ways to create running and jumping platform games that can then be shared online. You can play hundreds of games that other...
LocoRoco
Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation Portable and PlayStation Vita
Duration: Between 6 hours and 24 hours to complete.
This creates a world of plants and creatures to investigate. The novelty, besides the character’s singing and cute aesthetic, is that you control the game with just two buttons, tilting and bumping your characters through each level.
New Super Lucky's Tale
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One
Duration: Between 8 hours and 12 hours to complete.
This is a platform game where you play a fox on a quest to recover pages from a magical book that will save his world. It takes gameplay in a more action-oriented direction but the islands and characters are full of quirky character and treasures like...
A Fold Apart
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and iOS Apple Arcade
Duration: Between 4 hours and 6 hours to complete.
A puzzle game that explores the emotional rollercoaster of a long-distance relationship — in a world of folding paper. After career choices force them along separate paths, a Teacher and Architect vow to make their long-distance relationship work at...
Old Man’s Journey
Platforms: Android, Nintendo Switch and iOS
Genres: Narrative, Platform and Puzzle
Duration: Between 2 hours and 3 hours to complete.
Old Man’s Journey is a game about memory and old age. You help a grandfather-figure traverse the countryside by raising and lowering the landscape. Along the way he visits places that evoke the story of his life: a wife, a child and a love of the sea.
Fez
Platforms: Mac, PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Xbox 360 and iOS
Duration: Between 7 hours and 10 hours to complete.
Fez is a dimension based puzzle game where you, as a small character called Gomez, can rotate between four 2D views of the 3D world (as four sides around a cube-like space). This sounds confusing but actually develops into a mind-stretching and...
Fru
Platforms: Xbox 360 and Xbox One
Genres: Physically Active and Platform
This is a platform game with a twist. One player uses a controller to run and jump around the level; a second player stands in front of the Xbox Kinect camera and appears on the screen in silhouette. This person must use the outline of their body to...
Moving Out
Platforms: Mac, Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One
Duration: Between 5 minutes and 15 minutes to play a round.
Moving Out is an action-puzzle game where you play a removal company. With up to four players you work together to get items out of the house and into the van. Although this starts simply you soon find furniture that is an awkward shape or needs two...
Human Fall Flat
Genres: Action, Fighting, Platform and Puzzle
Duration: Between 6 hours and 9 hours to complete.
Players: You can play with 2 players in the same room and up to 2 players online.
Human: Fall Flat takes the idea of rag-doll characters and movement in the direction of a platform game. You run, jump and solve puzzles with your elastic character, either on your own or with another player. Get it wrong and you fall flat on your face,...
Heave Ho
Genres: Action, Platform, Puzzle and Simulation
Duration: Between 4 hours and 5 hours to complete.
Heave Ho is a game where up to four players try and swing themselves across a level. But you can only hang on to certain points and must dangle and swing with both arms to progress. The twist is that you can also hold hands with other players and make...
The First Tree
Platforms: Mac, Nintendo Switch, PC and PlayStation 4
Genres: Creative, Narrative, Open World, Platform and Puzzle
The First Tree is an exploration narrative game. In a dream, you explore a forest wilderness as a mother fox looking for her cubs. Simultaneously, you revisit childhood memories in spoken reflection from two lovers remembering the dream and their...
Super Mario Galaxy
Platforms: Nintendo Wii and Nintendo Wii U
Genres: Action, Adventure, Platform and Simulation
Duration: Between 16 hours and 26 hours to complete.
Mario Galaxy is a different style of running, jumping and exploration game. It takes the Mario character to 100s of different planet shaped levels adding more realistic physics to the platform Ing play. Each world, or collection of worlds is different...
Teach Your Monster To Read
Teach Your Monster to Read is a game about phonics, letters and reading. Children create a monster for a journey through three games. The combination of colourful well-animated characters and proper reading learning is both fun and powerful.
Good Job!
Platforms: Nintendo Switch
Genres: Action, Platform and Simulation
Duration: Between 6 hours and 8 hours to complete.
You play an office employee with a difference. Together with a friend you must climb the corporate ladder to take over the family business. But rather than starting as tea boy and working up, you have a set of more bizarre office problems: building zen...
Snipperclips
This is a game where you play a piece of paper that can be cut into different shapes. Through a series of puzzle levels, you adjust your shape by clipping and overlapping other players. Sometimes this is to match a shape, at others it is to catch a ball...
Mutant Mudds
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Wii U, PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita and iOS
Genres: Action and Platform
Duration: Between 15 hours and 19 hours to complete.
Mutant Mudds is a retro platform video game. It's unusual because it Is unforgiving and hard to play so presents a substantial challenge. Also, playing to the 3D feature of the Nintendo 3DS console, the game allows you to jump into the background of the...
Snake Pass
Duration: Between 6 hours and 10 hours to complete.
Snake Pass is a puzzle game where you move around objects and through the world like a snake. Rather than running around the levels like you do in games like Mario games, you have to slither along the ground and coil around...
Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy
Platforms: Android, Mac, PC and iOS
Genres: Action, Platform, Simulation and Sports
Duration: Between 6 hours and 17 hours to complete.
Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy is a strange game about movement and momentum. You are tasked with climbing a mountain. However, your only means of locomotion is a hammer that can stick to objects and drag you forwards.
Phogs
Phogs is a game where you control a stretchy dog that has a head at both ends of its body. It sounds a little strange, but is actually an endearing adventure where, on your own or with another person, you control each end of the dog separately to...
Retimed
Genres: Action, Platform, Shooting and Strategy
Duration: Between 5 minutes and 15 minutes to complete.
Retimed is a multiplayer shooting game where players can create a bubble that slows down time. This makes the usual frantic shooting and dodging more achievable as when you are in danger you have more time to get out of the way.
No Heroes Here
Genres: Action, Fighting, Platform, Puzzle and Simulation
Duration: Between 6 hours and 7 hours to complete.
No Heroes Here is a co-operative defend your castle game for up to four players. In simple pixel graphics, you have to work together to prepare your defences and then use them as the armies attack. The key to success is that everyone needs a role,...
Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair
Duration: Between 15 hours and 22 hours to complete.
Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair is a side-on running and jumping game starring the characters from the 3D platform game Yooka-Laylee. You control Yooka, a male chameleon, and Laylee, a female bat and take on a level...
Ibb and Obb
Platforms: Mac, Nintendo Switch, PC and PlayStation 3
Ibb & Obb is a puzzle game where you run, jump, land on enemies and solve momentum puzzles. The novelty is that it's a game designed for co-operation. One player controls the green creature, Ibb, and the other controls the pink creature, Obb. The world...
Chariot
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Wii U, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One
Genres: Action, Adventure, Platform and Puzzle
Duration: Between 14 hours and 15 hours to complete.
Chariot is a co-op platform game where you haul around a wheeled Chariot, to the end of each level. Pushing, pulling or dragging with ropes, you need to use the real physics of the game to solve puzzles and time jumps to get the heavy object to the...
Pikuniku
Platforms: Mac, Nintendo Switch, PC and Xbox One
Genres: Action, Adventure, Platform, Puzzle and Simulation
Pikuniku is an adventure where you play a red creature, Piku, on a mission to harvest the colourful world's resources. You interact with different objects to trigger switches and open doors. You can also lasso your legs to swing from hooks or curl into...
Super One More Jump
Players: You can play this with 4 players online.
Super One More Jump is a jumping platform game you control with a single tap or button press. You control the little character who automatically moves forward. Your task is to press jump at the right time so you can progress through the level.
Wunderling
Wunderling is a jumping game controlled by just two buttons: jumping and boost. The levels scroll automatically so you have to think ahead to decide how to get past each section. It's a combination of time reactions and forward planning.
Super Mario Run
Duration: Between 2 minutes and 5 minutes to play a round.
Players: You can play this with 1 player online.
Super Mario Run is a running and jumping game you play by tapping the screen to jump. You character automatically runs and you just tap at the right time to avoid obstacles and jump on enemies. It sounds too simple to be fun but is actually a cleverly...
Bubbles The Cat
Platforms: Android, PC and iOS
Bubbles The Cat is a platform game you play by tapping a single button to jump. Through hundreds of levels and six worlds, you automatically run forwards bu must tap at the right time to survive.
Hue
Duration: Between 5 hours and 7 hours to complete.
Hue is a puzzle game where you run and jump through platforms. You explore a grey land while searching for your missing mother. The novelty is in the coloured pieces you uncover, which when matched against obstacles will cause them to disappear,...
Pac-Man Vs.
Platforms: GameCube, Nintendo 2DS/3DS, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Wii
Genres: Platform and Strategy
Pac-Man Vs. is a version of Pac Man adapted for multiple players. One player controls Pac-Man and tries to eat the pellets, while the others control the ghosts to try to catch him. Each team scores points in different ways, and the first team to hit the...
Totally Reliable Delivery Service
Genres: Open World, Platform, Puzzle and Simulation
Duration: Between 9 hours and 10 hours to complete.
Totally Reliable Delivery Service is a package delivery game, where you use different means to get parcels to their rightful owners in the time limit.
Jump King
Duration: Between 9 hours and 17 hours to complete.
Jump King is a high stakes jumping game, where you control a character ascending a series of increasingly spread out platforms. You can control how high each jump is by the length of your button press. This enables you to judge difficult and long jumps...
Spiritfarer
Genres: Action, Adventure, Narrative, Open World, Platform and Simulation
Duration: Between 28 hours and 30 hours to complete.
Spiritfarer is a boat building exploration game. Unusually though, you play Stella, ferry master to the deceased and the boat you manage takes them to the next life.
Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze
Platforms: Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Wii U
Duration: Between 11 hours and 18 hours to complete.
Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze is a running, jumping and collecting game where you control Donkey Kong. A second player can control the Diddy Kong sidekick. The challenge is getting to the end of each level, but there are also letters and items to...
Yoshi's Crafted World
Genres: Adventure and Platform
Yoshi's Crafted World is a running and jumping game where you control a friendly dinosaur, Yoshi. You work through each level, eating or jumping on enemies while searching for hidden items and collectables.
Lumino City
Duration: Between 5 hours and 6 hours to complete.
Lumino City is a puzzle adventure game in a hand made world. This is not unusual for a video game, but this world was literally made by hand in a physical studio and then filmed. It creates a unique experience that feels like you are poking around a...
Levelhead
Platforms: Android, Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and iOS
Levelhead is a game making game where you construct levels to train a delivery robot. The simple drag and drop level design develops into as complex a level maker as you want. Create simple running and jumping levels or something huge, puzzling and...
Gerrrms
Genres: Fighting, Platform and Puzzle
Duration: Between 2 minutes and 10 minutes to complete.
Gerrrms (yes, Germs with three r's) is a light-hearted infection themed fighting game. You control one of 12 tiny germs and fight for dominance within the human body. However, you can only move around by swinging from hooks inside a corporeal arena....
Lego Super Mario
Costs: Purchase cost. In-game 'loot box' purchases.
Lego Super Mario is a running and jumping game you play in the real world with an electronic Mario toy. A series of Lego sets provide special bricks that the Mario toy can detect. The timer starts as you move the toy through the level and trigger...
Fledgling Heroes
Platforms: Nintendo Switch and iOS Apple Arcade
Genres: Action, Platform and Rhythm
Fledgeling Heroes is a fun flying game where you tap or press to guide a part through landscapes and collect coins. You can swim, sprint and soar, defeat dastardly dragons, unlock wondrous new worlds, and explore limitless levels in the Lab.
Yoshi's Wooly World
Platforms: Nintendo 2DS/3DS and Nintendo Wii U
Duration: Between 12 hours and 18 hours to complete.
Yoshi's Woolly World is a platform game made of knitting. You explore, jump and run your way around, solving puzzles and collecting items to complete each stage.
Fling Smash
Platforms: Nintendo Wii
Fling Smash is an action throwing game where you direct a ball-shaped hero by flicking the controller.
Wii Party U
Platforms: Nintendo Wii U
Genres: Action, Platform, Puzzle and Racing
Duration: Between half an hour and 45 minutes to complete.
Wii Party U is a collections of games to play with families in the same room. Different modes suite different groups and ages but are all light hearted fun and make use of the Wii U Gamepad in creative ways.
Wii Party
Duration: Between 15 minutes and 45 minutes to complete.
Wii Party is a party game that offers a variety of challenges that each use the Wii Remote motion controls. These 80 mini game challenges are organised through three sections of the game: Party Games, House Party Games, and Pair Games.
Degrees of Separation
Degrees of Separation is a running and jumping game where you control two characters from different seasons, Ember and Rime. Each has different abilities to change the environment and help you to progress: freezing water, melting ice and the like.
Super Mario 3D World
Duration: Between 22 hours and 35 hours to complete.
Super Mario 3D World is a platform game you can play with up to 4-players in the same place. While all Mario games are good for families, this co-operative and competitive play makes it great for families and friends to play together.
New Super Mario Bros. U
Genres: Action, Creative, Platform and Puzzle
Duration: Between 18 hours and 40 hours to complete.
Players: You can play with 5 players in the same room, but you can’t play it online.
New Super Mario Bros. U is platform game where you play with 4 main players (and an optional assistant player) to traverse from one side of the level to the other. Along with the usual running, jumping, stomping and collecting you are racing other...
Sonic Mania
Platforms: Android, GameCube, Mac, Nintendo 2DS/3DS, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo Wii U, PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Xbox 360, Xbox One and iOS
Duration: Between 9 hours and 12 hours to complete.
Sonic the Hedgehog is a series of games staring an athletic blue hedgehog who runs, jumps and bounces his way around platform levels. Created as Sega's answer to Mario, Sonic is now on all modern video game platforms.
Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker
Duration: Between 11 hours and 12 hours to complete.
Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker is a running, exploring, puzzle game where you guide the Toad character to save Todette from the villain Wingo and retrieve the Power Stars on each level. You navigate puzzles and obstacles, fighting enemies to reach the...
Gris
Platforms: Android, Mac, Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4 and iOS
Genres: Adventure, Narrative and Platform
Gris is a platform game where you guide a young girl through a crumbling world. Through beautiful metaphoric landscapes and soaring music, the game touches on emotions of loss and longing but doesn’t resolve to a firm narrative. Although not hugely...
Roblox
Platforms: Android, Mac, PC, Xbox One and iOS
Genres: Action, Adventure, Creative, Fighting, Platform, Puzzle, Rhythm, Role-Playing and Strategy
Duration: Between 5 minutes and half an hour to play a round.
Players: This is a single player game. You can play with up to 100 players online.
Costs: Free-to-start. Season pass and in-game purchases.
In this game, amateur game-makers create simple online games that often mimic real-world grown-up scenarios, like working in a pizza restaurant, surviving natural disasters, escaping prison, scuba diving or playing hide-and-seek. The library of games is...
Tearaway
Platforms: PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita
Tearaway on PlayStation Vita and Tearaway Unfolded on PlayStation 4 create a game world entirely from paper as the setting for this fantastical adventure. It’s beautiful and funny, and offers a running, jumping exploration challenge. Drawing on...
Child of Light
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Wii U, PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Xbox 360 and Xbox One
Genres: Narrative and Platform
Duration: Between 12 hours and 16 hours to complete.
Child of Light is a platform game presented like a fairy tale, where you play a young girl, Aurora, on a quest to save her kingdom from the darkness. Battle encounters break up the adventure and power up your character. To finally make it home, you must...
Minecraft
Platforms: Android, Mac, Nintendo 2DS/3DS, Nintendo Wii U, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Xbox 360, Xbox One and iOS
Genres: Action, Creative, Fighting, Open World, Platform and Shooting
Players: You can play with 4 players in the same room and up to 16 players online.
Although Minecraft – where players place blocks to build structures, sculpt the landscape and create adventures – is the best-selling game of all time, some of the best aspects of it are little known. Along with the exploration, building and...
Papo and Yo
Platforms: Mac, PC and PlayStation 3
Papo & Yo pits you as a young boy, Quico, exploring a Brazilian city slum. As you solve puzzles and perform well-timed jumps to progress through the city, you must also deal with a monster – both real and metaphorically representing your alcoholic...
Celeste
Platforms: Mac, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One
Duration: Between 13 hours and 30 hours to complete.
This is a platform game that requires players to use jumping and climbing moves to ascend an increasingly challenging two-dimensional mountain. You play Madeline, who is, perhaps unsurprisingly, haunted by self-doubt at the task in hand. She presses on...
Tunic
Platforms: Mac, PC and Xbox One
Genres: Action, Fighting, Platform, Puzzle and Role-Playing
Duration: Between 8 hours and 10 hours to complete.
You wake up on an island as a small fox, with no memory of how you got there. From a fixed overhead perspective, you push through trees, pick up weapons and learn new moves to discover an expanse of forests, caves and landscapes. Choose your own way...
Fe
Genres: Action, Open World, Platform and Puzzle
Duration: Between 7 hours and 15 hours to complete.
You play a fox in a magical fairy tale forest. The world extends in front of you in stylised form, with trees, mountains and streams glistening with sparkles of life. You run, jump, climb and dip your paws in every aspect of the world. But it’s the...
Wandersong
You play a bard on a quest to gather parts of a song. Uniquely, you interact with the environment and inhabitants by singing. Controlled by one of the direction sticks, you can access different notes on the coloured ‘Song Wheel’. This unusual way of...
Ori and the Blind Forest
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC and Xbox One
Duration: Between 9 hours and 13 hours to complete.
Both Ori and the Blind Forest and Ori and the Will of the Wisps place you in control of a diminutive elfish spirit called Ori. You run, jump and solve platforming challenges to progress through the world. As you do new powers are unlocked that allow you...
Hollow Knight
Genres: Action, Adventure, Fighting, Narrative and Platform
Duration: Between 20 hours and 30 hours to complete.
Run, jump and battle your way through the underground kingdom of Hallownest. It’s not uncommon for platform games to invest in the environments through which you pass, but the haunting depths in this game contain more than a veneer of ancient...
Nintendoland
Genres: Action, Fighting, Platform, Puzzle, Racing, Shooting and Strategy
This collection of Nintendo games was created for the Nintendo Wii U launch. It uses the console’s tablet screen to create specific roles for different players. In Mario Chase, the hiding player uses the tablet controller screen while the four seekers...
Shadow Puppeteer
Platforms: Nintendo Wii U and PC
Duration: Between 4 hours and 7 hours to complete.
In Shadow Puppeteer one player controls a shadow and the other player controls the main character. Their task is to help each other progress through a series of platform levels to recover stolen shadows from their hometown.
Unravel
Unravel and the two-player Unravel Two are a pair of jumping and swinging platform games where you control a character made out of wool. As well as making him look super cute, the wool is used to swing around and interact with objects.
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart
Platforms: PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PlayStation Portable and PlayStation Vita
Genres: Action, Adventure, Fighting, Platform and Shooting
Duration: Between 15 hours and 20 hours to complete.
Ratchet & Clank looks more cartoony but still offers the B-movie-style action. As Ratchet, you explore planets and space stations, battling enemies with a variety of weapons and gadgets. Sidekick Clank sits on Ratchet’s back and offers more abilities,...
Steamworld Dig
Platforms: Mac, Nintendo 2DS/3DS, PC, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita
Duration: Between 7 hours and 12 hours to complete.
The SteamWorld Dig series are action platform games where you play steam-powered robots trying to recover their lost civilisation. The two games in the series draws on classics like Dig Dug, Rick Dangerous, Repton and Boulderdash.
Steamworld Heist
Platforms: Nintendo 2DS/3DS, Nintendo Wii U, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita
Genres: Action, Platform, Role-Playing, Shooting and Turn-Based
Duration: Between 14 hours and 20 hours to complete.
Steam-powered robots fighting for space supremacy sounds like the script for a 1950s B-movie. As in those matinee hits, the point here isn’t realism but interesting characters. Like the related games (SteamWorld Dig and SteamWorld Quest), SteamWorld...
WarioWare
Platforms: Nintendo 2DS/3DS, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii and Nintendo Wii U
Genres: Action, Platform, Puzzle, Rhythm and Shooting
Games don’t get any sillier than the WarioWare series. Each of its mini-games presents a basic yet peculiar challenge for the player. A simple scene appears on the screen with a one-word clue about what to do. In the few seconds of the countdown you...
I Am Bread
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and iOS
Duration: Between 2 and a half hours and 4 hours to complete.
I Am Bread takes the malleable, real-world physics gameplay and applies it to a slice of bread. By controlling each corner with a different stick or button you make your way around the kitchen and other rooms of the house. Playing a slice of bread is...
Super Mario Odyssey
Genres: Action, Adventure, Open World and Platform
Duration: Between 13 hours and 18 hours to complete.
Mario has stared in running and jumping Super Mario games on Nintendo hardware since the Nintendo Entertainment System in the 80's. The formula remains unchanged. Explore a level, jump on enemies, collect coins and get to the flag at the end to inch...
Lost Winds
Platforms: Nintendo Wii, PC and iOS
LostWinds is a running and jumping video game with a difference. As well as controlling a young boy named Toku you also control the wind. On the Wii you do this by gesturing with the Wii Remote controller, on iOS you draw the direction on the screen. A...
The Last Campfire
The Last Campfire, from the same developer as No Man's Sky, is an adventure about Ember who is trapped a puzzling place, searching for meaning and a way home. As you travel you take a flame with you to the world, lighting...
Yooka-Laylee
Genres: Action, Adventure, Open World, Platform and Puzzle
Duration: Between 16 hours and 19 hours to complete.
Yooka-Laylee is a running, jumping, collecting and exploration game where you play a pair of animal friends: a chameleon called Yooka and a bat called Laylee. They act as one, each contributing different abilities, on a quest to retrieve a magical book...
Lost Words: Beyond the Page
Lost Words is an adventure game where you run, jump and explore inside a young girl’s diary. You control Izzy as she writes her diary by walking on words, move them around and solve different puzzles. This develops two parallel stories, one about Izzy...
Eagle Island
This is a running and jumping adventure where you play Quill and his owl companion Koji as they uncover the secrets of Eagle Island. You work your way through levels using falconry-inspired attacks to take down enemies.
Canabalt
Platforms: Android, PC, PlayStation Portable and iOS
Duration: Between 1 minute and 15 minutes to play a round.
Canabalt is a side-on running game where you press jump at the right time to keep a small character from falling off buildings or crashing into things. With minimalist visuals, you play the small suited man fleeing from an unknown threat. As the game...
Disney Infinity
Platforms: Nintendo Wii, Nintendo Wii U, PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One
Genres: Action, Adventure, Creative, Fighting, Open World and Platform
Disney Infinity is an action game with themed adventures around iconic Disney, Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars characters. Players unlock content in the game with physical figurines and PlaySet pieces placed onto a Base peripheral plugged into the console...
Cuphead
Duration: Between 1 minute and 5 minutes to play a round.
Cuphead is a running, jumping and shooting game that looks like an old Mickey Mouse cartoon. You play on your own or with someone else and work across the screen, jumping gaps, shooting enemies and avoiding projectiles.
Arise: A Simple Story
Duration: Between 7 hours and 9 hours to complete.
Arise: A Simple Story is a narrative game about an old man living in a pre-agricultural tribe. He has just been cremated and as get travels to the next life, begins a pilgrimage of revisiting memories of his life.
Aqua Lungers
Platforms: Nintendo Switch and PC
Genres: Action, Fighting, Platform and Racing
Aqua Lungers is a fighting and collecting game where you control a diver that can dash and swim through underwater levels. You are racing to collect more treasure, faster than your opponents and get it back to your base.
Overwhelm
Genres: Platform and Shooting
Overwhelm is a running jumping game set in a pixilated dark bloody world. The twist, apart from the mild-horror theme, is that it's your enemies that power up rather than you. You explore the oppressive caverns of the hive, guided only by a sparse map.
SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom
Platforms: GameCube, Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 4, Xbox and Xbox One
Duration: Between 11 hours and 16 hours to complete.
SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom is a running and jumping game based on the Nickelodeon animated series SpongeBob SquarePants. It's an original story where you defend Bikini Bottom from an invasion of robots.
Sackboy: A Big Adventure
Platforms: PlayStation 5
Sackboy: A Big Adventure is a platform game. Unlike the other LittleBigPlanet series, you can explore fully 3D open environments in a Mario style experience. Here though the levels are designed for up to four people to play...
LittleBigPlanet
Platforms: PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita
Little Big Planet is a series of games staring the Sackboy character. They offer a multiplayer running and jumping adventure, but also enable to player to substantially edit their character and eventually make their own levels.
Ultimate Chicken Horse
Ultimate Chicken Horse is a running and jumping game where you play different farmyard animals trying to get to the end of the level. The twist is that it's you and your friends who build the levels as you play, placing deadly traps before trying to...
Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time
Platforms: GameCube, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Wii, PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One and iOS
Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time is the latest game in the Crash Bandicoot series, where you play a genetically enhanced bandicoot called Crash and run, jump and bash your way through levels while avoiding hazards.
Extreme Exorcism
Platforms: Nintendo Wii U, PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One
Extreme Exorcism is a running, jumping and fighting game set in a series of haunted locations. The graphics are retro but the gameplay has a novel twist. Each enemy ghost you hunt mimics your moves on previous lives.
The Swapper
Platforms: Nintendo Wii U, PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita and Xbox One
The Swapper is a platform-adventure where you explore a damaged space station to collect orbs that open doors into other areas. Unusually, you can clone your character multiple times and then control it to help you solve puzzles and progress in various...
Rayman Legends
Duration: Between 10 hours and 15 hours to complete.
Rayman Legends is a platform game, the sequel to Rayman Origins, where you get sucked into a painting that takes you to a fantasy world with all sorts of creative running and jumping challenges.
Rayman Origins
Platforms: Nintendo 2DS/3DS, Nintendo Wii, PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita and Xbox 360
Duration: Between 10 hours and 16 hours to complete.
Rayman Origins is platform game where you run, jump, swing and attack your way through fantasy cartoon levels. It stands out because of the strong characters and variety of different enemies ranging in difficulty.
De Blob
Platforms: Nintendo DS, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Wii, PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One and iOS
De Blob is a platform-puzzle game where you explore cartoon-style urban landscapes to recolour the city. You play a sponge-like creature that can collect colour paint and take it to different locations to turn the buildings and landscape features to...
The Adventure Pals
The Adventure Pals is a running, jumping and fighting game where you play duo Sparkles the giraffe and Mr. Rock. By making jumps, exploring levels and defeating enemies you try and stop Mr.B from capturing the elderly, including your dad, and turning...
Panzer Paladin
Panzer Paladin is a platform game where you control Flame, a rescue service android who commands the Paladin robot Grit. They work together to defend against the dark Prince Ravenous and save Earth from being destroyed.
The Messenger
Duration: Between 12 hours and 15 hours to complete.
The Messenger is a platform game where you play as a young ninja after his village is attacked by a demon army. You must deliver a scroll, fighting enemies and pulling off complex acrobatic manoeuvres along the way. The game is inspired by the classic...
Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove
Platforms: Nintendo 2DS/3DS, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Wii U, PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita and Xbox One
Duration: Between 6 hours and 11 hours to complete.
Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove is a retro-style platform game where you play as a Knight who's primary weapon is a shovel. It can either be used to attack enemies head-on, dig up treasure, or aim below while jumping to bounce on enemies. You can get...
Thomas Was Alone
Platforms: Nintendo Wii U, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita and Xbox One
Genres: Action, Narrative and Platform
Duration: Between 3 and a half hours and 6 hours to complete.
Control different-coloured rectangles in this simple running, jumping and puzzle solving platform game. It sounds boring and derivative but each of the distinctly coloured shapes comes to life in the game as a character embroiled in this escape story...
Starbound
Platforms: Mac, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita and Xbox One
Genres: Action, Adventure, Fighting, Open World, Platform, Shooting and Simulation
Duration: Between 20 hours and 25 hours to complete.
Players: You can play this with 8 players online.
Starbound is an action-adventure similar from the same developer as Terraria. It takes place in a two-dimensional, procedurally generated space universe where you can explore and discover new weapons, armour, and items. You can also visit towns and...
Terraria
Platforms: Android, Mac, Nintendo 2DS/3DS, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Wii U, PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Xbox 360, Xbox One and iOS
Genres: Action, Adventure, Fighting, Platform, Shooting, Simulation and Strategy
Duration: Between 50 hours and 80 hours to complete.
Players: You can play with 4 players in the same room and up to 8 players online.
Terraria looks like a 2D, lesser, version of Minecraft. However, this is a game every bit as complex and creative as the better-known block building game. To the world-crafting and survival it adds hundreds of items to collect, characters to defeat and...
Portal
Platforms: Mac, PC, PlayStation 3, Web Browser, Xbox 360 and Xbox One
Genres: Action, Narrative, Platform, Puzzle and Simulation
Duration: Between 4 hours and 9 hours to complete.
You are in a science laboratory where you seem to be being tested. Watched by the artificial intelligence GLaDOS, you have a gun that can create a pair of magic portals on any surface: one is an entrance and the other is an exit. Through a series of...
Braid
Platforms: Mac, PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Xbox One
Duration: Between 5 hours and 9 hours to complete.
Braid is a platform game, not dissimilar to Mario World, that appears simple but has a twist. The movement of your character is connected to the progression of time in a mind-bending manner. The resulting puzzles are fascinating and connected to a story...
The Gunstringer
Platforms: Xbox 360
Genres: Action, Narrative, Physically Active, Platform, Puzzle and Shooting
The Gunstringer is an Xbox Kinect camera game where you use your body to control a cowboy puppet and shoot the villains by forming a gun with your fingers. You can play with two people working together, with one player controlling the character’s...
Another World
Platforms: Android, Nintendo 2DS/3DS, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and iOS
Another World (Out of This World in North America) is a retro cinematic running, jumping and shooting game about a young scientist who, as a result of a failed experiment finds himself on a dangerous alien world where he is forced to fight for his...
Flashback
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One
Flashback is a running and jumping game with a strong narrative. Made in the 90s it's similar to Another World and Prince of Persia.
Valiant Hearts The Great War
Valiant Hearts is an adventure game set during World War I. You play four characters who help a young German soldier find his love in a story about survival, sacrifice and friendship. This is achieved by solving puzzles and interacting with various...
Knack
Platforms: PlayStation 4
Genres: Action, Adventure, Fighting, Narrative, Platform, Puzzle and Shooting
Duration: Between 10 hours and 13 hours to complete.
Knack is a platform action series where you control a shape-shifting robot called Knack. Through beautiful arcade-style battles and worlds, you collect Relics that enable you to grow bigger and gain more powers.
Prince of Persia
Platforms: PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Xbox and Xbox 360
Duration: Between 9 hours and 14 hours to complete.
Prince of Persia is a long-standing game series dating back to the early 90's. The games all feature the titular prince who must escape a maze of platform-based levels. The game first impressed with its unusually fluid movement and life-like animation....
Paladins: Champions of the Realm
Genres: Action, Platform and Shooting
Duration: Between 10 minutes and 20 minutes to play a round.
Players: You can play this with 10 players online.
Paladins: Champions of the Realm is a free online shooting game, like that lets you play as different heroes in the battles. It's set in a world combining fantasy and science fiction, including medieval-looking soldiers who use...
Viewtiful Joe
Platforms: GameCube, Nintendo DS, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable and PlayStation Vita
Viewtiful Joe is a side-on fighting game where you play a movie-lover whose girlfriend Silvia is kidnapped during a film starring your favorite superhero, Captain Blue. You enter the movie world, transformed into the tokusatsu-style persona "Viewtiful...
Sea of Solitude
Sea of Solitude is an adventure where you play a young woman, Kay, with such strong loneliness that her feelings turn her into a monster. As you explore a flooded city you discover dark creatures that you must deal with -- by uncovering their underlying...
Clubhouse Games
Platforms: Nintendo DS and Nintendo Switch
Genres: Action, Platform, Puzzle and Strategy
Clubhouse Games, is a series that offers classic board and card games in one large bundle. It's not only great value but introduces children to a wide range of real-world games to play with the family.
Never Alone
Platforms: Android, Mac, Nintendo Wii U, PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One and iOS
Duration: Between 3 hours and 5 hours to complete.
Never Alone is a running, jumping and exploring game based on the traditional Iñupiaq tale, "Kunuuksaayuka". You swap between controlling an Iñupiaq girl named Nuna and her Arctic fox companion as you complete puzzles and move the story forwards.
Forgotton Anne
Duration: Between 8 hours and 9 hours to complete.
Forgotton Anne (Forgotten Anne) is a hand-animated adventure that combines cartoon (Ghibli-inspired) storytelling with running and jumping puzzles. You play as Anne, the enforcer who keeps order in the Forgotten Lands, as she sets out to squash a...
Journey to the Savage Planet
Genres: Action, Adventure, Open World, Platform and Shooting
Duration: Between 11 hours and 14 hours to complete.
Players: You can play this with 2 players online.
Journey to the Savage Planet is an adventure-shooting game played from a first-person perspective. You explore a planet to catalogue various alien flora and fauna and collect the resources you need to craft items and upgrades like jetpacks and grappling...
Worms Rumble
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5
Players: You can play this with 32 players online.
Worms Rumble is a multiplayer game where 32 worm characters try and shoot each other. It takes the usual turn-based Worms formula in a real time direction complete with a battle royale mode like Fortnite.
Rogue Legacy
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita and Xbox One
Duration: Between 16 hours and 18 hours to complete.
Rogue Legacy is a dungeon fighting game. Each time you die you go back to the start. However, you are resurrected as a character with different challenges: colourblind, dyslexic, a dwarf and so on. You can use gold, collected form previous lives, to...
Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons
Platforms: Android, Mac, Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and iOS
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is an action-adventure game where you control two brothers at the same time with a single controller. After their mother passes away, they must find some water from the Tree of Life to save their father. The controls weave...
Limbo
Platforms: Nintendo Wii U, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita and Xbox One
Duration: Between 4 hours and 8 hours to complete.
Control a small boy as he runs, jumps and climbs through a dark, silhouetted forest that clanks and hums with foreboding. As the age-rating suggests, he is killed in all manner of gruesome ways. But this is not without reason. Rather than violent...
Mirror’s Edge
Platforms: PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One
Mirror's Edge and the follow up, Mirror’s Edge Catalyst are free-running games where you traverse a futuristic city using aspects of urban exploration and parkour movements to complete missions and evade or fight enemies. The focus is on this...
No Time to Explain
Platforms: Mac, Nintendo Wii U, PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One
Duration: Between 2 hours and 4 hours to complete.
No Time to Explain is a running, jumping and shooting game where you play a man chasing his future self through time. As the game evolves you must progress to solve time puzzles and complete platforming challenges.
Remember Me
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
Genres: Action, Adventure, Fighting and Platform
Remember Me is an adventure game developed where you play Nilin, a memory hunter working for an underground resistance. The game is set in the year 2084, in a futuristic version of Paris called Neo-Paris, where the Memorize corporation has made memories...
Framed
Platforms: Android, Nintendo Switch, PC and iOS
Genres: Action, Narrative, Platform and Puzzle
Duration: Between 1 and a half hours and 2 hours to complete.
Framed is a puzzle adventure where you re-arrange panels of an animated comic book to change the outcome and timeline of the story. With a noir-detective look, the puzzles start simply but soon get complex.
Deadlight
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One
Duration: Between 5 hours and 8 hours to complete.
Deadlight takes the monochrome running, jumping and shooting action in a more mature direction and with a deeper and coherent story. It draws on older (and equally excellent) platform games Another World and Flashback. You control Randall Wayne, a...
Inside
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and iOS
Duration: Between 8 hours and 13 hours to complete.
Inside is from the same developer as Limbo. As such, you play another boy in a dark dream-light and horrific world. Here though, it's more modern-day and realistic.
