34 Great Games Like Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker

We spend our lives in buildings every day. Our homes, offices, shopping malls, cathedrals, stations, bridges and even public toilets have all been designed. Video games mirror and magnify this built environment in different ways.

Some, like Assassin's Creed, Grand Theft Auto and Forza Horizon recreate virtual versions of familiar places. Others, like The Witcher, Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess and Eastshade, create their own cities and buildings. Then there are games like The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, Biomutant, Enslaved or The Last Of Us that drop you in a once-great but now ruined architecture.

Along with these pre-built spaces, there are also games that invite you to affect and rebuilt the architecture of a world. Games like Townscaper allow you to easily create series of buildings and consider how one structure relates to those around it -- like a street-scene generator. Then there are games like Animal Crossing, that offer a social context in which to apply your architectural and landscaping skills.

Then there are games that build spaces that would be impossible in real life. From the Escher-like Manifold Garden to the scale-confounding Superliminal, these games can play with perspective and movement to not only confuse the player but open new possibilities in perceiving buildings.

Finally, there are games with breathtaking architecture. Whether it's the atmospheric lighting of Control, the climbable buildings of the Uncharted series or Shadow of the Colossus vast cathedral-like structures, video games often create original spaces that stop you in your tracks.

The video games in this list create space to notice, reflect and try your hand at architecture. They are fun, but they are also important because the design of the spaces we spend time in have profound effects on how we feel, think and move.
 

In this series, we are learning how different aspects of video games work by playing games that offer an easy introduction to this one concept. This is designed for people new to gaming, and aims to identify games with the least barriers. In this entry we are looking at Platform games.

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 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.
 

We all have a different level of experience, ability and connection to video games. Finding a game to play with another person who has less (or more) expertise of playing can be a challenge.

This list is designed to help you find games to solve this. Some of these games, like Super Mario Odyssey or Spiritfarer, let one player help the other. Other games, like Kingdoms or Chariot let you work together to progress with enough time for one player to help the other. Then there are games, like Affordable Space Adventures or Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes where each player takes on a different role. Some games like Tick Tock A Tale For Two or Get Together let you play on separate devices and talk to each other to solve collaborative puzzles. Finally, there are single player games, like Detroit Become Human or Return of the Obra Dinn where one player can control things while the other makes suggestions.

Whether you are a parent playing with a gaming expert son or daughter, or a partner of someone who plays less or more games, these are a great place to find common ground.
 

Some forms of play are timeless. Running around with a stick pretending to be in the army. Chasing each other in games of tag. And, of course, hide and seek. The games in this list offer digital ways to play hide and seek with a variety of different twists.

Hide In A Crowd: There are games like Spy Party, Thief Town, Hidden in Plain Sight and Buissons, that let you play as a range of characters and then challenge another player to find you amongst a computer-controlled crowd, from what way you move and interact. The Fruit game in Game & Wario on Wii U has the same mechanics, with one person trying to steal fruit without the other players working out who they are. Wii Party offers hiding in its Spot the Sneak mode where one player has a secret advantage in the mini-games that the other players have to spot. Another great example is Wii U Party, Lost and Found Square mode. One player stands in a crowd of identical people and uses the Wii U gamepad to look around and describe their location to other players, who use the TV to explore and find them. At the end, you see a map of where the players had run.

Prop Hunt: There are games with "Prop Hunt" modes where you can change into the items in the world to hide. Fortnite has a great Prop Hunt mode, as does Minecraft. Then there are games like Witch It designed around this idea of transforming into normal items and hiding in a game world.

Separate Screens: There games like Mario Chase and Luigi's Ghosthouse in Nintendoland, or Pac-Man Vs where one person has their own screen while the others team up to hunt for them use the main TV screen. Or games you play online where everyone has their own screen and try to hide from a particular character like in Secret Neighbor. Screencheat is a twist on this, where you share the same screen and try to shoot each other, but your characters are invisible.

Hidden Objects: Or there are hidden object games where the computer hides things that you have to find, like Hidden Folks and Hidden Through Time. There's a hidden object mode in Super Mario Odyssey where you hunt online player's hidden balloons. A twist on this is Here Kitty where one person hides a phone that then makes cat noises until the seeker has found it.

Open World Hiding: You can use pretty much any open-world game to make your own hiding fun. You can hide in Minecraft (having turned nameplates off), sneak around on public transport in or simply count to 10 while visitors hide in Animal Crossing New Horizons.