It’s unfair to call Cyber Shadow a Ninja Gaiden ripoff, although that NES platformer is certainly this game’s principal inspiration.

Again, the story is a little “indie winsome”, but Unravel and its sequel are both well worth your time. There’s a sense of freedom and momentum to Unravel’s platforming it’s always satisfying to solve one of its puzzles, because they never feel arbitrary. This is an indie physics puzzler that has you dragging your unspooling yarn over levers, around branches, and through gaps in order to solve puzzles. Much like Ori and the Blind Forest, Unravel has a sequel that’s worth playing if you liked the gameplay of the original.

It’s worth checking out this new version over and above the original Super Lucky’s Tale it revamps the art style, adds some new gameplay modes, and includes the game’s DLC, so it’s the definitive Lucky experience. It doesn’t have any XP bars, skill trees, or other modern trappings what it offers is a pure 3D platforming experience with lots of collectibles and surprisingly varied gameplay. New Super Lucky’s Tale is an unashamedly retro-style platformer. Check out the sequel if you liked this game it’s not quite as good, but it’s still worth experiencing.

The story is a little rote, but there’s more than enough atmosphere and charm to carry this one through. Watching Ori leap and bound through the game’s wooded environments never becomes a chore, and it helps that the platforming in this Metroidvania adventure is just as fluid and compelling as the animation. We’ve never seen a game that moves this fluidly. If nothing else, Ori and the Blind Forest should be experienced simply for the quality of its animation. Dragging your co-op partner off a ledge after a tricky physics puzzling sequence simply never gets old. It’s a mixture of 3D platformer, sandbox game, and cooperative-slash-competitive multiplayer. This is an utterly bizarre 3D platformer that focuses mainly on physics your little bean person doesn’t have a huge range of movement, so you’ll need to manipulate your environment in order to progress through the levels. We don’t think Human: Fall Flat gets the love it deserves. Hollow Knight’s world is bleak, beautiful, and absolutely massive just when you think it’s stopped, it keeps on giving. Who would have thought that of all the pretenders to Dark Souls’ throne, a 2D Metroidvania platformer would be the one to finally get it right? Hollow Knight isn’t superficially similar to Dark Souls it’s 2D, after all, and it has more in common with latter-period Castlevania games than it does with From Software’s game. Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth Nothing up to this point has matched it in scope, influence, variety and sheer fun factor. Mario 64 truly felt like a generation above any other platformer that had released up to that point, and it’s still the golden standard by which all 3D platformers are, and should be compared. It’s the only 3D platformer wherein I actually enjoyed the swimming segments. Enemies are fun to fight and avoid, and it’s genuinely fun to tinker around and explore to find the more difficult stars. The various worlds are exciting to explore and feature a multitude of tiny details. No one will forget the first time they wandered Peach’s castle or fiddled around in the courtyard. Was there any doubt that this would be number one? Super Mario 64 released in this infancy of 3D gaming and blew everything else at the time out of the water with it’s huge expansive environments, objective based collecting, and all around whimsical and magical worlds. It’s an all around magical experience that only one other game of this kind can compete. The gameplay is addictive, the graphics and art are one of a kind, and it has one of the greatest video game soundtracks of all time. Instead of being focused around platforming and exploration NiGHTs is more about racing against the clock and pulling off massive combos. In NiGHTs you play as one of two children who, within their dreams, battle against their nightmares and insecurities by transforming into the titular flying purple jester character. It’s one of the few titles ever released where I truly feel like the developer’s heart and soul was in it. Either way, this is in my opinion the single best game Yuji Naka has ever created. Moreover not a lot of people have played it because it was released on an unpopular console, and though it was re-distributed digitally last generation it never set the sales charts on fire. NiGHTs is barely a platformer, but still has just enough elements of the genre to be included. This is going to be considered an oddball pick by many.

3d platform games