In these highly acclaimed platformers, you need to move very precisely to stay alive.
Platforming games, as the name suggests, require players to carefully and quickly jump off of many dangerous cliffs and ledges while avoiding dangerous objects and making sure they land on safe areas as they progress through stages. Thanks in large part to changes in controls and game features over the years, some platformers have made it possible to make jumping from one place to another both hard and fun.
But which precise platformers are the best? Here are some games where players have to use their speed and skill to dart through levels that are cleverly designed:
Levelhead
In Butterscotch Shenanigans’ Levelhead, players take control of GR-18, a delivery robot that needs to finish a bunch of training levels to get better at programming its movement.In Levelhead’s story mode, which has more than ninety levels, GR-18 has to avoid getting hit while avoiding dangerous enemies and traps.
Besides having exact controls, Levelhead also lets players make their own stages and let other players try to finish them. This part of the game lets players be even more creative as GR-18 and improves their stage-designing skills.
N++
N++ is the third game in the N series. It is also known as NPLUSPLUS. To get high scores at the end of a game, players must use momentum to avoid enemies and projectiles. Each level was carefully thought out by hand, and as the single-player story goes on, players are met with tougher stages that test how well they understand how the game works.
Up to four people can play N++ together on the same couch. For each level, there is also a leaderboard that shows which people are the best at finishing it.
Garlic
Garlic is a tough platform game about a boy with an onion for a head whose goal is to climb the Sacred Tower to meet the Cyber Goddess, who grants wishes. To get past different obstacles, scary enemies, and tricky platforms, players must use Garlic’s dash mechanism.
Both the game’s pixel art and its cutscenes make me think of early Game Boy games. The 8-bit music makes me feel even more nostalgic with each thumping beat that plays as I move through the levels. For perfect platforming fun, the crazy humor and retro style go perfectly with the game.
Slime-san
Slime-san is a strange 2D action platformer game where players take control of the titular Slime-san, who was eaten by a worm. You have to help Slime-san get out of the worm’s innards, which are full of dangerous things that you have to avoid, slide, slime, and jump over.
As a slime, you can cling to walls, sneak into cracks that lead to secret areas, and fight different bosses in the game in unique ways. Wordle Unlimited has a speedrun mode and a boss rush mode that test how fast players can react and how well they know how bosses attack and what their flaws are.
Jump King
The main character in Jump King is the titular Jump King, who is on a quest to get the famous Smoking Hot Babe, who is at The Top. The only way to get to The Top is to jump from one stage to another, avoid obstacles, and find hidden items along the way.
The game’s jump mechanics depend on momentum, and players have to make the right changes to land on the right ledges and paths. Every level gets harder as you go through the game. To be successful, you need to learn the right timing to get the jump trajectory.
The End is Nigh
The End is Nigh is a good action platformer game where players take control of a mutated blob named Ash. It was made by the same publisher and creator who made the cult classics Binding of Isaac and Super Meat Boy. Ash is one of the few people who lived through the “end of the world,” and he wants to make friends with any other humans who are still alive in the harsh, post-apocalyptic wasteland.
Many people think of The End is Nigh as the spiritual successor to Super Meat Boy because it has smooth controls and dangerous levels that test how fast players’ twitch reactions and timing are.
Hollow Knight
A lot of people think that Hollow Knight is one of the best Metroidvania games. This game has exciting platforming, characters you’ll remember, and fighting that is both fun and hard. The players take control of the named Hollow Knight and use his trusty nail to explore all of Hollow Nest’s different areas.
Hollow Knight has a lot of challenging platform levels. The famous Path of Pain in the White Palace is the best place to see how well you can time and master Hollow Knight’s traversal controls. You can use the patented Nail Pogo technique to get through thorn beds, spiked floors, and some enemies by jumping on them.
Super Meat Boy
Super Meat Boy is one of the hardest platform games. Players have to get Meat Boy to save his girlfriend Bandage Girl from Dr. Fetus by controlling him and his physics-based traversal and platforming techniques and beating the game’s punishing levels.
As Meat Boy, players have to stay away from screaming blades, fireballs, and other dangers on the stage. A better letter grade is earned by finishing each level as quickly as possible. This is important, but harder to do in later levels where players have to deal with tougher hurdles.
Celeste
It looks like Celeste is just another boring platformer at first glance, but people who play it will be amazed at how well the controls work for moving and traversing. Celeste, the main character, can climb, jump, and dash through the air to get over cliffs, onto ledges, and to different platforms that are strategically placed to get past tricky places.
Celeste also has an interesting story about the main character, Madeline, and how she and her friends try to get over their worries by actually and figuratively climbing up Mount Celeste one step at a time.
Super Mario series
If you want to talk about the best precise platformers, you can’t leave out the Super Mario games. Super Mario games were the first of their kind and set the standards for what a platformer game should have: a jump that can be changed by how long the player presses the button and can be controlled while in the air, a run button to help players gain speed before jumping over gaps, and a lot of platforming hazards that players have to avoid.
Super Mario games, whether they’re in 2D or 3D, stick to their tried-and-true model and have done a lot to keep the platforming genre fresh.