20 Best PS4 Platformers

Trine 2 is a fantasy puzzle-platformer from Frozenbyte, the studio behind the original Trine. The Complete Story edition is the full game with the Goblin Menace expansion included. The mystical Trine has bound three heroes together into one, so you control one of them at a time and switch to the other two whenever a puzzle calls for a different trick. A narrator tells the story while you play.

The story takes place several years after the first game. The heroes go after Rosabel and find out that she has held her sister Isabel captive for years. Then the goblins they fought in the forest attack their own kingdom. Players who like puzzle-platformers keep recommending the Trine games, and the second one is the easy place to start.

Sonic Mania was made by people from the Sonic fan game and ROM hacking scene. Christian "Taxman" Whitehead had been hired by Sega to make enhanced mobile ports of the Genesis games, and the project began when he showed a playable prototype to Sonic Team producer Takashi Iizuka. The team aimed for graphics between Genesis and Sega Saturn games. Eight of its stages are remixed from older games, Green Hill Zone included.

It came out in August 2017 and became the highest-rated Sonic game in fifteen years. Within a year it had sold over one million copies. Players who want classic 2D Sonic on the PS4 get sent straight here. Critics had one real complaint, a lack of originality, and for a game built to feel like the Genesis years that is close to a compliment.

A Hat in Time began with director Jonas Kærlev, a computer science graduate from Aalborg University in Denmark. He felt there was a shortage of 3D platformers, especially ones developed by Nintendo, and he wanted to fix that without the endless collecting he blamed on Donkey Kong 64. Development started in August 2012 with a release planned for 2013, and it was badly delayed.

You play Hat Kid. The cast around her is wonderfully odd, from two rival bird directors fighting over a movie award to the Snatcher, a contract-obsessed ghost who steals her soul. Players describe it as a cute, fun platformer in the style of Super Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie. On a console that was short on mascot platformers, it filled the gap better than any big studio did.

Little Nightmares came out in April 2017, on PS4 from day one. You play a girl equipped with only a lighter, sneaking through the bowels of the Maw, a massive underwater iron vessel. Its guests lumber into the Japanese-style Guest Area and gorge themselves on food, and you very much do not want to end up on the table. The team wanted to explore the "wild extremes" of childhood.

Critics praised its atmosphere and its art design. Three extra chapters followed, the last one in February 2018, starring the Runaway Kid, who first breaks free while wrapped in butcher paper on a hook heading for the Kitchen. The game started a series, with the prequel Little Nightmares II in 2021 and Little Nightmares III in 2025. It is short, and it is the scariest game on this list.

Sackboy: A Big Adventure takes the knitted star of LittleBigPlanet and builds a straight 3D platformer around him. There is no create mode to learn first, just levels to run through. At launch it had no online play, so playing together meant sitting on the same couch.

It still found its audience. As of February 2022 it had sold more than 1.2 million copies, and that year it won the Game award at the British Academy Children's Awards. It was also nominated for Family Game of the Year. In October 2022 it came to Windows, the first time the LittleBigPlanet series had been on PC. Players who played it want more Sackboy. For a family with one PS4 and two controllers, it is the easiest pick on this list.

Celeste started small. In August 2015 Maddy Thorson and Noel Berry created a version for the PICO-8 during the course of a weekend, then expanded it into a full game. The climbing was designed to mirror the feeling of bouldering, with Super Mario Bros. 3 and Thorson's own TowerFall as inspirations. Madeline can dash in mid-air in any one of eight directions, and almost every screen is a puzzle about where to use it.

The story is about self-forgiveness, and critics praised how it handles depression and anxiety. Lena Raine wrote the soundtrack. Players call it one of the best 2D platformers in years, tight and hard but rewarding, with music they still listen to. A free chapter called Farewell arrived in September 2019 for anyone who finished the game and wanted to suffer more.

Inside is Playdead's follow-up to Limbo. Work began shortly after the release of Limbo, and the team later switched to Unity and added its own rendering routines for the look. It premiered at Microsoft's E3 2014 conference, slipped from 2015 to 2016, and reached PS4 in August, after Xbox One and Windows.

A boy moves through a dark, dystopian world, avoiding guards and creatures and using a mind-control device to steer other bodies. There is no dialogue and no on-screen display at all. The composer, Andersen, was inspired by 1980s B horror films. Players call it a masterpiece and name it with Limbo among the best puzzle-platformers on the PS4. Critics were just as kind, and it was nominated for game of the year.

Spelunky began as a free game. Derek Yu's first public release was on December 21, 2008, and he kept building it on the TIGSource forums, where players gave him feedback as he went. Jonathan Blow, the developer of Braid, reached out to Derek concerning releasing the game officially on console platforms, and an enhanced version for Xbox Live Arcade was released on July 4, 2012. Ports of that version followed, the PS4 one included.

Some of its items have supernatural abilities, and many can only be found through secret methods like combining other items. Due to its popularity, it became the influence for a whole wave of later roguelites, and many critics regard it as one of the greatest video games of all time. Players describe it as simple and brilliantly designed, and they hand it to anyone who wants a challenge.

Axiom Verge came out on PS4 first, in March 2015, and reached computers in May. You play Trace, a scientist whose theories were ridiculed by the scientific community. He hears a voice and fights his way to its source, a massive, mechanical head named Elsenova. The only survivors of the pandemic were the Rusalki, a race of mechanical giants like Elsenova.

It is a Metroid-style game through and through, and reviewers praised its huge variety of weapons and its rewarding upgrades. Metacritic gave the PS4 version 84/100, and Jeff Gerstmann from Giant Bomb gave the game a perfect score. Players who love Metroid point straight to it. The Multiverse Edition included a physical copy for anyone who wanted it on the shelf.

Dead Cells started as a follow-up to Die2Nite, a browser game from Motion Twin. The studio replaced the cooperative gameplay of Die2Nite with a single-player game focused on combat, took inspiration from the Engineer class in Team Fortress 2, and remade it into an action platformer where you mix weapons and skills. It came out on PS4 and other systems on August 7, 2018.

Motion Twin is a worker cooperative, and it kept the Dead Cells team to between eight and ten people. That small team made a hit: by June 2023 the game had sold over 10 million copies. Critics praised its combat and its permadeath. Players rank it among their favourites, often next to Hollow Knight and Shovel Knight. Of all the games here, it is the one you are most likely to replay.

Knack II came out in September 2017. Reviews were still mixed, but it was largely considered to be an improvement over its predecessor. The big addition is co-op for two on one couch, and reviewers praised how it lets people of varying ages play together. One reviewer singled out the ability to play as Ice Knack.

The backstory belongs to Yurick, a High Goblin leader and master engineer who built the Ancient Weapons, an army of robots meant to wipe out the humans. Lucas and Ava set out for Targun, the High Goblin City, where Yurick first built them. In Japan, it did not rank in the Media Create or Famitsu sales charts at launch. PS4 owners turned it into a running joke anyway, shouting that it was game of the year.

LittleBigPlanet 3 was developed primarily by Sumo Digital, with series creator Media Molecule helping out. Sackboy is no longer alone. New heroes join him, starting with Oddsock, found in Manglewood Swamp on the planet Bunkum. It is also fully voice-acted, while the earlier games only had voices in cutscenes. The developers drew loads of silhouettes for the new heroes and picked the best ones.

Critics praised the visuals and the create mode, where you build levels and play what the community has made. They also found technical issues and a short campaign, and one reviewer called the adventure mode "too short". Players keep adding it to their picks for PS4 platformers, especially for co-op. The story mode is the starter. The levels other people built are the main course.

Shovel Knight came from Yacht Club Games, founded by former members of WayForward Technologies, and development was crowdfunded. The concept was conceived in January 2013. The team drew inspiration for the checkpoint design from Dark Souls and named smaller influences like DuckTales. Jake Kaufman composed the chiptune music using FamiTracker, software for making songs in the style of NES games, with two contributions by Mega Man composer Manami Matsumae.

Critics consider it one of the greatest video games ever made. Later campaigns gave the original story the name Shovel of Hope, and the full game was released in December 2019 as Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove. Players recommend it to anyone after a 2D platformer on PS4. It looks like an NES game and plays better than most of them did.

Tearaway Unfolded is an expanded remake of the 2013 PlayStation Vita game Tearaway. Media Molecule first used it to experiment with the DualShock 4, then decided it should be an alternate version of the game rather than just a remake, with many new and reworked levels. You play Iota or Atoi, a messenger with an envelope head, delivering a letter to a portal in the sky called 'the You'. Some tools must first be created on the controller's touch pad.

Critics mostly praised its controls and its world design, though some felt the Vita original was a more personal experience. Metacritic has it at 81/100. Players call it one of the best 3D platformers on the PS4. One said simply, "I smiled the whole way while playing." That is the right reaction to a world made of paper.

Knack was envisioned as the PlayStation 4 equivalent of a Crash Bandicoot title, and it comes from Mark Cerny. It came out in November 2013. Knack is built out of Relics. With a few he is the size of a human child, and with a very large number he is the size of a small skyscraper.

Players only control Knack, never the camera. Knack received mixed reviews from critics, who praised its original concept and criticized the gameplay. Tom Bramwell of Eurogamer criticized its checkpoint balancing. Players who gave it a fair chance tell a different story: they liked it for what it was, a platformer with a classic PlayStation feeling.

Strider brings back Strider Hiryu, the original assassin, in a completely new game. It came out in February 2014. A different reboot had been in development by Grin back in 2009. The developers wanted Hiryu to retain all of his abilities from the first and second Strider games while still earning new skills to get around a massive interconnected world. His plasma-charged cypher can freeze enemies in their tracks or deflect bullets, and the soundtrack features multiple homages to classic Strider themes.

Critics called it a fun throwback to traditional action games of the 1980s and 90s, and The Escapist called it "a stellar example of how to remake a classic." A first run takes 4-6 hours. Players call it great and tell other PS4 owners to buy it.

Rogue Legacy is a castle-crawling platformer where death is part of the plan. Every new run hands you a new hero from the same family line, and the classes range from mages with stronger spells to assassins with stealth tricks. Beat it and it starts again as New Game+, with secret remixed bosses waiting for anyone stubborn enough.

It was made in Toronto by Cellar Door Games, the brothers Kenny and Teddy Lee. It took 18 months, and it was inspired by Demon's Souls and Dark Souls. The game cost the team about $15,000 of their own money, all of which was earned back within an hour of release. It went on to sell more than 100,000 copies within the first week. Players keep naming it among the 2D games every PS4 owner should try.

Rayman Legends is the fifth main title in the Rayman series and the direct sequel to Rayman Origins. It was built for the Wii U, delayed to February 2013, then held back another six months after the financial failure of ZombiU, and made multi-platform. A petition to release it on the original Wii U date had over 11,000 people signed onto it.

It has over one hundred twenty levels, including forty remastered levels from Rayman Origins, plus rhythm-based levels set to music. Murfy helps by cutting ropes and grabbing enemies, and up to four players can run together. Critics praised its level design and controls, and after slow sales on release it sold over a million copies by 2014. Players recommend it without a second thought. A remake, Rayman Legends Retold, is scheduled to be released on December 3rd, 2026.

Hollow Knight comes from Team Cherry, founded by artist Ari Gibson and web designer William Pellen, who wanted to create a game inspired by older platformers. A crowdfunding campaign raised over 57,000 Australian dollars by the end of 2014. It reached PS4 in 2018. You explore Hallownest, a once-prosperous, now-bleak insect kingdom, and Gibson's hand-drawn sketches were scanned directly into the game engine.

Die and you lose all your Geo, the game's main currency. To get it back you must defeat your Shade, and if you die first, the money is gone. One reviewer said it "rewards patience and skill massively". A sequel following Hornet, Hollow Knight: Silksong, was released in September of 2025. Players tell anyone who asks to get it, and they warn that the platforming gets as tough as the bosses.

Ratchet & Clank on PS4 is a reimagining of the series' first game, the 2002 PS2 game Insomniac made after finishing the Spyro series. The PS4 remake arrived first, and an animated film based on the same story followed in April 2016. You travel from planet to planet as Ratchet, fighting enemies with a wide range of inventive weapons and gadgets while crossing gaps with a grappling hook and riding grind rails. Clank's segments focus on environmental puzzle solving.

Weapons and gadgets are unlocked through progress or bought using bolts. The original was very well received by critics, and by July 2006 it had sold 1.1 million copies in the United States. Players looking for a real 3D platformer on the PS4 get pointed here first. Players recommend it more than any other PS4 platformer.