The best family games like Spyro the Dragon are Spyro Reignited Trilogy, Kao the Kangaroo and A Hat in Time. Below are 11, each with the reason it is here — and, at the end, what filtering to family costs you.
Filtering to family means the game has to work for a child and an adult at the same table without either of them being bored. That is a much harder design problem than a difficulty slider.
What you get: Something you can put in front of anyone. The best family games make the skill gap not matter rather than pretending it is not there.
What made Spyro the Dragon worth playing in the first place is covered on the full list. This page is the family part of that answer, and only the family part.
All three originals rebuilt, and the definitive way to play them.
A modern mascot platformer in exactly the same register.
The best indie collectathon, and just as warm.
By ex-Rare developers, and rebuilt with better controls.
The other great collectathon of that moment.
Small, kind, and made for the same audience.
The sister series, if you want it much harder.
The best-feeling modern platformer, and equally generous.
An unashamed N64-era collectathon throwback.
Hub-and-levels platforming where every world is a completely different idea.
The third of the PS2 mascot trio, and the most forgiving stealth game there is.
Edge. Family games rarely go anywhere uncomfortable, and a few of them are too generous to hold an experienced player for long alone.
Specifically, these are strong answers for Spyro the Dragon that are not family games, so they are not on this page:
The full list is on games like Spyro the Dragon — 12 picks, no genre filter.
Spyro Reignited Trilogy. All three originals rebuilt, and the definitive way to play them.
No. Spyro the Dragon released on the PlayStation, but a recommendation is only useful if you can play it, so the picks above span platforms and eras. What they share is the genre and the reason.
Age ratings cover content but not difficulty or frustration, which is what actually ruins a family session. Five minutes of unedited play footage tells you more than any rating.
With mixed ages, co-operative usually wins. The competitive ones that work are the ones where being in last place is still entertaining.
By hand. Each pick was written for the full Spyro the Dragon list first, on what the game actually does, and this page is the part of that list that is family — never a genre tag lookup, which is how "best racing games like Super Mario 64" used to be a page on this site.
Or read the family guide for where to start in the genre generally.