Best Platformer Games Like Metroid

The best platformer games like Metroid are Super Metroid, Metroid Dread and Castlevania Symphony of the Night. Below are 8, each with the reason it is here — and, at the end, what filtering to platformer costs you.

Why Platformer Is a Good Answer for Metroid

Filtering to platformer means you want the movement itself to be the pleasure. It is the right filter when the thing you liked was getting from one place to another.

What you get: A game you can judge in ten seconds. Platformers live or die on the jump, and a good one feels right before anything else happens.

What made Metroid worth playing in the first place is covered on the full list. This page is the platformer part of that answer, and only the platformer part.

8 Platformer Games Like Metroid

  1. 1. Super Metroid

    The one to play instead, and arguably the best-designed game on the SNES.

  2. 2. Metroid Dread

    The modern 2D entry, and it plays better than any of them.

  3. 3. Castlevania Symphony of the Night

    The other half of the genre's name, and where the RPG layer came from.

  4. 4. Hollow Knight

    The modern benchmark, and it withholds the map in the same deliberate way.

  5. 5. Axiom Verge

    The most faithful modern take on Metroid specifically, glitches and all.

  6. 6. Environmental Station Alpha

    A small, hard, very well-built indie Metroid with a real secret underneath it.

  7. 7. Ori and the Blind Forest

    The same structure, far kinder, and beautiful with it.

  8. 8. Blaster Master

    NES exploration with a vehicle you leave behind to get into the small places.

What This Filter Leaves Out

Weight. Platformers rarely carry a story you will think about afterwards, and the collectible-led ones can become checklists if you let them.

Specifically, these are strong answers for Metroid that are not platformer games, so they are not on this page:

  • Ender Lilies — Melancholy, slow and combat-led, with the map opening the same way.
  • The Legend of Zelda — The other NES game that handed you a world and refused to explain it.

The full list is on games like Metroid — 10 picks, no genre filter.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best platformer game like Metroid?

Super Metroid. The one to play instead, and arguably the best-designed game on the SNES.

Are all of these on the Nintendo Entertainment System?

No. Metroid released on the Nintendo Entertainment System, 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.

What separates a good platformer from a bad one?

Whether the move set is complete early. The great ones give you everything in the first level and spend the rest asking better questions of it; the weak ones drip-feed abilities to disguise thin level design.

2D or 3D?

Different games. 2D platformers are about precision on a single screen; 3D ones are about reading space and camera. Each pick below says which it is.

How are these chosen?

By hand. Each pick was written for the full Metroid list first, on what the game actually does, and this page is the part of that list that is platformer — never a genre tag lookup, which is how "best racing games like Super Mario 64" used to be a page on this site.

Other Angles on Metroid

More Platformer Games Recommendations

Or read the platformer guide for where to start in the genre generally.