The best platformer games like Spyro the Dragon are Spyro Reignited Trilogy, Kao the Kangaroo and A Hat in Time. Below are 12, each with the reason it is here — and, at the end, what filtering to platformer costs you.
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 Spyro the Dragon 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.
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.
Seamless open platforming from the same moment, with no loading between areas.
The third of the PS2 mascot trio, and the most forgiving stealth game there is.
Weight. Platformers rarely carry a story you will think about afterwards, and the collectible-led ones can become checklists if you let them.
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.
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.
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.
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 platformer — 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 platformer guide for where to start in the genre generally.