A platformer stands or falls on the jump. Everything else — collectibles, worlds, story — is decoration on top of whether moving your character feels good in the first ten seconds. This is the one genre where you can judge a game almost immediately.
Whether the move set is complete early. The great platformers give you everything in the first level and spend the rest of the game asking better questions of it. The weak ones drip-feed abilities to disguise thin level design.
A hub, worlds you re-enter, and things to find in all of them. The genre Mario 64 invented and Banjo perfected.
Tighter controls, better cameras, and levels built around one idea each.
Single screens, instant restarts, and a movement system to master rather than a world to explore.
A 3D platformer where the levels are full of things to find and finding them is the progression — Banjo-Kazooie, Donkey Kong 64, Yooka-Laylee. Super Mario Odyssey is the modern version, made far more generous.
Celeste in two dimensions and Astro Bot in three are the usual answers, and both are unusually kind about difficulty.
Most of them, yes — and the ones with assist modes, like Celeste and Super Mario Bros Wonder, let a child and an adult play the same game at different difficulties.
Start from something specific rather than from the genre:
Or by the machine you own:
Or start from a game you already love — every title we cover has a page of hand-written recommendations, and the best-games lists cut the same library by era, audience and mood.