Best Of
10 Best Platformers on PlayStation 5 (2025)
PlayStation 5 is a powerful gaming console that provides the best graphics and gameplay. It’s a current-gen console with all of the latest modern titles available, ensuring you’re enjoying the best gaming has to offer. But you can also date back to the glory days of platforming, reliving Sonic and Mega Man adventures in a new light.
Whichever mascot you fancy and platforming you’re looking for, whether 2D, 3D, fantasy or open-world, the best platformers on PlayStation 5 below have it all.
What is a Platformer Game?
Why buy one remaster when you can grab three?
A platformer game lets you control your character, moving them from point A to point B. They must arrive at their destination unharmed, dodging obstacles, solving puzzles, and defeating enemies. Alternatively, some may have hidden pathways and secrets to discover, alongside collectibles to hunt down.
Best Platformers on PlayStation 5
Looking for the best platformers on PlayStation 5? Here are the best options offering the most exciting and seamless playthroughs.
10. Astro's Playroom
AstroBot is PlayStation’s own mascot, fighting to keep the console’s best functionalities alive in gamers’ hearts. Literally, the game Astro’s Playroom is an exploration, magical as it were, of the capabilities of the PlayStation 5.
I know how it sounds, bland and boring. However, Sony has managed to make the whole platforming experience surprisingly fun. I might even go as far as to say it may be one of the best platformers on the console it’s meant to advertise. Ha!
9. Sackboy: A Big Adventure
Another popular mascot you probably already know by name is Sackboy, although he was first a side character in the LittleBigPlanet series. Now, the brown sack with a zipper and bulging eyes has his own platforming game called A Big Adventure, and a “big adventure” the game is.
The sack folk need your help after their capture by Vex to build a machine that causes nightmares. Just as out-of-this-world as the mission sounds, so are the characters and worlds you’ll explore. But all in great charm and wonder, as Knitted Knights rise to save their home from complete destruction.
8. Psychonauts 2
The international psychic espionage organization demands that you prove your worth. And what better way than saving the world? Psychonauts 2 is a completely bonkers game –in a good way. It follows Raz, a young psychic who uses his powers to dig into mysterious conspiracies within the organization.
The game delivers equal doses of danger and peril, but at the same time retains tons of style and plenty of belly laughs to go around.
7. Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time
Crash Bandicoot is a franchise as old as time. But the fourth entry, It’s About Time, brings the series back to modern times. It features the returning villains, Neo Cortex and N. Trophy, who’ve expanded their devious plans to impact not just the universe but the multiverse.
So, now, Crash Bandicoot and friends have to chase them down across multiple dimensions. They have to bend reality to collect all four Quantum Masks and save the multiverse from collapse.
6. Mega Man 11
Check out Mega Man 11, an old series returning with a blend of retro charm and modern touch-ups. It remains a 2D platforming adventure, still damn challenging but action-packed all the same.
You also grapple with new and improved graphics, as well as new systems, including a Double Gear system that cranks up your speed and power to optimum.
5. Yooka-Laylee
The best platformers on PlayStation 5 are created with one sole goal in mind: to offer the most fun and laughs for gamers of all ages. Among the best in the field is Yooka-Laylee, featuring an all-new open world bursting with overwhelming cuteness.
Beautiful worlds await your exploration, as do shiny collectibles and an unforgettable cast of characters to meet. You’ll control two of the most adorable mascots in gaming: Yooka, a green, male chameleon, and Laylee, a red, female bat, each unique in their own devious ways.
4. Sonic Frontiers
The Sonic franchise keeps getting better and better. At the top of the pile is Sonic Frontiers, offering unmatched graphics, scale, and gameplay. As different worlds start colliding in one another, Sonic must race against time, all across the ancient island, collecting the Chaos emeralds, and once again, saving the universe.
3. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
Every so often, it’s great to expand your horizons into the lesser-known platformers. While exploring, you’ll want to check out Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. It’s a side-scroller action RPG following Miriam, an orphan fighting back a curse that gradually degrades her body.
She must journey across a demon-infested castle, fighting enemies and eventually defeating the master to save herself and humanity from complete crystallization.
2. Cuphead
Two things Cuphead does right, or experiments with and succeeds in, are using a 1930s cartoon aesthetic and making most of its enemy encounters boss fights. The former is a definite home run, but the latter can seem like a hard pill to swallow.
Yet the bosses are so much fun, from the moment you discover their absurd designs and fight against their far-fetched attack patterns. Every battle is interesting and exciting to take on, simply because of the sheer variety of enemies, as well as the ingenuity of the boss battle designs.
Even the worlds you traverse in are strange themselves, culminating in an overall unique must-play title for gamers looking for something more out-of-the-box.
1. A Hat In Time
And finally, at the top of the best platformers on PlayStation 5 is A Hat in Time. It follows a little girl with a special power of stitching hats that then give her unique powers, including time travel.
Explore giant worlds, each one different from the last. Fight back the power as you learn to master your own. With each level up, you’ll unlock the tools and abilities you need to recover the Time Pieces and further progress to newer heights.
All you have is you and your space-traveling spaceship. Where will you go next?
