10 Best Platforming Games on Xbox Game Pass (April 2026)

Want to dive into some of the best Xbox Game Pass platformers in 2026? Game Pass is packed with amazing adventures where you can jump, climb, and fight through beautiful worlds. So, whether you love fast action or slow exploration and puzzle solving, there’s something perfect waiting for you.

What Defines the Best Platformers?

Great platformers go beyond just jumping across gaps. The best ones bring sharp level design, solid mechanics, and a world that feels fun to move through. Some hit hard with fast combat and big challenges. Others take their time with deep stories or clever puzzles. What matters most is how each part of the game stays interesting.

With that in mind, this list ranks 10 platforming games on Xbox Game Pass that offer different strengths, from tight challenge-based stages to slower, more atmospheric journeys. Starting at number 10, here are the platformers worth checking out in 2026.

10. Limbo

Dark puzzle platforming with deadly traps and a haunting journey

Limbo runs on silence, danger, and short puzzle rooms that hit hard without using long text or hand-holding. You guide a small boy through forests, caves, and abandoned factories while traps wait in the grass, under wheels, and above your head. Bear traps snap shut, ropes swing over pits, crates slide into place, and giant spiders crawl out of the dark. Nearly all action happens through jumping, climbing, pushing, and reading the room quickly. Dark visuals do a lot of work here. Shadows hide threats until the last second, and small sounds from metal, mud, and insects make quiet moments far more uneasy.

Limbo never floods the screen with extra stuff. Nearly all danger comes from clever room layouts, hidden traps, and objects that can help or kill you. Several parts make you pause, scan the room, and figure out how one object affects another. Black shapes against gray fog create striking scenes without crowding the screen. Also, music barely steps in, and silence does more damage than loud sound ever could. The final result is a dark platformer with horror energy, nasty surprises, and puzzle rooms that stick in your head long after the ending.

9. Another Crab’s Treasure

Fight through an underwater world by wearing cans, cups, and junk

Another Crab’s Treasure plays out through snappy platforming, chunky hits, and a funny, junk-covered sea world that never stops surprising you. Kril uses found shells for defense, then swaps them often to match the danger ahead. Old trash becomes gear, from cups to cans to other weird scraps, and this idea makes the whole adventure stand apart from standard fantasy action. Jumping across broken paths, climbing uneven ground, slipping past traps, and hunting side routes all feed into the action. Combat has weight, but platforming still gets plenty of room.

Boss fights hit hard and often, with giant sea creatures filling the screen and forcing better positioning. Regular enemies also stay active enough that quiet travel rarely lasts long. Shell choices bring variety to fights, since one shell might help you block longer, another may break after heavy damage, and switching options can rescue a bad run. Anyone searching for the best 3D platformer on Xbox Game Pass should keep this one high on the list. It has style, action, platforming, and enough weird energy to stay memorable.

8. Celeste

Make careful jumps and air dashes across a mountain full of hazards

Celeste is a mountain-climbing platformer with tight jumps, wall grabs, air dashes, and rooms that use all of those ideas in different ways. You play as Madeline, climbing toward the top of Celeste Mountain through screens packed with spikes, moving blocks, narrow ledges, crumbling platforms, and tricky air routes. Death happens a lot, but restarts are instant, and that helps the game move at a lively pace. You miss a jump, hit retry, and go again right away.

Celeste gets a huge amount out of a tiny set of actions. Madeline can run, jump, climb for a short stretch, and dash once in midair. From those actions, the game creates a wide range of rooms that stay interesting from chapter to chapter. Moreover, new areas keep shifting the challenge through different kinds of obstacles. Celeste also carries a strong emotional thread through Madeline’s climb, making the mountain more than a set of hard stages. You are pushing through doubt, frustration, and fear one jump at a time.

7. Rain World

Search for food, escape predators, and find safe shelter before the deadly rain

Rain World gives platforming a survival edge that feels unlike almost anything else on Xbox Game Pass. You play as a slugcat, a small creature separated from its family in a ruined ecosystem ruled by predators, scarce food, and deadly rain. Reaching shelter before the downpour is a constant concern. You run, climb poles, crawl through tunnels, leap across broken structures, swim through flooded sections, and squeeze past threats that can end a cycle in seconds. Food matters too. You need enough to hibernate, which gives each outing extra risk.

Rain can wipe out a run fast, and predators can appear from pipes, ceilings, water, or dark corners with almost no warning. Slugcat is small and fragile, which makes travel risky even in quiet areas. Lizards chase, vultures dive, and strange creatures roam ruined spaces with minds of their own. Rooms often have several paths, and choosing one route can decide whether you reach shelter or get hunted down halfway there.

6. Little Nightmares II

Crawl through oversized spaces, avoid capture, and survive twisted encounters

Little Nightmares II follows Mono, a small kid in a paper bag mask, through a grim world packed with danger. You run, climb, jump, drag objects, and squeeze through tight spaces to get past rooms filled with traps and giant enemies. Six joins Mono for much of the journey, and both characters work together during key moments. She boosts you onto ledges, helps with heavy objects, and joins tense escapes when everything goes wrong. Platforming is tied closely to survival. Miss a jump, step too slow, or grab the wrong object, and the screen cuts straight to failure.

Mono can grab objects, swing from ropes, climb furniture, and use small tools during certain scenes. Puzzles stay direct and readable, with enough danger packed into them to stop the pace from going flat. Chases hit hard because they leave little room for mistakes, and failure lands fast. The overall design stays grounded in the world, which helps immersion across every chapter. The school and hospital areas stand out in particular, thanks to enemy design and excellent room layouts that create dread without relying on dialogue. Lastly, oversized objects and towering enemies make Mono look tiny, and that size gap adds dread to nearly all encounters.

5. It Takes Two

Tiny heroes brave giant worlds through teamwork and inventive ideas

It Takes Two is a co-op platformer made for two people, and nearly all of its best moments come from doing things together at the same time. Cody and May run, jump, swing, dash, grind on rails, and cross weird obstacle courses that never stay in one lane for too long. New ideas show up all the time through chapter-specific abilities. One area uses nails and a hammer for crossing gaps and hitting switches. Another uses magnets for pushing and pulling objects across dangerous paths. Toy rooms, garden sections, snow areas, and mechanical spaces all bring new tasks, and the game shifts from platforming to puzzle sections.

Co-op action is the heart of the game. Both players usually have different roles, and those roles connect during platforming sections, chase scenes, boss fights, and puzzle rooms. Mini-games also pop up between larger sections, giving both players short competitive breaks before the next big sequence. Altogether, it is a great co-op platforming game in the Game Pass library because it offers this much variety across a full run.

4. Ultimate Chicken Horse

Build the stage, then race through your own trap-filled mess

If you asked me to pick a Game Pass platformer for group play, Ultimate Chicken Horse would be near the top. Here, the match flow is funny, messy, and full of betrayal in the best way. You and your friends run toward a finish line on a small stage, and then all of you add a new object before the next round. Sometimes it is a platform, sometimes a trap, and sometimes a moving hazard that ruins the whole route. Bit by bit, the stage grows into a ridiculous obstacle course full of bad ideas and risky shortcuts.

Scoring makes the whole thing even better. Reaching the goal earns points, but blocking everyone else can help too. Because of that, nobody wants the stage to be too easy. Nobody wants it to be impossible either. Everybody wants a path they can survive and that everybody else can mess up. Ultimate Chicken Horse is full of panic, laughter, and dumb confidence. You line up a jump, hit a trap, yell at your friend, and then try again with a new plan. Great matches usually end with a level that looks absurd but still has one narrow path to victory.

3. Relooted

Museum heists and rooftop escapes drive this sleek action platformer

The last three picks on this 2026 list are recent Game Pass additions, and you really should keep an eye on them. Relooted is a platformer with a heist theme, and the whole thing is centered on grabbing stolen artifacts from massive museum spaces and escaping before security shuts the path down. You run, jump, slide, wall-jump, swing, and dash through halls packed with lasers, guards, and locked gates. Museum rooms are large, stylish, and full of routes hidden above, below, and behind the main path. Platforming is the heart of it, but the heist angle gives every stage a strong purpose.

Missions get more intense once alarms kick in. Relooted also has a strong replay hook. Runs can be finished and then replayed for smoother lines, tighter escapes, and better route decisions. Shortcuts become easier to spot after a few attempts, and risky paths start looking tempting once the layout clicks. Relooted has a cool idea, but more than that, it nails the second-to-second action in a way any platformer fan will appreciate.

2. Planet of Lana II

A cinematic sci-fi adventure with puzzles, platforming, and emotional stakes

Planet of Lana II takes the quiet puzzle-platforming style from the first game and expands it into a bigger adventure with more variety. Lana still travels with Mui, and their bond drives nearly everything on screen. You run, jump, climb, slide, and wall jump through forests, ruins, machine zones, snowy slopes, and underwater spaces. Mui helps in puzzle rooms by reaching small gaps, triggering objects, and working with creatures that Lana cannot use on her own. Compared with the first game, this sequel has a wider range of actions and more layered rooms.

Stealth sections also appear more often, with patrols, hiding spots, and short escape sequences. The puzzle flow has more steps too. Lana may move one object, Mui may trigger another, then an animal or machine opens the final path. Planet of Lana II does not rush from one puzzle room to another. It gives scenes room to breathe, then hits you with a tense chase, a stealth passage, or a multi-step puzzle that uses Lana and Mui together in a satisfying way. Across the full adventure, the game feels larger, richer, and more dramatic without losing its emotional side.

1. Super Meat Boy 3D

The best 3D platformer in the Xbox Game Pass lineup

Super Meat Boy 3D moves the series into full 3D, but the same brutal speed-run spirit is still there. Short stages hit you with saws, spikes, collapsing floors, missiles, and tiny landing spots that leave almost zero room for sloppy play. Our Meat Boy can sprint, jump off walls, dash in mid-air, and use wall-running across certain surfaces, which opens more routes through a stage. Death happens fast, then the retry is instant, so you miss a jump, restart, and then try a cleaner line a second later. Stages are small, tight, and packed with danger from top to bottom.

3D does change how stage design works, and that is the big hook here. Older games mostly hit you from the side. Super Meat Boy 3D plays with height, corners, distance, and diagonal routes. World structure still uses short levels picked from a map, which suits the retry-heavy format really well. You enter a stage, learn the trap layout, and then hunt for a tighter route on the next attempt. In short, it carries the same angry speed, the same harsh stage design, and the same habit of making you hit retry again and again until the perfect run finally lands.