10 Best Platforming Games on Xbox Game Pass (October 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 top 10 Xbox Game Pass platforming games 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. Contrast

Shift between 3D and 2D shadows to solve clever puzzles

Contrast is a platformer with an idea I absolutely love. You play as Dawn, and Dawn happens to be the imaginary friend of a little girl named Didi. Now, Didi’s family is going through rough times, her parents are separated, and the story is essentially about her trying to piece everything back together. But here’s the interesting part: you experience all of this through Dawn’s unique ability to merge into shadows on any lit wall and move through them as flat, 2D platforms. So you’ll be walking around in a fully three-dimensional world one moment, and the very next, you’re sliding across the wall as a silhouette.

The 1920s feel of the world is also worth mentioning here, with cabaret singers and circus performers all around, and jazz playing in the background. And the storytelling pulls off a neat approach where almost every character besides Dawn and Didi appears as a shadow on walls. You’ll listen in on conversations between Didi’s parents, watch their arguments play out as shadow silhouettes, and then use those very shadow shapes as platforms to climb higher or reach new areas. Contrast is easily one of the more creative best platformer Game Pass games you can pick up right now, if you want a short and thoughtful experience.

9. Limbo

Guide a silent boy through a dark, dangerous world with deadly traps

Limbo follows a young boy who wakes up in the middle of a dark forest, searching for his sister. There’s zero dialogue, zero text, and zero explanation of anything. The screen is almost grayscale with heavy grain and blur, creating this suffocating feeling from the very first second. You move left to right, jumping over gaps, dragging crates, and dodging hazards. And everything around you is designed to kill you in gruesome ways if you misjudge even slightly. Sawblades, bear traps, giant spiders, collapsing structures.

The creators at Playdead even describe it as a “trial and death” experience, so you can already tell how punishing the gameplay gets. Additionally, there are zero tutorials. You learn by dying, watching what went wrong, and then rethinking your approach on the next attempt. Puzzles gradually shift from simple obstacle avoidance in the forest to elaborate physics-based challenges with gravity manipulation, moving gears, and electrified rails. Here, the grayscale look does so much heavy lifting. Even the boy himself is just a small black silhouette with glowing white eyes.

8. Little Nightmares

Survive a terrifying vessel as a tiny child in a yellow raincoat

Speaking of dark and unsettling platformers, Little Nightmares goes even harder into that territory. You play as Six, a small child wearing a bright yellow raincoat, and you’re trapped inside a massive floating vessel called the Maw. The Maw is populated by grotesque, oversized creatures who are all looking for their next meal. And Six, being about the size of a shoe compared to these creatures, has to sneak, climb, and scramble her way through room after room to find a way out. You can grab onto ledges, swing from hanging objects, push and pull things around the environment, and use a small lighter to see in pitch-dark areas.

The puzzles are simple in design, like dragging a chair across a room to reach a high shelf, but the context around them makes every single moment carry weight. You’ll creep past blind creatures who rely entirely on sound to hunt you, and the slightest misstep can get you grabbed and swallowed. The scale of the world is worth pointing out too, because the rooms, furniture, and corridors are all built to make you seem incredibly small. Doors are massive. Tables tower above you. And that constant sense of being dwarfed by your surroundings makes the Maw come across as a living, breathing nightmare that you desperately want to escape from.

7. It Takes Two

Play as two dolls trying to fix a broken marriage by working together

It Takes Two requires two players. There’s no solo option, no AI companion filling in. You and another person, couch co-op or online, will play through the entire thing together. I think that’s the boldest design decision here, because the game is so committed to co-op that it refuses to compromise on it. The story centers on Cody and May, a married couple on the verge of divorce. Their young daughter Rose, upset about the split, accidentally triggers a magic spell that turns both parents into handmade dolls. From there, the two of them have to work their way back to their human bodies, guided by an annoying (on purpose) sentient relationship advice book named Dr. Hakim.

Then, every single chapter introduces brand new mechanics for both players, with those mechanics often differing depending on whether you’re Cody or May. For example, Cody can rewind time while May creates a clone of herself to reach distant platforms. The two roles always complement each other, which means constant communication with your co-op partner is a must. The variety here is insane, too. One level plays like a dungeon crawler, another turns into an on-rails shooter, and you’ll even stumble into competitive mini-games scattered throughout the world. I’ve played a lot of co-op games over the years, and very few of them swap their mechanics this aggressively.

6. Human Fall Flat

Wobbly physics characters stumble through dreamscape puzzles together

Human Fall Flat is hilarious because the character you control can barely walk straight. Bob, the protagonist, has the coordination of someone who just woke up from a nap on a spinning chair. And since each arm is controlled separately, even something as simple as climbing a ledge becomes a comedy sketch. You grab on, heave yourself halfway up, lose your grip, flop backward, and somehow land face-first into a wall. I’ve spent more time laughing at the failures in Human Fall Flat than I have at most actual comedy games, which is probably why it became such a massive hit among streamers and content creators too.

Otherwise, underneath all the slapstick, there are clever puzzles scattered across floating dreamscape levels, where every single one has multiple ways to solve it. Locked door in front of you? Grab some boxes, stack them against the wall next to it, climb over. Or find a beam, prop it as a ramp. The game never tells you the “right” answer. Plus, as many as eight players can join online, and when you add that many floppy characters to one environment, absolute chaos follows. People grabbing each other, accidentally flinging friends off cliffs, failing simple jumps in spectacular fashion. These things become routine after a few sessions.

5. MOTORSLICE

Parkour through a crumbling megastructure with a chainsaw sword

MOTORSLICE is an action-platformer about a girl called “P” who gets sent into a massive abandoned structure loaded with rogue construction equipment. Her task is to destroy every machine inside and get out. And her weapon of choice is, well, a chainsaw. Brazilian indie studio Regular Studio made a puzzle-platformer called Togges before this, which was colorful and lighthearted, so MOTORSLICE being this gritty, fast-paced gauntlet through brutalist concrete corridors seems like an unexpected leap for them. But it works.

P can wall-run, slide, crouch, and perform mid-air stunts to cross gaps and dodge deadly traps scattered all over the megastructure. Her chainsaw doubles as a traversal tool, so you’ll use it to close impossible distances between platforms when regular jumps fall short. Speaking of the boss encounters, you climb directly onto the massive machines, like dump trucks and cranes, and slice them apart piece by piece. It’s a physical, close-up approach to boss battles. Granted, the movement gets stiff at times, and a few jumps need a second or third try.

4. Planet of Lana II

Girl and furry pal solve puzzles to protect their planet

Planet of Lana II picks up two years after the first game, in which a young girl named Lana and her small, cat-like friend Mui saved their home planet from a robot invasion. Mui is a fluffy black creature with big, curious eyes, and the bond between those two is the heart of the series. This time, the invasion is over, but the robots and their tech stuck around, and different tribes started using them in their own ways. Power grabs, broken peace, tribes at odds. Lana is older here too, and the story grows darker as she digs up buried truths about her planet and about herself.

In the puzzles, Lana and Mui split the work, with Lana handling the climbing and jumping while Mui sneaks into tight spots. Mui can calm wild animals, mess with machines, and help Lana slip past guards, and the sequel adds even more tricks for both of them. Plus, there’s swimming now, with Lana diving through bright coral reefs and old, flooded ruins. Hiding from patrols is a big part of it, and getting spotted sends you back to a nearby point for a quick restart. It’s a relaxed pick among the best Game Pass platforming games 2026 has to offer, and definitely a nice palate cleanser after the chainsaw racket of MOTORSLICE.

3. Super Meat Boy 3D

Precision platforming with instant deaths, now in full 3D

Super Meat Boy became iconic back in 2010 as a brutally difficult 2D platformer. Meat Boy, a small cube of raw meat, had to rescue Bandage Girl from the villainous Dr. Fetus across hundreds of obstacle courses filled with saw blades and spike traps. Contact with any hazard results in instant death and an instant respawn at the beginning of the stage. I remember the original being one of those pick-up-and-throw-your-controller kind of experiences. Well, the formula is now fully three-dimensional, and Meat Boy can jump, wall-slide, wall-run horizontally, and mid-air dash to extend his reach or break certain platforms.

The camera is fixed, inspired by how Super Mario 3D World handles its perspective. You’re basically working with angles the game chooses for you. And this can be tricky, because judging depth in a precision platformer where everything kills you in one touch requires some adjustment. Still, once the controls fall into place, there’s a smooth flow to chaining wall-runs into dashes across hazard-heavy stages. Perhaps my favorite detail is the replay feature: after you finish a level, all your attempts play back simultaneously on screen. So you see dozens of Meat Boys running, with the failed attempts dying off along the way.

2. SpeedRunners 2

Race friends through side-scrolling tracks while sabotaging them off-screen

SpeedRunners 2: King of Speed is a competitive multiplayer platformer where up to eight players online race through 2D side-scrolling tracks at the same time. The gameplay goes like this: everyone runs through the same looping track while trying to stay within the shared screen. If you fall behind the edge of the screen, you’re eliminated, and a ring of fire gradually closes in on the remaining runners. The last person standing wins the round. The original SpeedRunners from the mid-2010s earned a cult following and even got picked up as an esport by the Electronic Sports League, which is pretty remarkable for a small indie title. So the sequel carries high expectations from a passionate community.

Momentum is everything here. You build speed by sliding down slopes, swinging with a grappling hook, and hitting boost pads scattered across the tracks. Power-ups like fireballs, freeze rays, golden hooks, and new additions like portable teleporters throw every race into complete disorder. And SpeedRunners 2 introduces a mode called “Playground” where the rules bend completely, with scenarios like the floor becoming lava or collecting coins across the map. It supports local multiplayer on consoles too, so couch sessions with friends can get extremely loud. Friendships may suffer a little after a few rounds. But it is worth it.

1. Denshattack!

Perform skateboarding tricks with a gravity-defying train across Japan

Denshattack is, without question, the strangest concept on this entire list. You play as Emi Araki, a ramen delivery girl who stumbles into an underground sport called “Denshattack,” where train drivers compete by performing tricks with their trains. Yes, trains. Ollies, kickflips, grinds, and aerial spins, all done with a full-sized train car on rails. If you’ve ever played any Tony Hawk game, the DNA is immediately recognizable here, but with the skateboard swapped for a gravity-defying locomotive racing through a vibrant Japanese dystopia. I honestly could not believe how well this absurd mashup works in practice.

Tricks are performed with the right analog stick, where flicks and half-circles execute different moves, and chaining them together builds a combo multiplier that boosts your score. You’ll race through courses across eight regions, from quiet villages to corporation-controlled cities, battling rival train gangs and bizarre bosses like mecha magical girls and mechanical worms along the way. Tee Lopes, known for his Sonic Mania soundtrack work, contributed to the music here, and the J-Pop boss battle tracks are incredibly catchy. You can customize your train too. Among the best Game Pass platforming games 2026 has delivered, Denshattack is the wildcard pick that has no competition in its lane.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do all these platformers require an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription?

Most of the games on this list are available across multiple Game Pass tiers. However, newer day-one titles like Denshattack!, Super Meat Boy 3D, and Planet of Lana II landed on the Ultimate and PC tiers first. Older picks like Limbo, Contrast, and Human Fall Flat have been part of the catalog long enough that they’re typically accessible on Standard as well.

Which of these Game Pass platformers can be played with another person?

It Takes Two is entirely built around two-player co-op, so a partner is essential there. Human Fall Flat also supports co-op with multiple players at once. SpeedRunners 2 supports up to eight players in competitive matches. The rest of the list leans solo, but those three cover the multiplayer side well.

Are any of these games suitable for younger players?

Human Fall Flat is probably the safest pick for kids because the tone is lighthearted and the physics-based puzzles are more silly than stressful. Denshattack! also has a bright, colorful anime-inspired look with no heavy themes. On the other hand, Limbo and Little Nightmares II deal with darker subject matter and tense sequences, so those might be better suited for teens or older.

Which game on this list is the best entry point for someone new to platformers?

Human Fall Flat is the easiest recommendation because the pace is relaxed and failure never feels punishing. Planet of Lana II is another solid option since the puzzles guide the player naturally without overwhelming them. But if precision platformers sound intimidating, definitely stay away from Super Meat Boy 3D early on, that one expects quick reflexes and a high tolerance for repeated deaths.

How difficult are the harder games on this list?

Super Meat Boy 3D is easily the toughest pick here, with levels designed to kill the player over and over until the timing clicks. MOTORSLICE also has demanding sections, especially during boss encounters where the platforming and combat overlap. Limbo sits somewhere in the middle, with puzzles that require thought but rarely feel unfair. If difficulty is a concern, Planet of Lana II and Human Fall Flat offer a much gentler experience overall.

Will any of these platformers leave Game Pass soon?

Day-one launches like Denshattack!, Super Meat Boy 3D, Planet of Lana II, and SpeedRunners 2 usually stay on Game Pass for at least a year after release. Older titles like Limbo, Contrast, and Human Fall Flat have been on the service for a long time, but Microsoft does rotate games out periodically without much advance notice. It’s a good habit to check the “leaving soon” section on the Game Pass app every couple of weeks.

Is an internet connection required to play these platformers, or can they be played offline?

As long as the games are downloaded to the console or PC, most of them can be played offline without issues. Limbo, Contrast, Super Meat Boy 3D, MOTORSLICE, Little Nightmares II, and Planet of Lana II are all single-player experiences that run fine without a connection. SpeedRunners 2 obviously requires online access for multiplayer matches, and It Takes Two needs a connection for online co-op. Game Pass does require an occasional online check-in to verify the subscription, but that’s a platform requirement rather than a game-specific one.