Difficultplatformershave always had this pride around beating them, especially since it’s been a tradition to include at least one insanely hard level in your platformer for years.
That said, it’s tough to find good, solid platformers that are difficult the whole way through, aren’t frustrating messes of terrible game design, and aren’t combat-focused.
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Any list you read on the most difficult platformers will put stuff likeHollow KnightorCave Storyon there, despite those games relying on combat for a large amount of their difficulty.
This list is different, as I’ll be solely including games with a similar amount of “combat” toSuper Mario Bros., and I’ll be giving higher spots to games with better-designed, fair challenges
For this list, I’m defining combat as game segments where you slow down to focus on fighting enemies. Games that use bosses and enemies to test your platforming moveset as a dedicated challenge or simple obstacles are still qualified for this list.
10Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels
Overblown, But Fun
Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels
Notoriously, this game was so difficult that Nintendo decided to give America an entirely differentMario 2, Though, that was a bit of an overreaction, as The Lost Levels is not that bad,and a decent Mario game.
Don’t get me wrong—it’s no walk in the park, and it’s a great challenge if you’ve already played a ton of Super Mario Bros., but it’s not the most difficult game ever.
It’ll still be trolling you with terrible wind effects and warp pipes that take you back a few worlds, but if you know where to look for secrets, you can run through this game in minutes.
I think the platforming is on par with several other games from this era, but unlikeNinja Gaiden,Castlevania, orMega Man, it’s void of combat, so it scrapes its way onto the list.
9Sonic Advance
Rolling Off the Screen
Sonic Advance
Sonicgames are inherently somewhat difficult due to expecting quick reaction times and level mastery from the player, and Sonic Advance takes that to the extreme.
While every Sonic game DIMPS makes gets a bit easier than the previous, the first Advance game has some massive screen crunch, forcing you to react at lightning speeds.
This game brings the idea ofmemorizing the stage to achieve the perfect runto the logical extreme, practically forcing you to crawl through the level before you’re confident.
It’s got a massive number of instant death bottomless pits, and some levels force you to go fast, which means Egg Rocket Zone becomes an intense, unforgiving challenge.
8Kaizo Mario
Better Than You Remember
Kaizo Mariois one of those nightmarish ROM hacks that you hear about only because of its unfair and awful difficulty, but it’s genuinely not bad at all.
It’s got a few quirks, like asking you to platform across bullet bills and only giving you one shot to do it, especially without removing lives, but it’s fun to master.
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I do think hacks likeGrand Poo World 3do a better job at giving you a proper test of knowledge and skill, but Kaizo is iconic, difficult, and will throw a few hundred hidden blocks at you.
It feels immensely rewarding to crawl your way through, learn the little quirks of Super Mario World, and come out on top after a few thousand attempts. Just make sure to use save states.
7Donkey Kong Country Returns: Tropical Freeze
Incredibly Cold
Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze
TheDonkey Kongseries is one of Nintendo’s most consistently difficult franchises. Its platforming requires commitment to your jumps, or you will fall and die, andTropical Freezeis the peak.
On top of the rolling and bouncing that keep you moving under the punishment of death, the game’s got KONG letters that take climbing off-screen walls to find at times.
Even when the base difficulty is plenty hard, the hard mode changes the levels just enough to make them a real gauntlet that takes complete mastery.
You probably wouldn’t expect this level of intensityfrom the funny monkey game, but Donkey Kong always delivers, and whenever Retro Studios is done with Prime 4 I hope we see another one that can top this.
6Rain World
Scugging Along
Rain World
Rain Worldis an open-world exploration game with quite a lot of platforming strewn about, and before you say “But Rain World has a ton of enemies that you may throw stuff at!” Hear me out.
Every encounter with something hostile in Rain World is meant to be avoided, whether by finding cover or doing sick flip tricks to dodge the enemy entirely. While you can throw stuff at them, you’re not getting much from it.
Trying to scale the wall, dodge big lizards, and wavedash backflip around each tightly designed area takes a massive amount of execution to pull off, plus the game is a great experience, even with the thousands of deaths.
There are no boss fights, and any combat you attempt to engage with will get you killed; plus, this game is notoriously extremely difficult, so I think all of that combined makes for an excellent entry into this list.
Friendship Tester
N++is a rather simplistic game where you run, jump, and dodge the hundreds of obstacles that are rapidly flying at you as you try to finish out levels.
It’s got some slick movement, and by slick, I mean it feels like sliding on ice every time you’re trying to slide on walls and glide past explosions and lasers.
It can feel a bit unwieldy at times, especially if you’re trying to get through everything with a friend and dying constantly, but it does have quite the flow state when you get a hang of it.
It’s got a few thousand levels that find new ways to introduce some more challenges, and I think it deserves more recognition for its difficulty despite its inherent simplicity.
4Grapple Dog
Arcadey Agility
Grapple Dog might seem like a cutesy, wholesome platformer at first glance, but it’s a genuinely great challenge with its physics-based grappling.
The game will expect you to hit great angles while being chased down and relentlessly damaged or do precision platforming where the punishment is a swift death.
It’s got no lives system, yet still feels just as punishing, throwing you back at a checkpoint that doesn’t feel lenient at all, and making you do everything all over again.
Once you get into the later levels, you’ll be dealing with harder level gimmicks that have you grappling within an inch of your life, and it all feels great, if very punishing.
Up and Down and All-Around
VVVVVVis a game with a terrible name and a platformer with no jumping, which might sound sacrilegious, but it’s okay to sin once in a while, and this is a damn good time.
You flip up and down, weaving through lines of spikes that sometimes span across several screens and require you to either memorize the layout or get good.
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Every challenge in this game makes you feel like a complete badass, shifting left and right and up and down while accounting for each change in gravity.
It’s pretty punishing, the insta-kill spikes sending you back to whenever they were kind enough to drop a checkpoint, but it remains fair even if you’re tearing your hair out.
2Super Meat Boy
In The Grinder
Super Meat Boy
Perhaps the most iconic precision platformer,Super Meat Boyearns its reputation for incredible difficulty, constantly pushing you through intense gauntlets.
Each world has a new gimmick, whether piles of salt that instantly kill you paired with about a million sawblades, massive pits with precise jumps, or just Hell.
Meat Boy himself feels both incredibly precise and slippery to control, leading to quite the learning curve as you get a grasp on his bizarre physics.
If you want to 100% the game, you’re especially in for a treat, as the optional collectible bandages and the bonus levels are some of the hardest platforming challenges I’ve ever seen.
Overall, I thinkCelestedoes the best job at doing challenging, intense levels, without ever feeling like something wasn’t your fault, which is great.
Madeline’s controls are easy to grasp, she stops on a dime and can dash in eight directions, which somehow makes for themost insane speed tech ever.
The game tests you on just about every aspect and little quirk of her limited moveset, especially in the B-Sides and C-Sides, where the difficulty is cranked to 11.
Chapter 9, though, is where it’s at. This is a massive gauntlet of some of the hardest platforming I’ve ever seen, and the final screen makes you go several minutes with no checkpoints, and it’s super tough.
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