The 10 hardest 2D platformers without combat

difficult Platform We’ve always had such pride in beating them, especially since it’s been a tradition to include at least one extremely difficult level in your platformer for years.

However, it’s hard to find good, solid platformers that are challenging all the way through, aren’t a frustrating mess of terrible game design, and aren’t focused on combat.

Any list you read about the hardest platforms will list things like The hollow knight or The story of the cave There, though, these games rely on combat for a great deal of their difficulty.

This list is different, as I will only include games with a similar amount of “fighting”. Super Mario Bros.and I will give higher points to games with fair challenges and better design

In this list, I’m defining combat as parts of the game where your movement is slowed down to focus on fighting enemies. Games that use bosses and enemies to test your platforming moveset as a custom challenge or simple obstacles are still eligible for this list.

10 Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels

Overpriced, but fun

It is known that this game was so difficult that Nintendo decided to give America a completely different game Mario 2However, this was a bit of an overreaction, as ‘lost levels’ aren’t that bad, And a decent Mario game.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s no walk in the park, and it’s quite a challenge if you’ve already played a ton of Super Mario Bros. games, but it’s not the most difficult game out there.

You’ll still be haunted by terrible wind effects and twisting pipes that take you back a few worlds, but if you know where to look for secrets, you can play this game in minutes.

I think the platformer is on par with many other games from this era, but otherwise Ninja Gaiden, Castlevaniaor Mega Manit’s devoid of combat, so it makes its way onto the list.

9 Sonic offers

Rolling off the screen

Sonic Games are inherently somewhat difficult due to the expectation of fast reaction times and level mastery from the player, and Sonic Advance takes that to the extreme.

While each Sonic game made by DIMPS gets a little easier than the last, the first Advance game has massive pressure on the screen, forcing you to react at lightning speed.

This game brings an idea Save the phase to achieve perfect operation To its logical extreme, practically forcing you to crawl through the level before you get confident.

It has a ton of endless pits of instant death, and some levels force you to move quickly, meaning Egg Rocket Zone becomes an intense and unforgiving challenge.

8 Kaizo Mario

Better than you remember

Kaizo Mario It’s one of those nightmare ROM hacks that you only hear about because of its unfair and terrible difficulty, but it’s actually not bad at all.

It has some quirks, like requiring you to platform via bullet bills and only giving you one chance to do so, especially without removing lives, but it’s fun to master.

I think breakouts like Big Poop World 3 It could do a better job of giving you a proper test of knowledge and skill, but Kaizo is creative, challenging, and will throw a few hundred hidden blocks at you.

It’s an incredibly rewarding feeling to crawl your way through, learn Super Mario World’s little quirks, and come out on top after a few thousand attempts. Just make sure to use save states.

7 Donkey Kong Country Returns: Tropical Freeze

Incredibly cool

the Donkey Kong The series is one of Nintendo’s most consistently challenging franchises. Its basic system requires you to commit to your jumps, otherwise you will fall and die Tropical freeze It is the peak.

On top of rolling and bouncing that makes you move under penalty of death, the game has KONG letters that you need to climb off-screen walls to find at times.

Even when the base difficulty is too difficult, Hard Mode changes up the levels enough to make them a real challenge that requires complete mastery.

You probably wouldn’t expect this level of intensity From the funny monkey gamebut Donkey Kong always delivers on its promise, and when Retro Studios finishes Prime 4, I hope we’ll see another one that can top this one.

6 Rain world

Paddling along

Rain world It’s an open-world exploration game with a lot of platforming thrown in, and before you say “But Rain World has a lot of enemies you can throw things at!” Listen to me.

You’re supposed to avoid every encounter with something hostile in Rain World, whether by finding cover or pulling sick tricks to avoid the enemy entirely. While you can throw things at them, you don’t get much out of it.

Trying to wall-climb, dodge large lizards, and do corrugated backflips around each tightly designed area requires an enormous amount of execution to succeed, plus the game is a great experience, even with the thousands of deaths.

There are no boss fights, and any fight you try to get into will get you killed; Additionally, this game is known to be extremely difficult, so I think all of that combined makes an excellent entry on this list.

5 n++

Friendship test

n++ It’s a fairly simple game where you run, jump, and dodge hundreds of obstacles that quickly fly towards you as you try to finish levels.

It has smooth movement, and by smooth I mean it feels like it’s sliding on ice every time you try to slide down walls and slide through explosions and lasers.

It can seem a little unwieldy at times, especially if you’re trying to get through everything with a friend and keep dying, but it’s quite the flow once you get the hang of it.

It has a few thousand levels that find new ways to provide more challenges, and I think it deserves more appreciation for its difficulty despite its inherent simplicity.

4 Grape dog

Arkady Agility

Grapple Dog may seem like a cute and useful platformer at first glance, but it really presents quite a challenge with its physics-based grappling.

The game will expect you to hit great angles as you chase and deal relentless damage or do precise platforming where the penalty is quick death.

There’s no life system, yet there’s still a sense of punishment, throwing you back at a checkpoint that doesn’t feel at all lenient, and making you do it all over again.

Once you reach the later levels, you’ll be treated to the tricks of the harder level that you’ll have to wrestle within an inch of your life, and it all feels great, if quite punishing.

3 Ffffffffffff

Up, down and everywhere

Ffffffffffff It’s a game with a terrible name and no-jump platforming, which may seem sacrilegious, but it’s okay to commit the sin once in a while, and it’s a pretty fun time.

You flip up and down, weaving through lines of pins that sometimes span across multiple screens and require you to either memorize the layout or get it right.

Every challenge in this game makes you feel like a total badass, moving left, right, up and down taking into account every change in gravity.

It’s very punishing, with Instagram killing spikes taking you back to any time they were kind enough to drop a checkpoint, but it’s still fair even if you’re tearing your hair out.

2 Super Meat Boy

In the mill

Perhaps the most famous precision platform, Super Meat Boy It has earned its reputation for its incredible difficulty, constantly pushing you to face intense challenges.

Each world has a new gimmick, whether it’s piles of salt that instantly kill you combined with about a million saw blades, huge pits with precise jumps, or just plain hell.

Meat Boy itself feels incredibly precise and difficult to control, which leads to quite the learning curve as you get familiar with its bizarre physics.

If you want to grind the game 100%, you’re especially in for a treat, as the optional collectible dressings and bonus levels are some of the hardest platforming challenges I’ve ever seen.

1 Celeste

Peak

Overall, I think Celeste It does the best job of doing difficult, intense levels, without ever making you feel like something wasn’t your fault, which is great.

Madeleine’s controls are easy to understand, she stops on a dime and can dash in eight directions, which in a way makes The craziest speed technology ever.

The game tests you in almost every aspect and there’s a bit of weirdness in its limited move set, especially in Sides B and C, where the difficulty is turned up to 11.

But Chapter Nine is spot on. This is quite a challenge for some of the hardest platformers I’ve ever seen, and the final screen makes you go several minutes without checkpoints, which is very difficult.