Platform games aren’t just for playing on the Switch or Xbox, there are some great platform games you can play on the Mac. While you won’t find Mario or Sonic, there are still some great options. Here are some of our favourites.
For our top best Mac games recommendations read: Top 20 Mac games of 2022.
We also have eleven separate articles covering our favorites in each game genre. So if you want more of the same, select your favorite genre from the list below and jump to that article.
Abraca
Company: Ankama Games Where to buy: Steam (£10.99/$14.99), Green Man Gaming (£10.99/$14.99) System requirements: Mac with OS X v10.10, 2.0GHz dual-core Intel processor, discrete graphics card with 512MB VRAM
Abraca is the sort of game that you might expect to find on the family-oriented Wii console, rather than on a Mac or PC. It’s also very much a ‘marmite’ game – you’ll either love its daft, multiplayer take on old fairytale characters, or find the whole thing so horribly twee that you want to throw your gamepad at the screen.
The first thing to mention is that Abraca is a game for playing at home with friends – preferably fuelled by considerable quantities of alcohol. It needs two, three or four people to play it, and each person will need a proper gamepad controller. There are two main parts to the game, with you and your friends taking it in turns to play the role of a handsome prince in a platform game where you have to run and jump past a series of obstacles and monsters. But, as each player takes their turn to be the prince, their friends get to play as monsters and fight against them to stop them from reaching their goal. And, along the way, other fairytale characters such as Hansel and Gretel pop up, along with an assortment of dragons, evil witches and other monsters.
The other part of the game features princess-on-princess action in a kind of multiplayer arena brawl, and the whole thing plays out with the sort of annoying synthesiser soundtrack that accompanied all those old ’80s arcade games.
Braid
Company: Hothead Games Where to buy: Mac App Store (£10.99/$10.99), Steam (£10.99/$14.99) System requirements: OS X 10.6.6 or later
The first time you play Braid, you might be forgiven for thinking you’ve just bought a late 90s puzzle platformer. You jump and run like Mario, kill monsters by jumping on their heads and collect puzzle pieces. And then you’re introduced to Braid’s killer feature: you can turn back time.
As you progress, you realise that this is a crucial part of the game’s mechanics. There are sections you can’t complete without winding back the action. Add in some fiendishly designed levels, a lot of old-school gaming and a genuinely great soundtrack, and you realise why Braid won all those awards.
Dinocide
Company: Atomic Torch Where to buy: Steam (£7.19/$9.99) System requirements: Mac with OS X v10.9, 1.6GHz dual-core Intel processor
The recent fad for retro games has given the old-fashioned sideways-scrolling platform game a new lease of life, and one of the most authentically retro titles we’ve seen recently is Dinocide from Atomic Torch.
Dinocide is clearly inspired by the NES arcade games of the 80s, and puts you in control of a cute little pixellated caveman who fights his way through a variety of landscapes and levels in order to rescue his cave lady friend. The format is very straightforward, as you run and jump past various obstacles and chuck rocks at the monsters and other enemies that get in your way.
The landscape varies from level to level, ranging across deserts, oceans and underground caves, which allows the game to throw a good mix of obstacles and enemies at you. And, instead of committing dinocide, you can actually team up with many of the dinosaurs you encounter, perhaps riding on their back to escape other monsters, or using a fire-breathing T-Rex to blast your way past an obstacle.
Bear in mind that, like those old NES games, Dinocide can also be enormously frustrating at times. You need to feed your caveman on a regular basis by picking up various bits of food that are scattered around each level. If you don’t eat often enough he will simply keel over, forcing you to start the level again. This feed-me mechanic is meant to add a sense of urgency to the game, but it can also be really annoying at times, so Dinocide will mainly appeal to purists who enjoy old-school gaming, rather than casual gamers looking to pass some time on a rainy afternoon.
Limbo
Company: Playdead Where to buy: Steam (£6.99/$9.99), Green Man Gaming (£6.99/$9.99), Mac App Store (£9.99/$9.99) System requirements: Macs produced in 2009 or onward; Mac OS X version Snow Leopard 10.6.3 or later; Intel Mac processor; 1GB RAM; 150MB of hard disk space; OpenGL 2.0 compatible video card with 256MB shared or dedicated RAM (ATI or nVidia)
Few games are quite as creepy to play as Limbo, a 2D puzzle platformer in which you play as a young boy lost in the forest. Its exquisitely drawn levels, ambient soundtrack and visceral surprises make sure of that.
Dying becomes a fact of life – dying in ever more gruesome ways. Sometimes it will be the result of terrible accidents, other times you’ll fall into the clutches of giant monsters. (You can turn the gore off if you’re of a sensitive disposition.)
Beautiful and mournfully cruel, Limbo is a game that will haunt you long after you’ve switched off your Mac.
Read our full Limbo for Mac review for more information.
One Dog Story
Company: Big Way Games Where to buy: Steam (£6.99/$4.99) System requirements: macOS 10.8, Intel Core Duo processor, nVidia GeForce 320M
The retro games resurgence continues with One Dog Story, an old-fashioned 2D platform game that manages to add a little bit of variety to the standard running-and-jumping formula.
As the game starts you find yourself waking up in an underground laboratory with no memory of who you are or how you got there. That’s a bit of an old gaming cliché, but One Dog Story throws in a twist of its own as it turns out that you’re a dog – and somehow have the intelligence to speak and use tools and weapons. Clues that you find lying around the lab hint at some sort of genetic experiment, and as you start to explore you’ll meet other characters, as well as the occasional computer terminal, that can provide more information about the mysterious goings-on in the lab.
One Dog Story works well as a straightforward platform game, with plenty of obstacles and enemy monsters that you have to get past. There are underwater zones where you can only hold your breath for a short time, so you have to escape before you drown. Sometimes your escape route may also branch off in different directions – one level may contain doors that lead to two separate levels that you have to explore in order to find a weapon or tool that will allow you to go back and solve a puzzle in an earlier level. A key feature of the game is the ability to collect ‘mutagens’ – items dropped by the monsters that you defeat, which allow you to heal yourself, save the game at certain points, and also upgrade the weapons that you use.
All those features mean that you’ll have to use your brain, as well as your trigger finger, to succeed, helping to bring the old-school platform format a bit more up to date. It’s good value too, at just £6.99/$4.99, and the 2D graphics don’t need a super-fast Mac to run smoothly.
Poncho
Company: Rising Star Games Where to buy: Steam (£6.99/$9.99) System requirements: Mac with OS X v10.7 or later, 2GHz dual-core processor, graphics card with 512MB VRAM
Two-dimensional platform games have been around for donkey’s years – even longer than the Mac itself, in fact – but Poncho manages to put a new twist on the traditional platform-jumping action.
Poncho is described as a ‘parallax platformer’, which means that as well as running and jumping in two dimensions – left and right, or up and down – it uses parallax perspective effects to create additional ‘foreground’ and ‘background’ zones on the screen. This creates a kind of pseudo-3D effect that allows you to jump into the foreground or background in order to dodge obstacles and solve puzzles that wouldn’t be possible in a conventional 2D platform game.
In other respects, Poncho is a fairly conventional platform game, putting you in control of a little robot who is named after the red poncho that is his only possession. Poncho wakes up in a desolate post-apocalypse world with no sign of human life, so he sets off in search of his maker in an attempt to find out what has happened to the world. The traditional left/right movements of the platform game are so ingrained that it can take a little while to get used to the idea of jumping ‘in’ and ‘out’ of the screen, but the effect is well used and allows the game’s designers to create some tricky puzzles as you progress through the game.
Putty Squad
Company: Virtual Programming Where to buy: Mac App Store (£4.99/$4.99), Deliver2.com (£4.99/$5.99) System requirements: Mac with OS X v10.11, Intel dual-core processor
The resurgence of retro platform games continues with the release of Putty Squad, although this particular game has a bizarre history. Originally developed in the early 90s, the game actually lingered unpublished until just a few years ago, when an updated version with enhanced graphics was finally released for the PC and various games consoles. Now it’s been brought to the Mac and Linux by Virtual Programming.
The platform game format is fairly familiar, of course, but Putty Squad manages to come up with a fun twist. As well as the usual running and jumping that you’d expect from a platform game, you control a character simply called Putty who, as the name suggests, can stretch and change shape just like putty.
Putty can squish down flat to squeeze through tight spaces, or inflate in order to float above them. You can stretch Putty up and down in order to climb past obstacles, or stretch out a putty arm to punch enemies. Putty can also wrap around weapons, such as a nitro bomb or rocket-launcher, and carry them around until you need to use them.
Some of the puzzles are actually quite tricky, as you need to figure out which tactic – jumping, floating, punching or stretching – will work best, and we sometimes found it hard to remember all the different control buttons. However, there’s a handy tutorial that introduces the game’s main features, and we like the ability to press ‘M’ to zoom out and view the entire level in Map Mode, which helps you to figure out the best route through each level.
It’s a shame that the iOS version has also struggled to find a publisher, as Putty Squad seems ideal for the iPhone or iPad, but if you’re a fan of old-school platform games then Putty Squad is a real treat. Cliff Joseph
Rive
Company: Two Tribes Where to buy: Steam (£10.99/$14.99) System requirements: Mac with OS X v10.7, 2.0GHz dual-core Intel processor, discrete graphics card with 256MB VRAM
Old-school platform games and arcade shooters have been making a comeback of late – often courtesy of nostalgic gamers funding them on Kickstarter – and Rive is perhaps the purest example of that old-school approach that we’ve seen so far.
The format of the game is pretty straightforward. You play a tough old space jockey called Roughshot who finds himself adrift in outer space and simply has to blast his way past all the obstacles and enemies that stand in his way. In that respect Rive is no different from a zillion other arcade games. However, the game’s relentless, non-stop action has been honed to perfection – it’s agonisingly hard, and sometimes leaves you wondering how on earth you’re going to finish a single level, let alone complete the entire game.
You’ll die over and over, yet the presentation of the game is so slick and attractive that it draws you back in time and time again. Sometimes you’re floating around in outer space, dodging asteroids and enemy weapons, while other levels are more like a like a platform game where you have to find your way past a series of obstacles. The controls feel smooth and responsive, and the neon-hued graphics and synth soundtrack are like an arcade sugar-rush that just keeps drawing you back in, no matter how many times you die. Rive is most definitely not a game for casual players, but if you’re a fan of retro games and like a real challenge then Rive is pure, intravenous arcade action from start to finish.
Spiritfarer: Farewell Edition
Company: Thunder Lotus Where to buy: Steam (£23.79/$29.99) Requirements: Mac with OS X v10.10, 7GB disk space
In Greek mythology, it’s Charon the ferryman who guides the souls of the dead into the underworld. In Spiritfarer, it’s Stella and her cat Daffodil who seek out lost spirits, initially befriending them, but then helping them to move on when they finally decide that they’re ready to enter the afterlife.
You start the game playing as Stella, as she guides her barge across a mystical sea, exploring a series of mysterious islands, meeting a number of spirits and learning about their individual stories. The colourful 2D graphics have a very Disney-esque feel to them, and the game’s gentle pace and friendly characters will certainly appeal to younger players.
There’s quite a lot going on in the game, though, as you can spend time gathering wood, herbs and other materials in order to upgrade your barge. You can also do a spot of farming, cooking or crafting to help your spirit friends, and some levels include puzzles and elements of platform-jumping action to add variety. The spirits that you encounter will also give you quests, perhaps asking you to build them a house where they can rest, or to locate lost items so that they can prepare for the afterlife before finally saying goodbye. There’s also a two-player mode that allows you to invite a friend to play alongside you as Daffodil – which would be a great option for parents who want to play with their children. The game is a little expensive, at £23.79, but it should last for 30 – 50 hours if you want to complete all the quests in the game. There’s also a demo version that you can try out before paying for the full game.
Unbound: Worlds Apart
Company: Alien Pixel Studios Where to buy: Steam (£16.99/$19.99), GOG (£16.99/$23.62) System requirements: Mac with Catalina (10.15), Intel Core i5 processor, AMD Radeon Pro 450 or higher
This 2D sideways-scrolling platform game is surprisingly slick and polished for a Kickstarter project, and introduces a clever new twist that will appeal to fans of platform games. The start of the game is a little disorienting, though, as it provides only the briefest introduction to your character, a young mage called Soli, as you flee a rather vague calamity that has befallen your home world.
Initially, Unbound follows the standard format for platform games, allowing you to run and jump past a series of obstacles and enemies in order to complete each level. But after a couple of simple levels that allow you to master the basic controls, you’ll come up against an obstacle that has no obvious solution. That’s when you can use Soli’s magical powers to open up a portal that lets you quickly hop across into a different dimension. This allows you to side-step that obstacle in the new dimension, before closing the portal and returning to the previous dimension once more.
It’s not always that easy, though, as you’ll often open a portal only to find that there’s another trap or creepy monster waiting on the other side. And, just to challenge you even further, the laws of physics in each dimension can vary – so gravity in one dimension might allow you to ‘fall’ upwards in order to escape a deep pit in another dimension. So, as well as needing nimble fingers and quick reflexes, you’ll need to plan ahead – and maybe die a few times – in order to figure out the best dimension-hopping, physics-defying route through each level.
The rather brusque introduction at the start of the game may put off casual players who aren’t sure what’s going on, but the atmospheric hand-drawn graphics and slick animation make Unbound one of the most stylish and challenging platform games we’ve seen in ages.
Yooka-Laylee
Company: Playtonic Where to buy: Steam (£34.99/$39.99), Green Man Gaming (£34.99/$39.99) System requirements: Mac with OS X v10.9.5, 2.5GHz Intel Core i5 processor, GeForce 640M or later, game controller (recommended)
Games like Yooka-Laylee don’t appear on the Mac very often, as it very much harks back to the kind of candy-coloured sugar-rush platform games that thrived on Nintendo consoles back in the 90s. The set up is relatively simple, although it plays out against the sort of brightly coloured neon cartoon world that makes the Super Mario games look drab and dull.
The game starts when evil businessman Capital B – who looks rather like Gru from the Despicable Me films – and his henchman Dr Quack (who seems to be a duck in a bottle), steal every book in the world so that they can corner the market and make fortune.
To defend the books of the world you step in and take control of two characters – the chameleon Yooka, and his bat buddy Laylee. This dynamic duo has to explore a series of levels called Grand Tomes, which are full of weird and wonderful platforms, puzzles and other obstacles, as well as boss monsters, and endless collectibles that give you health boosts and new powers. As you explore each Grand Tome you will also discover magical book pages (called Pagies) that open up new areas to explore.
As well as playing on your own, the game also includes a co-op mode that lets a friend take control of a third character alongside Yooka and Laylee, and there’s a local multiplayer mode that lets four people play together at home. The game is a little pricey, at £34.99, but it’s great fun, and it’s inventive and funny enough to keep both adults and younger players entertained for hours on end.
