Some More Indie 3D Platformer Recommendations, Part 1: Tasomachi and Here Comes Niko!

I’ve mentioned it here repeatedly in the past, but I am a pretty big fan of 3D platformers, and I’m willing to give a decent variety of games a try just to see how they are. A few months ago, I did a round-up of smaller 3D platformers that I had found through this willingness to try new things, and it was a lot of fun! I didn’t necessarily have a ton of deep design insights or anything, but it is fun to recommend smaller titles.

And since I’ve found a few more fun 3D platformers in the interim, why not run another small game round-up? Technically, all of them are games I’ve briefly mentioned here in the past, but usually in passing on another article (two of them in the last round-up, and one in my most recent playlist). I’ve enjoyed all of them a ton, so I figure it’s time to give them their own full highlights!

One big difference from the last time I did a round-up, though: the last time, I was as much trying to break down the different components of the genre, and looking at games that did some things well and other things maybe less good. This time, though, there’s a lot more polish to the games I’m mentioning. If you’re also a big fan of 3D platformers and always on the lookout for more, honestly I don’t think you can’t go wrong with any of these. If it’s more a genre you occasionally dig into, though, you still might find something that’s your speed, and hopefully breaking down what I like about these games can help you make a decision.

This was intended to be a bit of a shorter piece, but things wound up spiraling a little out of control, length-wise. And so, today will be the first of two parts; look for the follow-up sometime in the next week or so!


Tasomachi: Behind the Twilight (Orbital Express)

Like all of the games here, I’ve mentioned Tasomachi here before as something I was looking forward to. Unlike the other entries here, though, it didn’t come in a video game article; rather, it came during my Summer 2021 playlist. Snail’s House, an artist who’s now a regular feature in my Playlist articles, provided the soundtrack here (albeit under his other pseudonym, Ujico*), which is part of what made me first take notice of it. And sure enough, as expected, I really did like the soundtrack. But the game it’s attached to is also pretty good!

More 3D Platformer Design: Yooka-Laylee & A Return to A Hat in Time

It’s been a while since my last article on 3D Platformers, one where I looked at the level design of Gears for Breakfast’s wonderful A Hat in Time. Since then, they’ve released two new worlds as downloadable content, “The Arctic Cruise” and “Nyakuza Metro”, and finally been ported to the Switch. I recently decided to replay the game, including the new content, and at more or less the same time, I finally got around to trying Playtonic Games’ Yooka-Laylee (which, for those not in the know, first got note for being a spiritual successor to the Banjo-Kazooie series from the Nintendo 64, made by many alumni from those titles). Playing them back to back gave me a lot of thoughts on both, and 3D platformers on the whole, so it seemed like a good time to revisit my last article.

A Hat in Time and Level Design Philosophies in 3-D Platformers

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my favorite indie games from the past year and I lavished high praise on A Hat in Time by the development team Gears for Breakfast. It’s a throwback to the 3D platformers of the ‘90s and early 2000s that I loved growing up, but like all of the best nostalgic throwbacks, it’s good not just because it references the classics of a past, but because it understands what made those classics work, and consciously decides to do its own thing. Now that I’ve more or less finished the entire game, I feel like I can begin to break down some of the things that the game does especially well.

Every aspect of A Hat in Time is meticulously designed and pitch perfect. The aesthetic side of things are incredibly strong; the game is filled with beautifully-animated, cel-shaded style worlds, each with it’s own hilariously-written and quirky side characters. The entire thing is scored with a triumphant and exciting soundtrack that makes you feel ready to set out on an adventure. Protagonist Hat Girl is given a strong personality with almost no dialogue, and is one of my favorite new main characters in the past decade or so. The controls are tight and so much fun to use, which is critical to a platformer that relies on navigating spaces. Few games make simply moving around a level feel so natural and easy.

And while that all is nice, there’s one specific aspect of the design that I’d like to focus on: the construction of the worlds that serve as your digital playgrounds. A Hat in Time makes some interesting choices in how they went about building these stages that I feel like digging into a little, because I think the variety they provide are part of what keeps the game feel so exciting and new at every turn.