Moving Platform

A Moving Platform is a platform which moves. These platforms add additional complexity and challenge to Platforming obstacles. They can be used to force players to more precisely time their actions or place a Time Limit on their completion of certain sections of a level in order to keep pace with the platform. In more puzzle-based contexts, Moving Platforms can be used to force players to evaluate their actions more carefully in advance, by requiring them to only activate certain platforms, activate platforms in a certain order, or only activate platforms at a certain point. They may also give Inherited Momentum when jumping off them.

Moving Platforms can be activated to start moving in a number of ways. Primarily, these are immediately upon the platform becoming loaded, and when directly interacted with by the player character. They can also be activated by switches elsewhere in the level, or when the player takes certain actions. Platforms can move in an endless variety of different ways; they can move in a circle, spin in place, move in a straight line forever, back and forth along a straight path, or along some curve or arc.

Celeste (2018) – features a wide variety of moving platforms across all of the game’s chapters. Most of them are immobile until the player character touches them, but there are also platforms that move whenever the player dashes and platforms that always move back and forth in a straight line. Some of the game’s blocks can be controlled by the player’s actions and travel almost anywhere in the level.

Levelhead (2020) – gives level designers access to only a few types of moving platforms, but they can move in circles, along paths defined by the level designer, or both. The game also features a complex logic system to allow blocks to be activated by almost any condition.

Super Mario 64 (1996) – includes several varieties of spinning platform and linear moving platform in 3 dimensions. It also includes a platform which moves on a winding path around the level it appears in.

Hollow Knight: Silksong (2025) – uses relatively few moving platforms, but they are frequently not used as platforms while they are moving. Instead, they mostly kill enemies and damage the player in their path, then, once they reach their stopping point, return to their previous function as static platforms.

Crumbling Platform – similarly complicates a platform