The video game world is filled with genres and subsets that everyone has taken a special interest in and deemed as their favorite. Open-world has Fallout and Grand Theft Auto. First-person shooter has Halo and Call of Duty. Every genre has multiple titles that immediately come to mind when discussing with your friends. The sidescrolling genre of course has theirs as well. Games like Celeste, Inside, and Shovel Knight — just to name a few.
These are games that many believe are must-play games if you enjoy the genre. Although those games are excellent, they overshadow the smaller, lesser-known titles that are often just as good. Sidescrollers have been around since the '80s. Titles such as Mario, Castlevania, Golden Axe, and Sonic all paved the way for the genre to live on and thrive today, causing many to choose the traditional 2D platformer over the Triple-A groundbreaking world of an Elder Scrolls game. In order for the subsection of gaming to live on for another 40 years, the lesser known, but equivalent, must prevail.
5 MonoBot
Perhaps one of the most adorable sidescrollers available on current consoles, Monobot follows the story of a tiny robot who is set free at the start of the game. Not much is told about the little guy at first, but the story steadily unravels as you learn more about Monobot's past. Similar to the concept of a more known game, Inside, Monobot uses the escape theme that many other stories have borrowed from. This one is a bit different, however. Monobot is an operator robot who wakes on an unfamiliar dystopian planet. The game gradually opens up into an empty and lonely, but also fascinating, world.
Monobot accomplishes everything that the developer, DreamSmith Studio, was attempting to. The game regulates feelings of loneliness and sympathy as you flee across this uncharted planet. It manages to make you feel immensely for a robot, a feat worth appreciating.
4 Huntdown
Huntdown is best described as if The Warriors and Blade Runner had a baby. It’s a sci-fi, action-packed sidescroller that keeps you coming back for more each wave. It’s a game that has fast-paced modern movement, while somehow maintaining the classic feel, reminiscent of the first time you played Streets of Rage on the Sega Genesis.
You're given a choice of three bounty hunters to choose from. They're then placed in a wave to flow through shooting up the bad guys. As you reach the end of the street or level, you're met with a boss. Each boss brings an arbitrary type of movement and weapon choice, giving you a serious challenge. Sounds like most beat-'em-up platformers, right? But what sets this game apart from the others is the world the characters live in. The world in Huntdown completely nails the look of futuristic America, and keeps you wanting to progress to see the following street location. It's a cyberpunk look where the world has advancements in technology, but inherits the style of music and clothing that's comparable to the 1980s.
3 Valfaris
Valfaris is criminally underrated and underplayed. You play as Therion, who is tasked with taking out the evil that has flooded his home of Valfaris. With an epic soundtrack and neon, vibrant colors, Valfaris completely and unapologetically rocks. It's a 2D action sidescroller, developed with a bevy of guns to use, demons to kill, and blood to shed.
The game's developer, Steel Mantis, sought to make a game that will undeniably challenge you, while simultaneously giving you one idiosyncratic gaming experience. Valfaris has inklings of Contra, but expands those similarities and creates a world unlike any other in all of video games. The mix of color scheme, heavy metal music, fantastic shooting and melee mechanics make for an eccentric game that more people need to experience.
2 Shadow Complex
Released in 2009, Shadow Complex is arguably the most played game on this list. With that being said, it remains unjustly underrated. Comparable to any Splinter Cell or 007 game, in Shadow Complex, you play as Jason, who seeks to rescue his recently kidnaped girlfriend, Claire. As the game unfolds, Jason learns more about the group that kidnaped his girlfriend, discovering that he may need to do a little more besides just saving his love interest.
What makes this game special is the way this particular sidescroller was developed. Shadow Complex remains one of the few sidescrollers with cutscenes — and these are real cutscenes where the camera moves around and gives you angles such as close-ups and wide shots. It set a new bar for the sidescrolling genre that unfortunately not many developers have attempted to simulate.
1 Olija
Olija is sidescroller like no other and masters the sense of minimalism. Olija’s developer, Skeleton Crew Studio, manages to tell an engaging story with very little dialogue and a pixel art style. The design choices end up helping rather than hurting Olija, as its movement and story are a fresh take on the genre. You play as Faraday, a leader who was dropped into the forbidden land where the game takes place. The goal is to defeat the waves of enemies and find your ship-wrecked crew to then return home.
It's extremely unfortunate that this game didn't pop more when it first released. It was granted decent reviews, but the silent acknowledgment the game received swiftly turned mute, and the game was forgotten.