---
title: "Platform walker"
package: "@phaser-ae/platform-walker"
tier: Pro
version: 3.0.0-3
released: 2026-10-14
updated: 2026-10-19
description: "Arcade platform movement for players and enemies alike, with walking, fixed or variable jumps, falls, ladders, bars, screen wrap and riding moving platforms, all driven by simple intents."
url: https://phaser.io/packs/platform-walker
site: Phaser - https://phaser.io
---

# Platform walker

Deterministic arcade platform movement for any number of bodies: walking, jumping, falling, climbing ladders, hanging
from bars, wrapping round the screen and riding moving platforms. Players, enemies and items share one set of rules,
and each body's feel is a profile of plain data.

## What it does

Every body is an axis-aligned box over a `platform-map` level. You set its intent each step, a horizontal and a
vertical direction and a jump, and the world moves it by its profile. Because input is just intent, a keyboard, a
recorded replay, a test bot and the enemy director all drive bodies the same way, and an enemy can share a profile
with the player.

A profile is the whole feel of a character. Walking is instant or has acceleration, deceleration and a skid on
turning. A jump is none, a fixed arcade arc that commits to its direction, or a variable jump you can cut short, with
coyote time, input buffering and air steering if you want them. Falls accelerate or drop at a constant rate, can be
fatal past a height measured from the apex or the take-off, and can glide to a column's centre so a body drops cleanly
into a one-cell hole. Ladders have rules for where you can get on and off, whether broken rungs block, and whether you
can grab one in the air; bars are caught by walking or falling into them.

The world is also the stepping hub of the platform packs. Moving-surface providers step first, controllers think,
bodies move, sensors refresh, and controllers sense. Riders are carried by lifts and pushed by belts, and the crush
rules are careful: a deck passing beside a walker never hurts it, and an `embedded` event names its cause so a game
can treat only real crushes as deaths. Horizontal moves are substepped and vertical sweeps cover every row crossed, so
nothing tunnels at any speed.

## Features

- **Walking** — instant or momentum, with acceleration, deceleration, a turning skid, step-up and step-down, and
  edge policies to walk off or stop.
- **Jumps** — fixed arcade arcs, keep-momentum jumps or fully controlled variable jumps, with jump cuts, coyote
  time, buffering, wall bounces and jumps from ladders and bars.
- **Falls** — accelerating or constant, with a top speed, a fatal height, bounces and centring for grid games.
- **Ladders and bars** — entry within a snap distance, exits at the ends or anywhere, broken rungs, grabbing in the
  air, stepping off sideways, and hand-over-hand bars with drops.
- **Screen wrap and drop-through** — wrap on either axis, down and jump to drop through one-way floors, and blocks a
  rising body passes through from below.
- **Flight and materials** — flying bodies, and per-material traction, acceleration and speed for ice.
- **Moving surfaces** — riding lifts, being pushed by belts and dropped by crumbling planks, with a careful crush
  policy.
- **Stun, knock and teleport** — generic states for rule packs, plus bodies others can stand on.
- **Sensors for AI** — wall and edge ahead, ladders above and below, a bar here, the current cell and what was hit.
- **Events** — jumps, landings with fall height and fatality, head bumps with the cell, wraps, hazards, embeds and
  leaving the screen.
- **Presets** — `jumpmanProfile`, `marioBrosProfile`, `bubbleBobbleProfile`, `snowBrosProfile`,
  `lodeRunnerProfile`, `spacePanicProfile` and `labPlayerProfile`, scalable to your tile size.

## Good for

- **Ladder-and-girder games** in the style of Donkey Kong, with a fixed jump arc, fatal falls and ladders entered only
  at their ends.
- **Single-screen wrap-around games** in the style of Mario Bros or Bubble Bobble, with momentum, head bumps,
  jump-through floors and wrap.
- **Dig-and-chase puzzles** in the style of Lode Runner, with constant falls, bars and sideways ladder exits.
- **No-jump climbing games** in the style of Space Panic, where the player only walks and climbs.
- **Your own platform hero**, mixing a profile's walk, jump and climb rules on a custom level.
- **Enemy movement**, since enemies are bodies with profiles of their own.

## Make it yours

Everything is per-body profile data, and `walkerProfile` merges your changes over a base, so a new character is a
few overrides of a preset. The presets are built for 8-unit tiles at 60 steps a second and scale to your tile size.
The world itself takes the map, any moving-surface providers and controllers, the step length and a cap on steps per
tick.

Two quite different feels from the same pack: a girder climber with a fixed jump arc, no air control, a fatal fall
measured from the take-off and ladders it can only enter at their ends; or a momentum hero on a wrapping screen with
variable jumps, a skid on turning, icy floors and head bumps that a rule pack turns into enemy flips. A Lode Runner
profile can even ride a girder game's conveyor under a bar, because every body reads the same level.

## A quick look

A world over a map and its movers, one player, and the frame loop:

```ts
const world = game.platformWalker.createWalkerWorld({ map, providers: [movers], step: 1 / 60 });
world.add({ id: 'player', x, feet, profile: game.platformWalker.jumpmanProfile(), tags: ['player'] });
world.setIntent('player', { x: -1, y: 0, jump: true });
world.tick(dt);                          // whole fixed steps; or world.step()
for (const e of world.drain()) { /* jumped, landed {fall, fatal}, bumped {col,row}, wrapped, hazard, embedded ... */ }
const b = world.body('player');          // x, y (centre), feet, vx, vy, facing, mode, support, sensors ...
```

## Works with

- `platform-map` — required: the level the bodies move over; edits take effect on the next step.
- `platform-movers` — lifts, belts, crumbling planks and elevators as moving surfaces.
- `platform-enemies` — the enemy director, a controller that sets enemy intents.
- `platform-rounds`, `dig-trap`, `enemy-capture` — rule packs that read the events and decide what they cost.
- `platformer-2d` — for physics traversal courses with slopes, joints and generated courses.

## Good to know

- Bodies are boxes that do not rotate or collide with each other; use the overlap and query calls for contact rules.
- Surfaces collide from above, and with solid undersides from below, never from the side.
- A world holds at most 4,096 bodies.
- Preset speeds are frame-analysis figures where published and judged from play otherwise.
- No rules: a fatal landing, a hazard or a crush is an event, and the game decides what it costs.

---

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