Silksong, Baby Steps, and more

Movement is something we might take for granted in games. Characters are expected to move in certain ways, and controls are often similar across games (an A button to jump, clicking in a left stick to sprint). Some of 2025’s best games disregarded expected movement mechanics to challenge the player to think differently in the way they move through a game, while another mixed up the tool used to shift through its world.

While traditional movement ideas aren’t going anywhere, these titles show how many creative ways there still are to rethink how players interact with games. None of them quite feel the same as another, or anything else from 2025.

Öoo

Öoo has one of the more inventive takes on movement in a game this year. You play as a caterpillar that slowly slithers around its puzzle-filled levels. But, how to cross the chasm littered with spikes? How to reach the ledge that the too-short caterpillar can’t grasp? How to outrun an enemy that’s faster than the squirming insect?

Bombs. The answer is bombs.

Öoo’s caterpillar is propelled forward, upward, and all around by bombs. The game wordlessly teaches you how to master its bomb-based movement, and asks for creativity from the player in the way those bombs are used. That creativity is rewarded by multiple solutions to puzzles depending on how those bombs are deployed, with new paths to tread just around the corner.

Hollow Knight: Silksong

Image: Team Cherry via Polygon

Movement isn’t the only mechanic in Hollow Knight: Silksong, but it is one of the game’s most divisive. Specifically, Hornet’s downward jump attack. By simply changing the angle of the downward thrust between entries — straight down in Hollow Knight, diagonally in Silksong — Team Cherry upended exploration in its metroidvania sequel. (Of course, if you longed for the first game’s original downward attack, there’s a way to obtain it in Silksong.)

Suddenly, players had to do all-new calculus on the fly, determining the right time for a 45-degree downward thrust when platforming atop red balloons. Too soon, and you’ll undershoot the platform. Too late, and you zoom right by it. Once the right rhythm is nailed, Hornet swirls along the screen like a ballet dancer, and suddenly the game opens up. And that’s to say nothing of her hover ability, with her red cloak serving as a poofy parachute. More challenging games need whimsy like that.

Sword of the Sea

Image: Giant Squid

Sword of the Sea didn’t challenge movement conventions in its design, but in the tool used to move its playable character. When you see a sword, you likely see a weapon. A classic choice in any story, game or otherwise; one that can dominate even a first-person shooter, slice through an all-powerful alien, impale enemies, and even need therapy. In Sword of the Sea, however, a sword is not used for violence, but for movement.

Through that movement, the sword-surfer ends up saving the game’s world. They don’t wield the sword to strike down enemies, but rather give life to a barren land. (Though, it is admittedly used in an inventive, climatic fight to deflect projectiles back at a boss — more shield-like than sword-like.) Fluidly platforming atop the sword, gracefully bending around curves, exhilaratingly performing tricks in the air; you can bring life back to this world in style.

You can also lazily ride on the back of a flying turtle in Sword of the Sea. So… GOTY.

Baby Steps

Image: Devolver Digital via Polygon

To play Baby Steps is to ponder every step you take in the game on the way to answering a question: Is this onesie-wearing man going to fall down as soon as I plant his foot? Instead of simply moving a stick forward and your character moving without issue, Baby Steps has you using your controller’s triggers to lift and place each of player character Nate’s feet, slightly tilting the left stick to propel him forward. It’s a control system that requires patience, even as you picture developers Gabe Cuzzillo, Maxi Boch, and Bennett Foddy manically laughing at your tenth faceplant of the hour. (Nate’s gonna fall down. A lot.)

The gameplay is intrinsically tied to Baby Steps’ story. As much as it’s a game about the physicality of moving through a tortuous world, it’s more so about masculinity and the feelings of belittlement so many isolated people contend with. Your early time with the game will be full of slapstick comedic bits that gradually grate on you until you’re just as angry at Nate as he is disappointed in himself. In the end, the poor guy is just trying to put one foot in front of the other, and Baby Steps makes that as difficult as a final boss in a Soulslike.