The protagonist's head also floats...
Houston: I just thought of something... how do these platforms float?
*CRASH*
Samus: NEVER question the physics in a video game!
*CRASH*
Samus: NEVER question the physics in a video game!
Ah, the floating platform. A staple of platformers and many other games beside. Their popularity is usually attributed to their use in the Mario series.
What do floating platforms do? They float. In the air. Unattached to anything (other than perhaps the background wall, if indoors). Inexplicably. Usually motionless, sometimes moving in a circular or back-and-forth pattern, and sometimes appearing from and descending into a Bottomless Pit. Their sole purpose of existence is to allow you, the player, to jump onto them to get to where you are going. After all, you can't fly.
If it just so happens that you can fly, floating platforms will serve the opposite purpose and become inane obstacles in your way, forcing you to go around them. Unless, of course, you can only fly short distances, in which case, they allow you a rest to recharge your flight meter or whatever the game happens to use.
Floating platforms aren't just immune to gravity, but to all laws of physics. Regardless of what happens to them, they'll either just stay frozen in place as if in some state of dimensional stasis (albeit with Midair Bobbing in some cases), or keep moving in a pre-defined pattern, ignoring all thrusts of inertia which attempt to affect them — unless it's a Temporary Platform, in which case the weight of the player will suddenly shock it back to reality in a couple of seconds and cause it to fall, crumble, or vanish, and sometimes respawn. And woe is the player who lands (or, more accurately, doesn't land) on a Fake Platform.
Inexplicable floating platforms are in some respects a Discredited Trope, as any game developer who wishes to preserve immersion will surely opt for ways to make platforms of this nature seem more realistic, such as by attaching them to the surrounding terrain or giving some sort of justification like jet thrusters, Green Rocks, Solid Clouds, Cranium Ride on a creature that you made into a Frozen Foe Platform, or some other excuse. But if not, then this is justified perfectly well by Artistic License – Physics and Rule of Fun.
See also Floating Continent and World in the Sky when major landmasses behave this way.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
- In The Daichis - Earth's Defense Family episode 11, after Dai, Nozomi and Seiko were detransformed, they took shelter to prevent themselves from being erased by the mysterious black void by going on the table. As the episode goes on, the rest of the objects (barring the lamp above the table and the table) including the floor was erased by the black void which has left the table as a floating platform. At the end of the episode, the table breaks apart as a result of Mamoru being on the table and the Daichi family were falling into a bottomless void but were luckily saved by Mamoru's space time interference of his transformation by using the lamp.
- In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind, Sale's Kraft Work allows him to remove an object's kinetic energy, locking it into place. He has used this ability to freeze falling rocks in the air to use as Floating Platforms.
Card Games
- Magic: The Gathering:
- In the expansion Zendikar, several geographic formations float in mid-air, including floating plains, mountains, and islands. This can be clearly seen in the artwork of the appropriate land cards. Of course, this expansion is based on the idea that the land is alive and is very volatile/unstable.
- The Urza's Saga storyline features the Heaven-like world of Serra's Realm, which is made up of idyllic meadows
and majestic cathedrals floating on huge slabs of rock.
Fan Works
- The second obstacle faced by Paul during his Speedrun on Sudran in The Keys Stand Alone: The Hard World is a series of Floating Platforms leading up to a partially floating, half-ruined tech complex embedded in the side of the volcano that Paul is trying to get into. While falling off would be a disaster at any stage, he doesn't have to worry about that, thanks to the telekinetic Ringo.
Random gamer watching Paul leap from platform to platform: "Guy's got hops!"
Films — Animation
- In Barbie and the Secret Door, Alexa, Romy, and Nori use a floating platform to get around Zinnia. It floats via magic.
- The Super Mario Bros. Movie: The Mushroom Kingdom is filled with different floating platforms and brick blocks as is the case in the games. The Toads get past them just fine, while Mario is worried he might fall off.
- In Toy Story 2, Rex is seen playing a Buzz Lightyear video game, and walks up some magically appearing floating steps to fight the final boss.
Films — Live-Action
- In Avatar, massive islands of stone known as the Hallelujah Mountains (Thundering Rocks to the natives) float high above the planet Pandora's surface. It is explained that the magnetic energies from the literal Unobtainium keep them suspended mid-air due to the Meissner Effect. It's also known that the resulting magnetic "Flux Vortex" interferes with the navigational instruments of human aircraft. The principle is actually scientifically sound; a superconductor like unobtanium would float when exposed to a sufficiently powerful magnetic field. However, a magnetic field strong enough to make mountains float would do a lot more than interfere with navigation.
- A rare example and justification of this: Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008) has floating stones large enough to stand on suspended by magnetic force.
- When Queen Amidala's starship arrives on Coruscant in The Phantom Menace, it docks at a floating landing platform — one with no apparent handrails, which is mocked severely by Darths & Droids.
Literature
- Laputa in Gulliver's Travels flies with the help of magnetic force, or so they say.
- In Running with Rats, one of the Dream Lands that the protagonists pass through involves a maze of these connected by rickety bridges in an endless sky.
- The Wheel of Time series feature the Ways, which are seemingly suspended in nothing. A Wizard Did It.
- The Worlds of Power novelization of Bionic Commando actually features moving floating platforms without the slightest bit of humor.
Manhua
- As the game Long Wei creates in Infinity Game is predominately made of pillars and bars, a lot of them float and are mostly used by enemies. The team eventually make their way to a falsely titled "floating city" which is really a series of floating platforms, that they reach by using an anti-gravity spell.
Video Games
- Akuji the Heartless throws plenty of these hazards, over Acid Pools. There's also "invisible" floating platforms in a few levels.
- In Angry Birds and its sequel Angry Birds 2, many structures are held by indestructible floating platforms of earth or rock.
- ANNO: Mutationem: At The Consortium's underground facility, several floating cubes hovering above a wide gap are used as platforms to reach the other side of the area.
- Banjo-Kazooie (1998): There are planks out wood floating near the treehouse in Click Clock Wood.
- Billy Blade and the Temple of Time: There are plenty of floating platforms in the various levels that Billy Blade can travel to, both moving and stationary.
- Bubble and Squeak: The game has mechanical ones that only move when a nearby button is pushed.
- Bug: The entirety of the six levels take place on a floating terrain — which is actually part of a movie set — where small pieces of the terrain move around in the air.
- Chantelise: In the Path to the Palace in the Sealed Palace section, there are floating rock platforms separating the cave you come out of, and the floating Sealed Palace.
- Clonk: Gravity is somewhat selective, similar to Minecraft, and ground that you dig out (unlike sand) will simply float there. Bizarrely, they can still collapse due to earthquakes. There are also quite a few levels that take place entirely in the sky. Falling off these is a bad idea. Also, all objects (separate entities, as opposed to materials which are parts of the level) that behave solid are unaffected by all gravitation.
- Cloudbuilt and Super Cloudbuilt have worlds made up entirely of floating platforms, a lot of which are vertical for performing Wall Runs.
- Clunky Hero: The game is full of mysteriously floating rocks and landmasses, being a Platform Game and all.
- Commander Keen: Usually averted due to the "floating" platforms being usually attached in some way to the background (which is clearly placed right beside everything that is seen in the levels). However, the level Isle of Fire in Episode 4 does have big chunks of solid terrain suspended airborne courtesy of some jets. And it's not just a decoration: Touching the fire expelled by those jets will spell instant death for Billy.
- Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure: Some Eternal Engine levels have pieces of mechanical terrain that are suspended in the air thanks to jets placed beneath them. Touching those jets is harmful.
- CreaVures: Giant dragonflies act as floating platforms.
- Croc: This comes in multiple flavors; some crumble when you stay on them too long, others don't and some move back and forth. One of Croc's hallmarks in retrospect is rarely bothering to diagetically justify why the same round platforms are all over the place, only using palette swaps to fit the biome. This is especially the case in the first game, where entire levels would consist of nothing but this trope and two ledges simply for the entry and exit to exist on.
- Crystal Caves has mechanical platforms with jet engines, allowing them to hover. There are also some classic floating platforms, though; since it's a game with a Side View, let's just say they're actually attached to the background.
- Dawn has a load of floating platforms in it, to the point it might as well be made up entirely of them. They can even be seen in the sky box.
- In Devil May Cry 1, Mission 17: Parted Memento makes you traverse a series of invisible floating platforms, presumably made of some kind of magical energy, to obtain the Quicksilver item needed to unlock the last room and proceed to the Boss Fight. These magical platforms are only visible when the lightning flashes from the storm outside temporarily illuminate them.
- Donkey Kong:
- Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest takes this trope one step further, having conveniently-placed hooks to swing off from that are attached to... the sky?
- Donkey Kong 64: The wooden house in DK Isles that provides access to the world Fungi Forest was built upon an inexplicably suspended piece of land that is accessed with a launch cannon from the firm ground.
- Drawn to Life:
- In the game, you draw two different varieties of cloud to serve as platforms, one sort which is stationary, and another sort which moves up and down or back and forth. And in the "floating in water" department, it later has you draw two kinds of ice cube, one which is stationary, and one which floats back and forth on the water. Certain parts also have floating, stationary Shadow Goo platforms which you ooze through.
- The main gimmick of Drawn to Life gives the player the ability to add whatever justification he or she likes. Sure the game advises you to draw clouds, but there's nothing stopping you drawing a metal platform with rocket thrusters, or a giant balloon, or some kind of non-moving bird. They'll still be floating platforms, but at least the justification is in the hands of the player.
- Elliot and the Musical Journey: The world of the game is made up of these. You have the average looke-like-ground ones, and there's also ones that resemble musical instruments.
- Feathery Ears has its share of these. They have a root reaching downward at their bottoms, but the roots don't seem to be connected to anything.
- Drunken Robot Pornography is crammed with stages consisting of floating aerial platforms of different sizes, that requires you to jump around while battling legions of robots and avoiding the Beam Spam from bosses.
- Fin and the Ancient Mystery: The game has floating platforms. These platforms seem to have blue glowing crystals attached to their undersides.
- Final Fantasy
- Final Fantasy XI: The few platforms that do float are either powered by crystals and magic (Tu'Lia) or are in an area created by ungodly formless beings (Promivion).
- Final Fantasy XIII-2: in 500 AF, evacuating Academia has somehow turned the city into a series of floating platforms, some of which also rotate.
- Fox n Forests: There are some of these in the game that can be summoned by firing coloured arrows at the appropriately-covered bullseyes.
- Ghoulboy has plenty, at least one of which can be controlled by pulling a lever.
- Ginger: Beyond the Crystal has sections that involve traversing a series of floating platforms.
- Gizmo: There are plenty of little floating platforms throughout the base.
- Glam: There are plenty of floating platforms in this game — a given, due to the level design being made to really push the players' skills.
- Glider PRO: This is mostly a non-issue: tables rest on floors, and cabinets and shelves are presumably attached to the back walls of rooms. (They're also usually more like Deadly Walls than platforms.) However, some user-created houses could have cabinets and shelves floating in the sky or in space: e.g., the notorious "Roofs" series.
- Goblin Sword has these. Though you don't encounter your first one in the first level immediately.
- Golden Sun features floating platforms at the tops of the four Elemental Lighthouses; the Lighthouses are similar to Evil Tower Of Ominousnesses until you beat the Evil Counterpart or the Big Bad). The floating platforms are supposedly held up by Psyenergy (the series' version of magic).
- Half-Life 1 and its expansions are unusual in their use of this trope in their Xen segments (where the platforms aren't supported by any visible force), since the game's popularity is in part grounding the surreality of fighting aliens in a realistic environment.
- Harry Potter games use them, especially the earlier ones. Note Hogwarts has got to be one of the few settings where floating platforms actually make complete sense.
- Haunted Halloween 85: As part of being a Retraux game, it has its share of floating platforms.
- Hytale: Either naturally generated or man-made.
- The towers (race tracks) in Iggy's Reckin' Balls are made up entirely of floating platforms.
- I Wanna Be the Guy: In one particular point, a spiked part of the ground actively floats up to try and kill you. It does have a thruster but it's probably just there to give it a larger hitbox to kill you with.
- Jak and Daxter: Justified Trope for the most part, as all floating platforms are made with Precursor technology. In the first game they are explicitly 'fueled' by blue eco, the eco of motion.
- Jet Force Gemini: Hovering mobile platforms are found in Eternal Engine areas, and have to be used to cross large pits. Examples include the Hold level in S.S. Anubis (where they're used to cross a huge gap with a big electrical generator), the Troop Carrier level in Spawnship (trivial for Lupus since he can cross large pits with the Jet Packs placed in his paws, but essential for Juno and Vela when they visit this level), and the Military Base level in Ichor (in a wide, large area where they move so fast that they're impractical even for Lupus, so it's best to use a nearby pad that empowers the characters' later-granted jet upgrades with fuel so they can fly to the desired spots). The latter level also has a preceding room with several hovering platforms that don't move on their own; instead, Vela has to press color-coded Pressure Plates to move them and position them accordingly for her to reach to the other side.
- Legend of Kalevala has plenty of them, especially in the Eternal Engine stage.
- The Legend of Zelda:
- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: A single floating platform is located in the first dungeon (Inside the Deku Tree), namely in the room where the Slingshot can be found. Also doubles as a Temporary Platform, because stepping on it will make it shake and then fall down (Link can exit the room by shooting at a ladder placed near the ceiling to make it drop). There are also various magical, marble-like platforms floating in selected parts of Spirit Temple and Ganon's Tower; depending on the case, they're either enabled for a limited time (whether by pressing a switch or lighting a torch) or invisible (but viewable with the Lens of Truth).
- The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: There are several hovering platforms (some static, others moving around in a pattern) with Deku Flowers in them, allowing Deku Link to move from one to another by launching himself from those flowers to fly. There's a minigame in North Clock Town where Deku Link has to move through said platforms to gather all Rupees without touching the floor below, and winning in all three days will net him a Heart Piece.
- The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: Some moving floating platforms can be found in Tower of the Gods, and are used to cross large chasms in the second floor (in one of them, due to being more wide-open than others, the platforms can be used in conjunction with the Deku Leaf to make platforming easier).
- The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: Some pieces of Zonai technology located in the sky's islands float in the air, seemingly without anything that is operating in some way to keep them afloat. Link can attach rockets and/or ventilating devices to them so he can travel with them to distant spots.
- Lep's World: The game has various types of floating platforms, from the regular ones, to ones that appear and disappear regularly, to ones that drop slowly when stood on.
- LittleBigPlanet: Dark matter platforms can float with no help. The sequels let you attach an Anti-Gravity Tweaker to an object, making dark matter redundant.
- Magical Whip: Wizards of Phantasmal Forest: Very common, with no explanation. The platforms are just floating in midair in the middle of the forest.
- MapleStory doesn't even bother to explain away why there are floating platforms everywhere, from meadows to volcanoes. Given that it is basically a cutesy MMO Metroid Vania, this is probably excusable.
- Märchen Maze has its levels set entirely on floating platforms.
- Mass Effect 2: Collectors use hexagonal platforms inside their ship and bases. They seem to be built for quick movement around the huge caverns they seem to favour, but have conveniently located blocks for Shepard to take cover behind attacked. During one mission, the Collectors use one of these to spring an ambush by allowing Commander Shepard to pilot one out into open space before locking it down and sending drones after the Commander. Shepard systematically blasts through every one before EDI can hack the platform and Shepard can escape. These platforms probably float around using mass effect fields.
- The Matrix: Path of Neo has giant floating stone platforms, along with smaller ones during a maze level.
- Mega Man X usually justifies floating platforms by having propulsion jets attached. The jets' condition also indicate their status. Platforms with smoking jets are Temporary Platforms.
- Metroid:
- Super Metroid: Taking what Metroid II: Return of Samus started even further, very few platforms are elevated without some form of hand wave or justification.
- Metroid Prime: They're jet-powered here. They simply sit on the ground when the power is off, and one puzzle involves filling a room with water to float such platforms. However, there are also plenty of non-powered floating platforms, including an underwater crash site with perpetually-floating debris that's perfectly spaced out for Samus to hop across. Also, the game never gives any explanation on why some platforms have rockets attached to them.
- Metroid Prime 2: Echoes: After defeating Chykka, Samus can jump between invisible platforms to reach the core of Dark Torvus' Temple (she can see them by using the Dark Visor, as there's the jusification that they're invisible due to existing in a cross-dimensional phase). There are also some invisible platforms (and also viewable with the Dark Visor) in a dark cave in Dark Agon Wastes, and can be used to reach a small creature guarding one of the Sky Temple Keys (though reaching there with the Screw Attack is another option).
- Metroid Prime 3: Corruption: There are semi-organic hovering platforms in the Leviathan Seeds. What keeps them floating are the waving Phazon tentacles beneath them.
- Minecraft, as a Wide-Open Sandbox, allows players to build up structures, but the physics engine only allows for some blocks to be affected by gravity. Only sand, gravel, uncured concrete powder, and liquids (oh, and dragon eggs and anvils) will fall if the space directly beneath it is unoccupied. All other blocks are not affected by gravity and can be used to create floating platforms.
- Moon Raider: The ones in this game seem to be powered by rocket thrusters located on their undersides.
- Mountain Troll: These are in abundance in the game, as brown blocks that just float in the air.
- Myst IV: Hovering rocks are an important feature of Spire, one of the Ages. Adjusting the electrical currents to raise, lower, or propel them is required to complete that Age's puzzles.
- Freeware Ninja Senki features plenty of these starting from the very first level. Sometimes they're attached to walls, but usually they are allowed to defy gravity.
- Ninja: Shadow of Darkness, befitting it's platformer inspiration, had tons of these in various levels, usually over Bottomless Pits. There's also "teleporting floating platforms" in the mansion level.
- Ninjish Guy In Low Res World: These are in the game. They can either be stationary with hazards on/orbiting (between) them, or small and moving fast.
- Nomolos: Storming the Catsle: Like the NES games that inspired it, this game has floating platforms.
- Pizza Vs. Skeletons: The floating platforms are present in the skiing levels, the balancing levels, and the bouncing levels.
- Pokémon Platinum has the area known as the Distortion World, and it's filled with only floating platforms.
- Portal: The Unstationary Scaffold fits, requiring a button or trigger to activate, but otherwise not unlike those in Half-Life.
- The Powder Toy: All solids behave like this.
- Red Goddess: Inner World: The game has its share of platforms. They come in various forms depending on where you are in the game.
- Revolution (1986) has them pop up in the levels here and there.
- Rise of the Triad makes ingenious use of these to get around engine limitations, creating bridges, elevators, stairs, corkscrews, and so on. The 2013 remake goes nuts with them.
- Ring Fit Adventure has giant floating rocks and islands peppered around the Dragaux levels.
- Rogue Galaxy: You get a gun which can create floating platforms.
- Samurai Revenge has its fair share of floating platforms that can either transport you across the level, or protect you from overhead hazards.
- Satisfactory:
- The game, for the most part, has a lack of floating platforms, but the player can build structures and then remove the surrounding supporting structures, invoking this trope.
- Played straight when the Alien Power Augmenters are fed Alien Power Matrixes, as the upper structure will then be suspended in the air. Possibly justified because of the alien technology being utilized.
- Secret Agent has a lot of Floating Platforms, though it always takes care to make them at least a little realistic; even in outdoor settings, all platforms are visibly attached to something solid, like a pole. Though, curiously, the clouds sometimes serve as Floating Platforms.
- Serious Sam: The Second Encounter has these in the forms of giant hovering caged fans. A variation is the ones that will sink while you are standing on them, but are not temporary platforms as they will stop sinking at a certain level, but still may sink enough to prevent you from making your next jump or you are required to stay on it long enough to jump to a lower area that would have been impossible to reach from a higher point due to an overhang. Also some of them move sideways while floating.
- Shantae: Risky's Revenge: Looking like a golden disk ontop of a smaller green disk and a purple light or something underneath, they first appear in Squid Baron's Labyrinth.
- Sonic Adventure:
- The game and its sequel often have entire floating freaking roadways which no car would ever drive on, for reasons including, well, the loops, and, of course, the fact that there's no access point unless you can jump or fly. Also, as in the 2D games, there are numerous small platforms attached to nothing.
- The best example in the series would be Sky Sanctuary in Sonic & Knuckles, which is the ruin of an entire floating city, traversed mostly vertically instead of horizontally as with most levels. Appropriately, the place collapses at the end of both Sonic and Knuckles's respective versions of the level.
- Parodied in Songs for a Hero, in which the Hero questions to himself in song form the logistics of this trope:
"Could I be losing my sanity?
Or does this truly defy
The laws of gravity?" - The Octarians from Splatoon are known for using mysterious, unexplained technology. As such, they love to use these, from their trademark hovering UFO platforms to entire structures levitating high above the ground. When Pearl makes note of floating platforms during the Octo Expansion, Cap'n Cuttlefish Hand Waves them as "octo tech". These floating platforms are so heavily associated with the Octarians that when Marina uses them in her Shifty Station stages, it serves as the first hint towards her past as an Octarian combat engineer.
- Stratosphere: Conquest of the Skies invents Phlebotinum called floatstone, a mineral that allows the floating fortresses of the game to—float. In practice, this is an virtually inconsequential feature of the game as the only combat that occurs from the ground involve artillery units that can missile you down, and you need to be use a special aerial view to target them. Otherwise, all fighting occurs at a single altitude.
- Super Mario Bros.:
- The series is fond of this. However, in Super Mario 64, the very first level has but a single floating piece of land called the floating island that looks ridiculously out of place.
- Ironically, this is a Pet-Peeve Trope for Shigeru Miyamoto, who once stated in an interview that he still has some issues with floating platforms, due to the lack of any real logic behind them. He then said that he pretends that they are attached to the background in the 2D games.
- Super Smash Bros. has some of these in almost every level of every game; heck, the entire level is often a wad of inert terrain floating inexplicably in the air.
- Thief: The Dark Project: In The Mage Towers, specifically the Earth and Air towers. Earth has a simple showcase above the foyer, while Air has most of them as elevators going up and down.
- Tomb Raider II included some of these in the penultimate level, appropriately titled "Floating Islands", in the form of "jade islands"—which were outside the confines of Lara's otherwise relatively mundane reality.
- Vagrant Story: Floating platforms, or "cloudstones," are considered proof of very powerful (and dark) magick, and they only exist within Lèa Monde. Later on, Ashley acquires a Grimoire that allows him to raise cloudstones himself. At the end of the game, when all the magic ceased to exist in Lèa Monde, the cloudstones are seen tumbling onto the ground.
- A Valley Without Wind features player-placed wooden platforms that are critical for navigating dungeons, but must have a backdrop to adhere to - trying to place them on empty air results in them dropping to the ground. Chunks of land can also naturally occur suspended in mid-air, but are always held up by the background.
- A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky: In Logos-3, to travel between the different teleporter rooms, and in other Lydian facilities. They need power to operate.
- Viewtiful Joe: Floating platforms are lifted by propellers on the bottom. Speeding up or slowing down time will also speed up or slow down the propellers, causing the platforms to rise or fall respectively.
- Worms:
- Many of the maps have inexplicably floating platforms. And that's just to start out with; as in so many other artillery games, you can blast away everything around a single pixel, and it will remain gravity-proof.
- Scorch aka "Scorched Earth", self-proclaimed "the mother of all games", averts it - by default, the ground particles fall. XScorch and Atomic Tanks follow the suite.
- Xain'd Sleena features floating platforms in several stages. Most notable of them are those of the easiest planet ("Cleemalt Soa"), being a mix of asteroids and artificial... things.
