In some games you can climb on top of other characters, the most common cause is puzzle solving currently, but there are few games where you can do so on enemies to attack their weak spots.
Examples:
* Lost Vikings - think this was specifically a mechanic involving the shield guy and not otherwise present, so this is poor example
* Thomas Was Alone - generally usable
* Natural Selection 2 - has no Real use, but is possible
No examples of the enemy variants, since I personally know only the kind where the climbing is part of QTE rather than something the player does themselves or not limited to some boss fights. Vehicles should not be included I guess, since for them it's usually assumed to be possible (not in older/retro games tho).
I don't think actual climbing is involved in any game so far for this, but you can jump on top of the other characters and stay there (and not kill them, kill them & bounce off, slip off, or inexplicably hurt yourself).
There's also characters in some games that are specifically made to be "rideable", but I think those are a bit different kind. Like a sea turtle that carries the player across a body of water, but otherwise jumping on characters hurts the player character.
Anyway: standing on characters, solid characters, something something... I've been unable to think what to call this concept (or the "riding" variant).
Climbing on top of others
This mechanic can be inverted, as it is in Thomas Was Alone, where a character jumps on the player character (actually other of the controllable ones) and player controls the lower ones, carrying them around. But I feel that is its own thing again.
Climbing on people and character carrying have been added since the thread was started.
Those don't really fit all instances and I'm thinking something along the line of `people/character platforms´ would be useful to cover the rest. I think some really old platformers had some enemies or enemy-like entities that were also platforms you used like regular moving platforms, and these exist in more recent titles as well.
Those don't really fit all instances and I'm thinking something along the line of `people/character platforms´ would be useful to cover the rest. I think some really old platformers had some enemies or enemy-like entities that were also platforms you used like regular moving platforms, and these exist in more recent titles as well.