Build a First-Person Platformer in Unity 6

Create a polished and reusable first-person controller with smooth movement, camera motion and platforming challenges.

Created byZouhair Serrar

Last updated 10/2026

English

What you'll learn

Build a first-person controller with smooth movement and mouse look in Unity 6.
Make platforming more forgiving with coyote time and double jumping.
Recover the player to a safe position when they fall into the water.
Bring movement to life with footsteps, jump sounds, and landing feedback.
Create and combine procedural camera motions like head bobbing and landing.
Create a platforming challenge with jump pads, collectibles, scoring, and a time limit.
Create a menu system with a global event bus for controlled communication between all your components.
Organize gameplay into focused components and prepare a standalone build.

Course content

5 sections • 34 lectures • 6h 40m total length

Introduction3:27
Learn how to get the most from the course as you explore the movement and platforming features you'll build.
How to Take This Course7:39
The mindset to have to get the most value out of this course.
Creating the Unity Project18:34
Learn how to give your project a clean starting point and set the scene for the work ahead.

Creating the Player Object6:43
Learn how to create your player and set up the view that puts you in their shoes.
Handling Input6:34
Learn how to turn keyboard and mouse input into the controls that will drive your player.
Implementing Basic Movement10:43
Learn how to take your first steps through the level, moving in the direction you're facing.
Implementing Mouse Look7:00
Learn how to look freely around the level and adjust the camera's sensitivity to find a comfortable feel.
Smoothing Player Movement8:13
Learn how to soften starts and stops so movement feels smooth while staying responsive.
Managing the Mouse Cursor6:58
Learn how to keep the mouse focused on looking around during play, then free it when it's time to use a menu.
Applying Gravity7:28
Learn how to bring your player back to earth and give falling a feel you can adjust.
Creating the Jumping Script12:15
Learn how to get your player jumping and choose a jump height that suits your platforms.
Adding Input Tolerance With Coyote Time5:22
Learn how to give players a little room for late jumps, making platforming feel fairer at the edges.
Detecting the Landing Event5:50
Learn how to recognize the moment a jump ends, setting the stage for landing sounds, camera motion, and the next leap.
Adding Double Jumping4:31
Learn how to give players a second jump in midair, opening up new routes and a chance to recover from a mistimed leap.

Computing Distance to Ground15:04
Learn how to tell when solid ground is beneath the player, helping jumps and landings behave more consistently.
Resetting the Player Position7:35
Learn how to bring the player back to safety after a fall so they can try the jump again.
Toggling Player Input13:17
Learn how to put player controls on hold when needed, giving menus and recovery moments room to work.
Creating a Smooth Recovery Transition17:31
Learn how to make the return from a fall feel smoother and help the player understand what's happening.
Creating the Pause Menu15:50
Learn how to give players a moment to pause, with a simple menu and buttons that respond to their touch.
Restarting and Exiting2:24
Learn how to make starting over and leaving the game simple, so testing another run is only a click away.
Playing Jumping and Landing Sounds10:33
Learn how to give jumps and landings their own sound and use ambient audio to give the level a sense of place.
Playing Footstep Sounds7:15
Learn how to give movement a rhythm with varied footsteps and make the return from a fall easier to recognize through sound.

Creating Jump Pads14:31
Learn how to send players higher with jump pads and open up fresh possibilities for your platforming route.
Creating a Collectible Item13:03
Learn how to give players something worth reaching for, with collectibles that reward a detour or a well-placed jump.
Creating a Score Manager and Score Display17:24
Learn how to turn collected items into visible progress, letting players watch their score grow as they explore.
Creating the Challenge Manager24:36
Learn how to bring the challenge together, giving each run a clear beginning and end.
Creating the Countdown UI21:32
Learn how to set the pace with a countdown that gives players a moment to get ready before the challenge begins.
From Single Scene to Full Game24:08
Learn how to persist our classes and make sure their state is valid when we switch to another scene.
Displaying the Timer9:09
Learn how display the challenge timer on screen, but only when we're in challenge mode.
Polishing Up The Gameplay12:52
Let's fix various issues in the project, especially features that are going to make a difference from the player's point of view.
Creating the Standalone Build10:36
Learn how to turn your Unity project into a game you can launch on its own and check that the experience holds up outside the editor.

Requirements

Basic knowledge of the Unity editor.
Basic C# programming knowledge.
Unity 6 installed on a computer suitable for development.

Description

This course is a gentle introduction to creating a polished first-person game in Unity.

This is the result of years of trial and error trying to perfect the formula of a modular first-person controller, this is the 4th course that I released or worked on in my instructor career about such a topic, with 3 serious attempts at making a commercial FPS game in Unity that ultimately failed, but I learned a lot of lessons from each of these experiences, and in these lectures I'm giving you the culmination of all that work for you to start on a solid foundation in your own projects.

This course is intended for developers who are past the beginner stage. I need you to be familiar not only with C# and Unity but with some intermediate-level concepts like actions and delegates, scene management, and some common design patterns. I will not spend any time explaining the basics of programming or using Unity, if you still struggle with this, I have a complete beginner course all about the basics, and you're free to take any beginner course you like and come back to this one at a later time.

We'll ask and answer a lot of interesting questions regarding first-person mechanics:

Why does one movement setting feel responsive while another feels awkward?
What makes a jump forgiving without removing the challenge?
How to add headbobbing without inducing motion sickness in the player?
How to recover the player to their last safe position when they fall into a pit instead of forcing them to restart the whole level? (Ok we don't have bottomless pits in the game, it's just water and somehow it can kill you, maybe we're on an alien planet so it's alien water made of silicon, I didn't think this through tbh)

We'll discover how to mix different camera motions and add various kinds of feedback like sound effects and connect them to the player's actions.

We'll bring a lot of systems together to create a nice platforming experience, where the goal is to collect some coins scattered around the level before a timer runs out.

Did I also mention jump pads? Yes we'll make jump pads. Boiinnnnng!

Thank you for checking out the course, I'd love for you to join us.

By the end of the lectures, you'll have a solid and modular first-person controller, you'll have made a few levels with platforming challenges that are connected together, and you'll be in a much better position to take on more advanced game projects that would have been too hard for you as an intermediate-level Unity developer.

I did my best to keep the duration of this course as short as possible, right now it sits just shy of 7 hours, and I designed it to be a quick win for you. If you need any help, I'm always available to answer any question you have in the q&a section, don't hesitate to reach out.

Who this course is for:

You know the basics of Unity and C# and want to build a responsive first-person controller for movement and platforming.
You want to write your own first-person controller and understand how input, movement, mouse look, and jumping work together.
You want to make movement feel more responsive with acceleration, deceleration, coyote time, and double jumping.
You want to bring more life to your game with head bobbing, landing camera motion, and sound effects that respond to the player's actions.
You learn best by building and testing a practical project, with a foundation you can adapt to your own gameplay ideas.

Build a First-Person Platformer in Unity 6

What you'll learn

Explore related topics

Course content

Introduction and Project Setup3 lectures • 30min

First-Person Movement and Mouse Look11 lectures • 1hr 22min

Level Design Tools and Feedbacks8 lectures • 1hr 29min

Procedural Camera Motion3 lectures • 52min

Creating the Challenge System9 lectures • 2hr 28min

Requirements

Description

Who this course is for: