Unity Playmaker 2D Platformer - Horizontal Movement X Axis

In this Unity Playmaker 2D Platformer - Horizontal Movement X Axis tutorial, I'll show how you can set up a moving your character left and right as well as flipping your character based on the input. This is the beginning of a series of 2D Platformer mechanics using Unity and Playmaker. (to Join m

This tutorial opens the 2D platformer series with the fundamentals: moving the character left and right from keyboard input, and flipping the sprite to face the direction of travel. Two FSMs handle it — one for movement, one for facing — connected by a single global variable.

Step 1 — Use Unity's built-in Horizontal axis

Open Project Settings and look at the Input Manager: Unity ships with predefined axes, including Horizontal, which already maps the A and D keys plus the left and right arrows. Copy that name exactly — the axis is referenced by string, so a typo means silent failure. On the player, add a new FSM named X Move.

Step 2 — Read the axis into a global variable

Add a Get Axis action and paste in Horizontal. Bump the multiplier up so the character moves at a decent clip — tune it to taste. Store the result in a new global variable named x move. Making it global rather than local is deliberate: a second FSM is going to read this same value for the character flip, and globals are how FSMs share data.

Step 3 — Apply it: translate or velocity

There are two ways to use the axis value, and both work. Option one is Translate Position 2D driven by the global x move on the X axis. Option two is Set Velocity 2D — uncheck the vector option and feed x move into X. Either way, place the action below Get Axis (read first, then apply) and check Every Frame on both actions. Test: the character slides left and right on keys or arrows.

Step 4 — Flip the character with scale

The flip trick is scale, not rotation: an X scale of -1 mirrors the sprite to face left, and +1 faces it right again. Add a second FSM on the player named Flip Character with two states, Right and Left. In Right, add a Float Compare on the global x move, every frame: if the value is less than 0 the player is heading left, so fire a new flip left event and transition to the Left state; if it's equal to 0 or greater, fire flip right and stay facing right.

Step 5 — Set the scale in each state

In the Right state, add a Set Scale on the owner with X at positive 1 — no every-frame needed, since the flip happens once on entry and it's done. Copy that action into the Left state and change X to -1. Mirror the Float Compare logic in Left so it fires flip right when x move goes positive again, giving you a clean two-state loop that tracks the movement direction.

Test it

Run right and the character faces right; turn around and the sprite mirrors instantly to face left. That's horizontal movement plus facing in two small FSMs — and the global x move variable is now available for anything else the series builds on top, starting with the jump in the next episode.