I recently hacked together a simple implementation of mantling, which allows the player to grip onto ledges while falling, and climb up onto ledges while standing below them or hanging off of them. It’s simple, but it does add a nice extra bit of mobility. It definitely helps in cases where you just barely miss a jump, because now you can grip onto the ledge and climb up instead of falling and having to try the jump again.

The implementation is pretty simple, so I’ll just summarize it here: While falling, if the player is pushing the dpad towards a nearby wall, I do some simple intersection tests to see if his feet are making contact with the wall, and if there’s room above him for him to climb up onto the surface. If both of these conditions are met, I ‘grip’ him to the wall until the dpad is released. At this point, you can press up to climb up onto the ledge automatically. Climbing up is a simple animation where I lock the player’s input temporarily and interpolate his position along a curve to bring him up onto the ledge, and restore input and normal motion/collision detection.