E for Everyone: Ori and the Blind Forest

"Ori and the Blind Forest" (2015) is designed by Moon Studios, a collection of ex-AAA developers gone indie. The game functions as a “love-letter to 2D” by combining the simple pleasures of an explorative platformer seamlessly with unobtrusive cinematic elements and the most gorgeous and enchanting artwork, sound design and soundtrack.

You are Ori, a protective spirit who has fallen from The Spirit Tree and must bring light and life back to a dying forest. The game falls under Metroidvania, a game genre in which players must navigate a set space to find new powers that will allow them to access new areas. As such, the game is naturally set up for tutorial, teaching the player one new concept at a time and ensuring they will not move on to a new area until they have completed the challenges of their current power. The story -- a simple one of loss, inner-strength, restoration, mercy, altruism and forgiveness -- complements the gameplay perfectly.

I love this game mainly because it’s not trying to be anything more than what it is. It doesn't try to be some revolutionary game with a million new features never seen before. In fact, it’s obvious that most of the gameplay elements in "Ori and the Blind Forest" are standards taken directly from other platformers -- including, but not limited to, "Rayman" (1995), "Metroid" (1986) and even "Portal" (2007). What it tries to be is an atmospheric achievement with really tight, satisfying controls, which takes place in a stunning parallax world with incredible depth and movement, set to one of the most enrapturing soundtracks since "Journey" (2012). The vastness of this world created with the Unity engine is really nothing short of inspired.

If that isn’t compelling enough for you, let’s talk about what makes "Ori and the Blind Forest" special from a gameplay standpoint. When the player dies in one of the many challenges in this rather difficult game, they are instantly revived to the last place they formed a Soul Link, which is basically a checkpoint that players insert manually into the map for some of what is essentially mana currency. Since the player decides the location of the save points, the world is theirs to explore at whatever pace they choose -- as long as they remember to save. The player can easily get caught up in the many flow elements of this movement-oriented platformer, only to die in a new challenge and respawn back to the Soul Link they created 10 or even 20 minutes ago. Besides this position relapse, however, there is no consequence to dying in this world, which is a feature that forces the player to save often and take bold risks if only to keep moving. It is ingenious.

"Ori and the Blind Forest" proves that a bunch of people who worked for companies like Blizzard can come together remotely to create something out of genuine love for a genre. Not all AAA-quality games are created out of sheer want for profit. For once, this is a game made out of love for adventure and pure human kindness.

The game can be purchased for PC, Xbox 360 and Xbox One for $19.99.