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Essays 05 July 2022, 16:00

author: Marek Jura

Ori and the Blind Forest. 15 best-looking indie games

Table of Contents

  1. Genre: metroidvania
  2. Engine: Unity
  3. Music: Gareth Coker

Ori managed to bring the metroidvania to a new age. The genre associated by some with hated backtracking has gained a new quality. Its symbol is the silhouette of the title white spirit. The creators, with limited resources, built a huge, vibrant world, full of magic and colorful enemies. Some of them were created specifically for this game. The title Blind Forest has its own cosmology, guardian gods and a great legend to tell. In terms of expanding the world, only the Hollow Knight can match Ori.

Gareth Coker composed music that you can listen to for hours after the game is over. He also showed his high musical prowess in the sequel released a few years later. That game, however, was above all more extensive visually – many more people developed Ori and Will of the Wisps and the studio had a larger budget.

Still, the mechanics, for example, though improved in the second part, worked flawlessly already in part one. Playing Ori from start to finish was a real pleasure. There were almost no technical problems, which only goes to show how well the developers prepared for the game's premiere despite small numbers and limited resources.

LITTLE NIGHTMARES

One of the inspirations for the creators of Ori were the animations of the Ghibli studio, authors of such hits as Princess Mononoke, Howl's Moving Castle or Spirited Away: In the Land of Gods. The link with the productions of Hayao Miyazaki and his team is also perfectly visible in another independent game – Little Nightmares. The "little" horror frightened the player with a completely new approach to the design of enemies – a short-legged and long-armed blind janitor is a real graphical masterpiece (and a really scary one)!

  1. Ori and the Blind Forest in our encyclopedia

Marek Jura

Marek Jura

In 2016, he graduated in philology at UAM. Since then, he has been reviewing prose, poetry, movies, series, and video games for GRYOnline.pl. He took his first steps in the journalism industry as a newsman in a local tabloid. He ran his own company - he designed, created, tested, and sold board games. He published several short stories and is also preparing his debut volume of poetry. Trains martial arts. A feminist, vegan, fan of pineapple on pizza, cat lover, dislikes Bethesda and Amazon, likes Lovecraft, Agents of SHIELD, P:T, Beksiński, Hollow Knight, performance, abstract art, game mods and dumplings.

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