Ori and the Blind Forest

[toblix]

This game is out, and it's been really great so far (2 hours). It's an exploration platformer (metroidvania, I guess?) from Moon Studios, the studio without a Wikipedia page. It's really beautiful, sounds great and controls really well. You run and jump around in this wonderful, mysterious forest, firing glowing bolts at spiders and spiky blobs, and there's wall climbing and you unlock powers as you go, and you collect various kinds of items that gives you more health or energy or lets you unlock new stuff in a little three-pronged tree, and you jump on plants and there are secrets if you look closely! I guess if you like games like that and you also appreciate them looking beautiful as fuck, you should get this. It's out for XBONE™ and WINDOWS™ (on STEAM™ and probably on MICROSOFT™'s own store; they have one, right?) and will be out for XBOX 360™ later, so anything non-Microsoft is probably not coming ever or anytime soon.

 

edit: Oh, I just remember the reason I was looking to post about this game in the first place: The game has this weird and quirky retro game mechanic in that it does not auto-save, so:

 

• REMEMBER TO SAVE REGULARLY.

[Joewintergreen]

The save mechanic is actually rad once you get used to it. You can save pretty much anywhere as long as you have enough energy to make a save point, and then you can go back to the save point and save there until you make a new one.

 

Also, all the animations in this game and a lot of the design are by James Benson, the guy doing most or all of the animation on Firewatch, also who animated the whale in my game Influx

[toblix]

Yeah, everything is moving in this game, and there are tons of great animation everywhere. Also:

 

• THIS GAME IS HARD. You'll be saving a lot for some of the areas, which can be pretty full of traps and enemies. It's pretty unforgiving too, at least early on. There are thorns and bad guys everywhere, and you can only take only a couple of hits before you die. Luckily you pop back to the save point really quickly, so there's something almost Meatboyesque to a lot of the more trap-filled areas.

[toblix]

Also this game has a cool feature that awards you random achievements when you start it?

[toblix]

Wow, holy shit. Even though this looks like a baby game (animation = made for children IMHO) it's more like the Dark Souls of video games. I'm still not halfway through and it's already consistently difficult, though the save system does keep the frustration at bay. Don't play this game if you're not into some half-way difficult platforming combo stuff.

[thefncrow]

Yeah, the difficulty level on this game is no joke.  I just got the dash move and finished the first big objective, and holy shit this game isn't playing around.

 

There's also some things about the mechanics of that dash move that feel kinda counterintuitive, and so I'm having to teach myself how to use it appropriately.

[kickinthehead]

I just beat this after playing it all weekend and man I LOVED IT. It's been a long time since I played a game that felt like every single part of it was so tremendously amazing. The art, animation, music, story and gameplay are nothing short of phenomenal. Only sort of thing I was thinking about during the game is that I think the story could work without the text and "voiceover" because it does a great job of telling it visually.

 

It's not often I play a 2D game where afterwards I feel like going back in just to look at the art, but I definitely have that feeling with this. Sort of like how I'll replay Naughty Dog games and just admire the environments. I can't wait to see some speed runs of this because there are a lot of secrets and hidden passages.

 

There are only a handful of moments when I got truly frustrated with the gameplay, but often it was because I didn't quite figure out how I was supposed to solve an obstacle.

 

Just one warning, when the game is telling you you're at a point of no return be sure to COPY YOUR SAVE. Once the game is completed you can't load your save to go back and get stuff you missed. I would've been super bummed had I not copied my save (though not SO bummed, because that would mean I'd just have to play it all over again )

[BadHat]

This game came out of nowhere and now I really want it. Too bad my wallet is being uncooperative lately.

the Dark Souls of video games

I'm sorry what

[BigJKO]

 (animation = made for children IMHO)

 

(Imagine the middle finger is extended as well)

[toblix]

Oh yeah, for some reason the choice of font is super weird. Everything in the game is super polished in this one style, and then the text is like out of Microsoft Word or something.

 

 

lso I was looking in the game directory and holy motherfucking shit; this game is made in Unity! I know I should at some point stop being amazed and blown the hell away by discovering all sorts of different great games being made in Unity but holy crap.

[James]

Just one warning, when the game is telling you you're at a point of no return be sure to COPY YOUR SAVE. Once the game is completed you can't load your save to go back and get stuff you missed. I would've been super bummed had I not copied my save (though not SO bummed, because that would mean I'd just have to play it all over again )

You also can't return to any of the previous "dungeon" sections. I suppose you could make a point of checking the map to ensure you don't miss anything in them (I believe the completion percentage should show at the top), but I never thought to do that. I missed a few things, but for me this game was far too beautiful to get hung up on dumb achievement or 100% completion nonsense. But it is nice to have a save with all the unlocks, if only so I can go and enjoy the nice green area with the peaceful music to the east of the map. I really liked that bit.

This game really does look spectacular. The animation is top notch, so kudos to James Benson I guess.

Regarding the difficulty, while it is certainly more challenging than you might infer from the aesthetic, I found it was mainly a few sequences that gave me real trouble, and that in probably half of those cases I'd either forgotten about one of my abilities or I'd been approaching the problem the wrong way. That's not to say that it wasn't tricky, but generally when it seemed like they were asking me to do something absurdly fiddly, they generally actually weren't. For example, I went through a whole big section of bashing off enemy projectiles and bouncing off a whole load of thorns, only to remember after I reached the bottom that I had recently unlocked the leaf, and that that was clearly the intended solution.

Anyway, I just finished it. What a great game.

The ending made me sad.

[Merus]

Yeah, the use of Verdana for the Tree's dialogue jumped out at me, it's bizarre.

 

I'm not loving that the game has an XP system; I think one of the advantages of these kind of games is that items are discrete, so if you find an item, you always get a reward, and the only source of rewards is finding items. Having XP drop from enemies emphasises combat to an uncomfortable degree.

 

It's disappointing because the game design is on point in so many other ways, including a lot of ways that other games in this genre mess up. The maps feel deliciously sprawling, with lots of one-way passages and shortcuts, and I'm not feeling that memory stress that many of these games induce where I know I'll have to come back here and here and here and here later and I'm trying to remember all that so I don't waste time poking about aimlessly later.

[Joewintergreen]

I think it's actually Segoe UI. But yeah, I reaaaaaaaaaally reckon there should be no text in this game. I think it would be disproportionately stronger that way

[Jake]

The font choice makes it feel like the game was localized from another language with a different character set. Like it was a Nintendo release in Japan first or something. Not a positive. Fortunately the game is really really pretty otherwise.

[Merus]

The worst thing? There's three fonts in the game and the other two are fine. It's not even 'their fonts are all over the place' (it's fun going back to Devil May Cry with an eye for fonts) but that someone who made really good choices in the UI department then made a really bad one.

[sclpls]

Yeah, the difficulty level on this game is no joke.  I just got the dash move and finished the first big objective, and holy shit this game isn't playing around.

 

There's also some things about the mechanics of that dash move that feel kinda counterintuitive, and so I'm having to teach myself how to use it appropriately.

 

I'm currently stuck at the point I believe you're referring to. I had to stop playing for a bit because I could feel myself getting more annoyed hahaha. It is pretty great overall though.

[Merus]

Having played a little more, I think this game has one of the best Metroidvania maps since Super Metroid. It's really solid: shortcuts, lots of connections between areas, one way passages, obstacles that seem impassable but it's not clear how you're supposed to overcome them (or even if that's something that can be overcome). The game doesn't have boss fights either, and their alternative seems obvious in hindsight.

 

Of course, then I discover that several regions do not allows players to return to them, so anything in them is permanently missable. This includes major upgrades, of course. Why would you do this game. Also why are you allowing me to put the locations of collectibles on the map so early, I'm only halfway through.

 

Also I'm not thrilled about the design of the escape sequences: they're built so the thing you're escaping from is always just behind you, which means that if you take just a little more time than they thought you might, you die. Getting all the collectibles during the flood escape sequence was mostly trial and error, and that feels wrong.

 

It's bothersome: there's so many difficult things this game does amazingly, but there's this tension at the heart of it where they didn't seem sure whether they were building a combat or acrobatic focused game. Exploration is rewarded, except where it's punished. Combat is de-emphasised, except where it's rewarded. Acrobatics are the main mechanic, but there are points where it becomes trial and error rather than execution.

[toblix]

I just finished the second fleeing sequence, and

I found it a bit annoying; a lot of the stuff was badly signaled, and every time I got past a new obstacle I knew I'd die again right after, hoping to decode what the hell they wanted me to do next.

After finishing it, I was mentally exhausted.

[thefncrow]

Yeah, the second escape was a little less than intuitive. It was mostly fine, except for

the bits where you have to hug the wall to avoid the big falling pieces. Nothing about that move felt very intuitive, and felt like you had to figure that out by dying.

Even considering that, it's still a magnificent game.

[gavku]

An art dump from over at pc http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?p=2267202

[Joewintergreen]

I just finished the second fleeing sequence, and

I found it a bit annoying; a lot of the stuff was badly signaled, and every time I got past a new obstacle I knew I'd die again right after, hoping to decode what the hell they wanted me to do next.

After finishing it, I was mentally exhausted.

yeah exactly this. most frustrating part of the game for me. 

[BigJKO]

An art dump from over at pc http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?p=2267202

 

I just died.

 

This is so good..

[Gwardinen]

Preposterously beautiful.

[Badfinger]

This is a good, hard game. Has anyone finished it? I feel like I'm awfully close.

[sclpls]

I just finished the second fleeing sequence, and

I found it a bit annoying; a lot of the stuff was badly signaled, and every time I got past a new obstacle I knew I'd die again right after, hoping to decode what the hell they wanted me to do next.

After finishing it, I was mentally exhausted.

 

Argh... I got to this section last night, and I stopped the game after like two tries because I knew it was going to be too exhausting and frustrating for me to deal with at the time, and I'm not looking forward to it. I really feel like these sequences are a serious misstep for a game that I find mostly challenging in a satisfying way, whereas these parts are just feel like a real nuisance and "fuck you" to the player.