Ori and the Blind Forest

Ori and the Blind Forest is a fairy-tale-beautiful platformer from Austrian studio Moon Studios, combining hand-painted backgrounds inspired by Studio Ghibli's animated films with precise metroidvania design. The story follows an orphaned forest spirit named Ori and his light companion Sein, who set out to save the dying forest of Nibel after a devastating storm robbed it of life. The emotionally powerful opening, without a single line of dialogue, in which Ori loses his guardian Naru, ranks among the most cited moments of the whole generation and sets the tone for a game that tells its story purely through image, movement, and music.

Gameplay gradually unlocks new abilities such as a double jump, a gliding dash, or Bash, which lets the player bounce off an enemy projectile and launch themselves in the opposite direction; it is this ability that turns movement into true acrobatics and opens up returns to previously inaccessible parts of the interconnected world, as is typical for the metroidvania genre. A key element of the difficulty is the save system built around the Soul Link ability, which the player activates at will at the cost of an in-game resource, forcing tactical decisions in the middle of dangerous passages. Escape sequences, such as the flooding Ginso Tree, rank among the genre's most demanding and, at the same time, most memorable scenes.

The music was composed by Gareth Coker, and the orchestral pieces accompanying key scenes rank among the decade's most acclaimed game soundtracks, since they weave dynamically together with what's happening on screen. A year later, an expanded Definitive Edition was released with new areas, abilities, a faster travel option, and better-balanced difficulty. Ori and the Blind Forest proved that Microsoft could also support smaller artistic projects alongside its big action exclusives, and it became one of the most beloved titles on the whole platform, as well as a gateway into the genre for a great many players.