At a first glance one would be safe to assume Ori and the Blind Forest is nothing more than a short, simple art-house platformer. Where gameplay only exists to bolster it's lavish graphics and to aid in the direction of the story however, that assumtion is wrong.

Instead, Ori is a cleaverly intricate adventure demanding a lot from the player, where quick reactions and spot-on timing matter just as much as exploring it's secret maze like enviroments.

The game is stunningly protrayed through gorgeous visuals which are only amplified further by the sweeping orchestral soundtrack that holds no shame in tugging at your heartstrings.

With all that being said.

Ori and the Blind forest is a beautifully designed and at times, excrucatingly difficult Metroidvania-style platformer with more than enough charisma to leave a long lasting impression. It's often confusing and sometimes frustrating gameplay leads to a spectacular platforming world with an engaging story.

I'm not really sure how to go about writing a review for this game. I tend to shy away from recommending early access games due to the risk of abandonment but I've been playing it for a very long time and I love it a lot. It started out as an idea, which developed into a private server on garry's mod, and since then has only continued to grow and evolve before becoming its own IP.

The game, at its heart, is a social-hangout game almost in the same vien as second life or vr-chat but it's also so much more than that. It's packed full to the brim of cool feature rich hang-out spots like a fully functioning arcade, casino and movie theater, as well as several minigames that in many respects could be releases of their own given a little more love. Mini-Games like accelerate (a wacky and halarious arcade racer), mini-golf (a golf game similar to golf with your friends), ball-race (a unique spin on super monkey ball) and so, so many more.

The game practially oozes fun and feelings of nostaliga at every turn and I love introducing friends to what it has to offer as well as show them my condo, which can be customised endlessly to my liking using workshop intergration and in-game coins that can be earned through regular play.

My only complaint would be that development sometimes feels very, very slow and haphazard. You can follow the games development process on the developers public trello (and I love the transparency) however often times it seems they jump from one thing to another before it's fully finished and it leads to slow updates and half baked features as things come in phases and don't see additional love for some time. It definitely has a bit of a work in progress feel to it and at times a quantity over quality to feel but if you can overlook that I cannot recommend it enough. I have no intentions to stop playing it and can't wait to see what else is available in a years time.