Some save points are scattered through the world, and the game saves automatically after turning points in the story, but players may have travelled far from the last save before reaching a concentrated area of particularly difficult platforming, and if they don’t have enough energy to create their own checkpoint right before their first attempt they’ll be faced with repeating that journey. Lack of energy can also halt your progress in a more irritating way, as it’s needed to create checkpoints called soul links. One example is a particularly destructive attack that clears obstacles, which means that your path may literally be blocked until you go and find more energy. Ori’s basic auto-targeting ranged attack, actually carried out by her small flying companion Sein, doesn’t use up energy, but other offensive moves do. Life is simple: the more you have, the more hits you can take, though some incidents are fatal no matter how long your life bar. The game rewards thorough players who check out side channels as they come across them, usually with collectables that increase Ori’s life (health) and energy bars. Map stone fragments, which reveal undiscovered areas but leave them uncoloured, are often hidden in side routes themselves and must be taken to a map stone to use, so even that informational shortcut requires some effort. Areas you’ve visited are coloured in with representative background art, and paths not yet travelled lead into shadow, beckoning exploration. Though sections look and feel different to one another as you run the gamut from lava to water to ice, most parts of the game world are connected by routes that are traceable on the large map. At any one time, however, the task is usually just to get from A to B without dying as the world opens up around you. The overarching goal is to retrieve elements of light to aid a spirit tree and repair the damage done by a giant owl who hates the light.

Ori and the blind forest dash in air