Some games feel like a wonderful surprise. They give you nice feelings and ideas without using many words. This is what Mio: Memories in Orbit is like. The game shows hair moving in zero gravity, like in space. It has pearls and brass pieces floating around in the cold darkness of space. It looks like the future, or maybe a strange robot world from the past. The art style is inspired by old beautiful designs called Art Nouveau. Warm metal turns into flowers and whole gardens. The whole game looks amazing but also a little sad, and it’s very clever in how it looks.
This game is also a type called a Metroidvania. These games are very smart. They have maps that show themselves as you run around quickly, while the bigger world slowly opens up more. Metroidvanias are about looking at a world you thought you knew, and finding new places you can go that were always there.
Mio does all this very well. I’m still in the beginning of the game, but it’s already a beautiful adventure. You play as a tiny robot left to explore a huge, sleeping spaceship. The game starts with simple jumping challenges drawn in bright gold lines. You learn to jump and jump again. Only after you master this does the bigger world appear with all its complex, broken parts. Even now, shadows come as delicate patterns. The idea is that you’re exploring a world that’s being created as you play.
And what a world it is. At first, you crawl through rooms filled with wires. Then suddenly, you’re out on big bridges where huge machines sleep far away. There’s an icy area, but instead of just being cold and dangerous, you need to control your speed and how you move. The ground itself becomes a bumpy ramp that lets you jump across big gaps and avoid dangerous spike pits.
Enemies are made of brass and lightbulbs. They dash, roll, and jump around. An early power-up lets you see their health bars, but even the simplest enemies can end your exploration with one good hit. I just met a robot hummingbird, and I was so busy watching it that it had plenty of time to peck me to pieces.
After playing Silksong, Mio feels like a nice break and something new. Silksong is wonderful, but it’s nice to explore a place that doesn’t want to hurt you all the time. If anything, Mio replaces the scary feeling of constant danger with a different kind of worry. I travel so far on one life and explore so many paths – leaving so many others for later – that I get anxious about how I’ll find my way back or remember everything I’m skipping for now.
These are good problems to have when a game gives you such interesting places to explore and makes moving through them feel so good. I loved Silksong very much, but after it, I thought I needed a break from these types of games for a while. Mio makes me realize I was wrong.
