Bloody Hell, Mio: Memories in Orbit Just Made Me Fall in Love with Metroidvanias All Over Again (Even After Silksong!)
AI Gaming News Author · Eurogamer ·
After the intense brilliance of *Hollow Knight: Silksong*, *Mio: Memories in Orbit* emerges as a stunning Art Nouveau Metroidvania that revitalizes the genre with its elegant design, unique challenges, and breathtaking visuals, proving that a different kind of 'panic' can be just as compelling.
Right, so you know that feeling, don't you? You've just emerged from a gaming experience so utterly brilliant, so intensely demanding, that you reckon you need a lie-down in a darkened room for a week. Like emerging from a particularly epic spell that went off perfectly, but also nearly took your eyebrows with it. That's kinda where a lot of us were after *Hollow Knight: Silksong* dropped its brutal joys on us. Deeply wonderful, absolutely, but intense enough to make you consider a brief hiatus from the whole 'explore a sprawling, interconnected world and die repeatedly' thing.
I mean, who could blame us? After the sheer, unyielding brilliance of Team Cherry's masterpiece, you might think the Metroidvania well had run dry, or at least needed a good long rest. I certainly did. I was ready to declare a temporary moratorium on dashing, double-jumping, and intricately drawn maps for a bit. But then, as if by some digital magic trick, *Mio: Memories in Orbit* floats in, offering a completely different kind of enchantment, a gentle but profound revelation that’s got me tinkering with my opinions all morning.
This game, mates, is something special. It arrives not with a bang, but with a whisper – a burst of sensation and pure delight that wordlessly conjures a mood. Imagine Mucha-like hair billowing gracefully in zero G, or delicate clusters of pearls and twills of off-cut brass twisting through the chill, silent reaches of outer space. It's a gorgeous, melancholic ballet of future tech and an almost cybernetic past, all wrapped up in an Art Nouveau aesthetic that's just *chefs kiss*. Warm metal forms stamens and petals, creating entire gardens of forgotten machinery. Every frame is filled with visual cleverness, a world that feels like it’s being drawn into existence right before your eyes, with shadows arriving as delicate cross-hatching. It's stunning, genuinely sad, and utterly captivating.
And yeah, it's a Metroidvania. But not *just* a Metroidvania. It's a reminder of why this genre is, dare I say, the most elegant of games. They're about maps that reveal themselves in darting, headlong stretches, their greater structures slowly curling outwards like a cosmic mandala. Metroidvanias aren't just about traversing a world; they're about looking at a place you thought you already knew and suddenly learning to see the fresh potential threaded through every forgotten corner. Mio absolutely nails this, turning what could be rote exploration into a beautiful adventure.
You start as a tiny robot, a wonderfully expressive little protagonist, left to explore a massive, dormant spaceship. The early game kicks off with platform gauntlets, drawn in sharp lines of gold pen – a deliberate, clean aesthetic that helps you master the basics of jumping and double-jumping. Only once you’ve got that down, only then does the wider world truly fade in, revealing its complex organic dereliction. It’s a masterclass in pacing, easing you into a world that slowly blossoms into intricate beauty.
The landscape itself is a character. One minute you're scrabbling through passages choked with cables, the next you're suddenly soaring across gaping bridges where colossal, ancient machines sleep in the distance. And just when you think you've got the lay of the land, an ice biome arrives. But forget your usual 'touch ice, take damage' shenanigans. Here, it's about managing speed and inertia, turning the ground itself into a rippling ramp that lets you launch yourself across truly vast distances, deftly avoiding toxic pits of spikes. It’s less about brute force, more about graceful navigation, a genuine revelation in level design.
Even the enemies are infused with this distinctive style – brass and lightbulbs given life, dashing, rolling, scuttling, and lunging with a peculiar charm. An early power-up lets you peek at their health bars, but don't let that lull you into a false sense of security; even the simplest, most ridiculous of these foes can still clobber a promising exploration run with a well-swung hammer. I actually just had a run-in with a sort of animatronic hummingbird, and I swear, I was so mesmerized watching its delicate movements, I gave it ample time to peck me to pieces. My bad, mate, totally worth it for the aesthetic.
Coming hot on the heels of *Silksong*, Mio genuinely feels like both a reprieve *and* a revelation. *Silksong* is a masterpiece, no doubt, but there's a certain pleasure in exploring a place that isn't quite so relentlessly devoted to causing you harm. If anything, Mio replaces the thrilling pressure of constant, game-ending threats with a different kind of panic altogether. You move so far on a single life, explore so many branching paths – and crucially, leave so many other paths unvisited – that you end up with that unique spatial and memory-based anxiety that only the most wide-reaching and intricately designed games can truly deliver.
"How will I ever find my way back here?" you'll wonder, staring at your map, a digital wizard lost in a beautifully rendered maze. "How will I remember to follow up on everything I’m ignoring for the time being?" These are the *good* problems, though. The problems you welcome when a game provides such an interesting set of spaces to explore, and when it gives you such immense pleasure in the light-footed, elegant way you move through them. I loved *Silksong* very much, don't get me wrong, but afterwards, I honestly felt like I needed a break from Metroidvanias, just for a bit. *Mio: Memories in Orbit* has made me realise I was completely, wonderfully wrong. It's an absolute gem, and I reckon you should go have a gander.
Tags: Metroidvania, Indie Game, Mio Memories in Orbit, Hollow Knight Silksong, Game Pass
Original article: Eurogamer