Your Next Must-Play Metroidvania
Two things can be true at once, even if they seem contradictory. It’s something I’ve been thinking about as I play MIO: Memories in Orbit.
I find its world cold and sterile. It’s a futuristic world of robots, so that statement makes sense, but it’s still starved of relationships and connections. Halo-like naming conventions make the world mythical and clinical: Nexus, Pearl, Cores. And the levels are vast, decrepit palaces rather than anything homely or warm.
But I also find the world incredibly inviting. Those palaces are awesome in the true sense. Its art is pencil layered on watercolour, making new areas like Haven immediately distracting as you soak it up while getting battering-rammed by an enemy.
The world pulls me into its nooks to find more mysteries. At any given time, I can be contemplating what to do next, and have a couple of bosses that need clearing, a secret that I had to leave behind, a challenge room that I’ve died in a few times, and a clue to a potential secret area. They pulse at the edges of my game map, making each session a choice.
A Game Of Hard Edges
I struggle to build up enthusiasm to play MIO sometimes. Its difficulty swells and sinks, spiking most often at the guardian bosses. They flash their visual cues at me, but the window for reflex is so small, and the cues are so similar to each other that I can often curse being hit. It’s not a game that has much patience or forgiveness: it has no interest in letting you blunder through a situation. You have to learn it, master it, and then come back over and over before you can claim its treasure.
But I also think about these roadbumps all the time. I know full well that I am the obstacle in most situations; if I could just clear the boss’s first two phases with minimal damage, perhaps I would have more of a chance. I could investigate that nook I forgot about, get the last protective coating I need to unlock a new health pip. It might even lead to new directions, a new elevator or modifier extension, perhaps.
And I wince at the insistence that I have to walk back to where I last died. Every failure leads me back to the Nexus, which may be central to the game map, but is still several screens – several minutes, often – from the boss, challenge room or new enemy that impaled me. The nacre, the game’s currency, that I gathered was stolen from me. I felt like I was being scolded.
But progress in MIO: Memories in Orbit comes in steps, not in a constant gradient. If I finally vault over the carcass of a boss then a new core module, new ability – a glide, a wall-climb! – is mine. And I’m leaping up to a new tier of the game’s world, vast as it is. New possibilities sprawl out in every direction.
And while combat is fluid, allowing pivots from one animation to another without blinking, some of the gained abilities are limited and awkward. The tether, used to grapple to new platforms, has a length and position that is hard to anticipate, and is fuelled by a stamina-like system that is too slow at the start.
The Good Kind Of Conflicts
These are the conflicts that play out throughout MIO: Memories in Orbit. While it is challenging, it’s rewarding. While it’s huge, it returns to itself recursively, building loops so that traversal is never too onerous. While it’s lonely, it’s also awe-inspiring, like night-walks through a cathedral.
These characteristics may even seem familiar, if you’ve got a favoured Soulslike or Metroidvania. MIO: Memories in Orbit is more of the latter than the former, but there are strains of each. If you’ve chopped through swathes of Hollow Knight or Ori then you will be familiar with MIO: Memories in Orbit’s game. It feels like the natural next choice for players of those games.
But there is a large part of MIO: Memories in Orbit that is resolutely its own. I’m not convinced I’ve played anything like it. Perhaps that uniqueness comes from a stew of Frenchness, drawing on Moebius and Jean-Pierre Jeunet to make something new (a tunnel-dwelling serpent who upgrades the main character through skewering them, is a highlight). Perhaps it comes from Douze Dixièmes’ experience on Shady Part of Me, which oozed atmosphere but stopped short of greatness thanks to simplistic gameplay and echoes of other games such as Limbo. MIO: Memories in Orbit almost seems to be a reaction to that game, maintaining the atmosphere but abundantly fixing its faults.
Imagining A Better World
A part of me wonders whether MIO: Memories in Orbit is a harbinger. AAA games may not be dead, but they’ve had a turbulent year that will require some readjusting. 2025 was the year of AA, and MIO: Memories in Orbit is the next curve on that trajectory. It delivers all of the immersion and polish that you would expect from a six-digit, over-produced game, but – you would suspect – a fraction of the cost. Perhaps the future is a battery of games like MIO: Memories in Orbit, and that prospect is inspiring.
An Early GOTY Contender
The start of the year used to be a barren place for exciting new games, but MIO: Memories in Orbit disputes that statement. It’s thrilling to play, a Metroidvania where you can feel confident giving yourself over to the development team as they present surprise after surprise. It’s bruising, but that’s an expectation of the genre, and the rewards are bountiful. It’s a game where you may feel contradictions – sometimes despair, often delight – but everything is suffused with the glow of immersion.
The Game of the Year conversation seems to start earlier and earlier every year. MIO: Memories in Orbit kicks it off while we’re still taking the Christmas decorations down.
Important Links
MIO: Memories in Orbit Launches Day One On Game Pass, Xbox, PlayStation & PC – https://www.thexboxhub.com/mio-memories-in-orbit-launches-day-one-on-game-pass-xbox-playstation-pc/
An odyssey awaits with MIO: Memories in Orbit in 2026 – Release Date Confirmed – https://www.thexboxhub.com/an-odyssey-awaits-with-mio-memories-in-orbit-in-2025/
Download MIO from the Xbox Store (Through Game Pass if you like) – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/mio-memories-in-orbit/9np86k57sqm3
