A beautifully melancholic Metroidvania that excels at movement and atmosphere, but stumbles in combat depth and a few head-scratching design choices.
Even though Douze Dixièmes isn’t a well-known studio, it has slowly built a reputation for making experiences that make you feel things. Their first game, Shady Part of Me (2020), showed that they had a strong artistic identity and were ready to mix gameplay with mood and story rather than just making things very complicated.
That creative DNA is clear from the start of Mio: Memories in Orbit, a game that once again puts atmosphere, movement, and feeling over raw difficulty or battle with a lot of systems.
Focus Entertainment released MIO: Memories in Orbit into a Metroidvania world that is already full of big games like Hollow Knight, Ori, and Silksong, which are always there.
Mio doesn’t try to create a new genre. Instead, it improves and remixes old ideas, showing them through an interesting audiovisual lens and a movement system that constantly asks the player to move with purpose and rhythm.
From the start, MIO: Memories in Orbit presents itself as a trip of reflection rather than a fantasy of power. You play as a small robot in a technological ark that is floating through space, which is too big to be real. Just the difference in sizes tells you a lot about the experience this wants to be: private, alone, and mostly thought-provoking.
A world that is torn between ruin and hope.
MIO: Memories in Orbit has a simple story with a lot of interesting ideas. You play as Mio, a small robotic AI whose origins are unknown, who wakes up on a huge spaceship. A civilization used to live on this ship. It was led by a central mind called the Heart, which was helped by five different Voices: the Breath, the Spine, the Hand, the Blood, and the Eye. Each one stands for a different philosophical and practical part of the ship’s life.
The ship is a mess when Mio wakes up. Voices are quiet, systems are breaking down, and the ark is slowly moving toward destruction. Mio’s job is to get in touch with these Voices again, fix the Heart, and find out why it fell apart in the first place. It’s a good setting, even if it relies too much on genre tropes.
The story isn’t as consistent when it comes to how the characters grow. Even though the Voices have voices and are conceptually interesting, they don’t feel fully developed.
When you think their stories are about to get more complicated, they often fade back into the background. Some characters do a little better than others. For example, Tommy, the investigator whose logs fill in a lot of the ship’s history, ends up being more important to the story than the Voices themselves.
A lot of the work is already done for you by environmental stories. Broken tools, empty rooms, and robot shells that can’t be fixed all point to people who used to live on the ship. It works, but it can be annoying sometimes because the game doesn’t stay on these ideas long enough to fully use them. The story has some really interesting parts, but many of the endings don’t feel very satisfying. There are a few Voices whose stories are more emotionally charged, though.
Moving is what makes the experience heartbeat.
MIO: Memories in Orbit is a Metroidvania game at its core, which means you can move around freely and keep exploring. Mio can move around more than most main characters in this type right away, and she can even do a double jump. As you move forward, you quickly gain access to new movement skills that keep the feeling of moving forward strong.
Hairpin, an ability that works like a grappling hook, flying sails that let you descend safely, and the amazing Striders, an ability that lets Mio climb walls and ceilings like a spider, are some of her most important skills. This completely changes how you see space, making rooms into play areas with three dimensions instead of flat hallways.
This works really well with the way the world is designed. Areas loop back on themselves, lifts open up shortcuts, and as your moveset grows, you can get to areas you couldn’t get to before. The map is easy on the eyes, lets you add your own marks, and uses subtle pulsing to show unexplored paths. Even though it doesn’t have any names or a legend, which is strange, it is still one of the easier maps to read in this type.
Exploration is always honored. Secret passageways wind through the ship like veins, hiding money, health upgrades, memory pieces, new enemies, and modifiers that can completely change how you move around and fight. Even dying doesn’t feel like a complete loss because when you reach a checkpoint or respawn place, new areas that have been explored are often added to the map.
Time, effort, and the cost of mistakes.
The energy system of the game is closely connected to both traversal and puzzle design. Gliding, grappling, and striding are some of the more advanced moving skills that use up energy. Mio is often grounded quickly when that energy runs out.
On the ground, energy regenerates slowly, but faster if you fall cleanly. You can instantly refill your energy by hitting certain enemies or objects in the environment. Some of the most exciting parts of MIO: Memories in Orbit are made possible by this method.
You have to perfectly chain your skills together in high-level platforming sequences: grab an anchor, hit a node in the air to get more energy, stride across a ceiling, drop into a glide, and repeat. It feels great when it works—almost like a dance in its beat.
But this level of accuracy works both ways. If you miss a grapple or hit at the wrong time, you can fall back several screens and have to repeat long sequences. In harder parts, it’s less about improvising and more about remembering where things are placed and doing them perfectly.
Changes in the distance of a grapple or the height of the bounce from a downward attack only make things more frustrating.
Mio really struggles in battle, which is a shame. Mio only has one main attack, which is a directional close-range attack with hair-like strands. It’s fast and has a good range, but there aren’t many options. You can’t use sub-weapons or different types of attacks, and there aren’t many ways to change how you attack in a useful way.
Boss fights bring this problem to light. It’s easy to see how the bosses’ attacks work because they are well-designed and look great. Mio can dodge attacks and get out of harm’s way without moving, and her grappling hook lets her get close quickly. Offensive play is boring, while defensive play is fun. Fights often turn into a cycle of “hit, hit, retreat,” which makes them last longer than they need to.
Moving Forward Without Power Fantasy.
Mio does not use experience points. Instead, she uses nacre, a currency that she gets from defeating enemies and finding broken tools. Nacre can be used for a lot of different things, like buying upgrades, refilling health layers at certain machines, and adding modifiers that change how the game is played.
How death is dealt with is a unique twist. When Mio dies, all of the uncrystallized nacre is lost forever and cannot be found again. At first, this loss helps to wake up the ship’s heart and serves both a narrative and a mechanical purpose. As time goes on, the system loses a lot of its power as crystallization machines become more widespread and upgrades run out.
When you add modifiers to growth, things get interesting. Mio can only hold a certain number of modules, so players have to make decisions. Some modules make harm go up in certain situations, while others get rid of parts of the HUD to make room for more stuff.
This creates a subtle risk-reward relationship. It’s smart, but not too fancy. Players who want big power spikes or builds that define combos may not be impressed by the system.
MIO: Memories in Orbit also has smart ways to change how hard it is, like eroded bosses, which slowly lose health after being defeated many times, peaceful mode for world enemies, and ground healing, which protects you temporarily if you stay on the ground. These choices are subtle, up to the player, and don’t get in the way of their freedom.
A painting that is alive and moving.
The graphics in MIO: Memories in Orbit are truly amazing. The game has fully 3D settings and a look that makes you think of hand-painted watercolors with thick, dark lines. With parallax effects, the foreground and background parts move around as you move through a space, giving it depth.
The animations are smooth and expressive, especially Mio. Her limbs move naturally in response to motion and gravity, and the lighting in the scene makes it feel soft and dreamlike. There are some places where it might be a little hard to read because the visual levels overlap, but that’s more of an exception than the rule.
The ship feels like it’s still alive, even though it’s broken down. Each new biome has its own color schemes and visual patterns, which makes exploration always satisfying just for the sake of looking good.
Music that stays with you after the trip is over.
One of the best things about MIO: Memories in Orbit is the music, which was written by Nicolas Gergen. There are dozens of songs on it, and it flows easily between sad electronic sounds and happy melodies. Sometimes it makes me think of Risk of Rain, and other times it makes me think of Daft Punk.
The music doesn’t really demand your attention; instead, it blends in with the experience and adds to the mood of reflection in the game. The sound effects are also very well thought out, from the creepy creak of the Striders to the soft hum of the ship itself.
MIO: Memories in Orbit is a game that stands out for its contrasts. It has some of the best movement and discovery in the genre, and the audiovisual package is so beautiful that it makes you want to get lost. But its restricted combat depth and sometimes punishing way of moving around keep it from being the best Metroidvania game ever.
It’s not the next Hollow Knight, and it doesn’t need to be. Mio, on the other hand, makes its own place as a reflective, movement-based experience that puts atmosphere over aggression. This is a great suggestion if you value travel, world-building, and easy movement.
If the different kinds of fighting are what you’re after, you might leave wanting more. With all of its flaws, Mio shines strongly, which is an accomplishment in and of itself in this niche.
