MIO: Memories In Orbit is an adorable platformer that makes you think it’ll be easy to get through.
It’s not. Instead, this game is brutal, and I’ve spent more time fighting against each boss than I care to admit.
Luckily, if you’re like me and you aren’t the best at platformers, the developers were kind enough to include some optional assists that you can turn on to help tone down the difficulty.
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Turning on Assists
All you need to do to turn on assists is open up your settings, then go down to “Assists” at the bottom. Here, you find three options that you can turn on to ease the difficulty of the game.
While they don’t make the game easy—it maintains its challenging nature—they do give you a little bit of a break, particularly against bosses you die to repeatedly.
You can turn on as many or as few assists as you want, and you can always go back into Settings to change them if you decide you want to use more, or if you want to try again without them.
Available Assists
The three assists you have available are:
- Eroded Bosses
- Pacifist
- Ground Healing
Eroded Bosses
Eroded bosses makes it so that the bosses remember fighting you, so every time you die to one, it’s a little weaker. The description says that they become more brittle, and in practice, that means that you can bring their health bar down faster each time you face them.
Even with this active, the bosses continue to pose a challenge, as your health is the same and you still need to dodge.
Pacifist
Pacifist makes it so that non-boss enemies don’t attack you unless you attack them. This has been great for figuring out where I’m going and keeping my health up before bosses, as I don’t have to worry about losing it to other enemies on my way to the boss.
Ground Healing
Finally, Ground Healing makes it so that you get an extra layer of protection when you stand on the ground for a short period of time.
This effect can’t be stacked, but if you’re on a tough platforming section, you can keep getting the extra layer to avoid dying when you’re on your last bit of health and keep hitting an obstacle that sends you back.
These settings are totally optional to use, but I love that they exist for players like me who find the game adorable, but who also aren’t exactly skilled at platformers. It was definitely nice to see assists existed, and I hope that other players also find that the game feels more approachable because of them.
