Después de su primer juego independiente, Shady Part of Me, una fábula poética y conmovedora que obtuvo elogios de la crítica, Focus Entertainment y Douze Dixièmes se complacen en renovar su colaboración en MIO: Memories in Orbit, una nueva odisea de ciencia ficción que combina metroidvania y una dirección de arte única. Como el robot MIO, los jugadores explorarán y conquistarán Vessel, una nave espacial gigantesca y laberíntica, para salvarla de la extinción.

Presentado exclusivamente en el último Nintendo Direct, su primer tráiler revela una jugabilidad tan intensa como variada, que sumerge a los jugadores en un mundo decadente e hipnótico con paisajes deslumbrantes.

«Los equipos de Focus están encantados de volver a trabajar con uno de los estudios internos del grupo: Douze Dixièmes», declara John Bert, director general de Focus Entertainment Publishing. «Sus talentos creativos demuestran la misma inventiva y talento artístico inigualable que nos cautivó en Shady Part of Me, y que brillará nuevamente en este metroidvania con su atmósfera única. Estamos ansiosos por revelar más sobre MIO y su mundo, y por Ver a los jugadores sumergirse en esta magnífica experiencia».

«Como estudio asociado de Focus Entertainment, estamos entusiasmados con esta nueva colaboración», afirma el equipo de Douze Dixième. «Como editor, siempre están presentes para apoyar nuestras ideas y ayudarnos a iterar la fórmula metroidvania. Después de varios años de desarrollo, estamos muy orgullosos de lo que MIO: Memories in Orbit puede aportar al género, y esta primera El tráiler lo demuestra. Estamos ansiosos por mostrarles a nuestros jugadores aún más en los próximos meses».

En los próximos meses se anunciará más información sobre el juego y su jugabilidad. Las listas de deseados ya están disponibles en PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S y Steam.

MIO: Memories in Orbit estará disponible para PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC y Nintendo Switch en 2025.

Acerca de MIO: Memories in Orbit

Eres MIO, un robot ágil con habilidades extraordinarias. Te despiertas en el Vessel, una nave espacial a la deriva sin rumbo en el espacio. Esta enorme arca tecnológica, cuyo propósito inicial sigue siendo desconocido, yace ahora como un campo de ruinas, cubierto de exuberante vegetación y máquinas deshonestas.

Adéntrate en el corazón de este laberinto tecnológico para revivir sus recuerdos perdidos mientras guías a MIO a través de la vasta extensión del Vessel. Desbloquea nuevos poderes y habilidades para explorar nuevas áreas, enfréntate a un temible bestiario y emprende una búsqueda para desbloquear los secretos del Vessel

Características principales:

• Revive los recuerdos del navío

• Un fascinante mundo entrelazado en decadencia te espera. Eres MIO, un ágil robot con habilidades extraordinarias. Despiertas en el Navío, una nave espacial a la deriva en el espacio. Esta enorme arca tecnológica donde las máquinas se rebelaron y de la que desconocemos su propósito inicial, está ahora llena de ruinas, invadida por una vegetación exuberante.
• Nadie sabe por qué las Perlas, las IA guardianas del Navío, dejaron de funcionar. Olvidado por todos, el Navío enfrenta un apagado inminente. Sumérgete en sus profundidades para revivir sus recuerdos perdidos, mientras descubres tu verdadero pasado y tu destino.

• Explora un mundo cautivador – Adéntrate en este metroidvania fascinante mientras guías a MIO por el inmenso Navío. Pero no estarás solo en tu aventura. Repara robots dañados y ayúdalos a desvelar el pasado del arca y a obtener bonus valiosos. Interactúa con el entorno para descubrir más cosas sobre su pasado y sus recuerdos. Desvela los secretos oscuros que explican su trágico apagón. Y déjate llevar por tu curiosidad mientras descubres sus numerosas rutas secretas.
• Contempla una maravilla artística – Descubre un mundo en decadencia, pero ostentoso, con detalles hechos a mano y fondos de acuarela. Este universo, que se inspira en cómics, cuadros y anime, rebosa maravillas y curiosidades artísticas. Deja que su banda sonora, única y dinámica, que combina ritmos lo-fi y melodías corales, te transporten por este universo cautivador.
• No dejes de moverte – El Navío es un laberinto descomunal, pero también un organismo vivo, con sus propios ecosistemas, bestiarios y estilos arquitectónicos. Consigue habilidades revolucionarias, como planear en el aire, trepar como una araña o el gancho de arpeo, para ayudar a MIO a progresar por este espacio retorcido e interconectado. ¡Juega con precisión y ritmo, y busca el momento adecuado para conseguir el flujo perfecto!
• Enfrenta a un bestiario único. – Enfrenta a un elenco de más de 30 unidades enemigas y 15 jefes guardianes formidables. Desde el implacable Mosquito al amenazante Espantapájaros, lucharás con diversos adversarios letales, cada uno con su estilo de lucha y sus patrones de movimiento distintivos. Utiliza tu arsenal de poderes para adaptarte a cada enfrentamiento. Esquiva a tus rivales con tu gancho, lanza orbes como proyectiles poderosos e incluso crea clones como señuelo para atacar desde ángulos inesperados.
• Saquea. Mejora. Domina. – Recupera componentes de enemigos para mejorar y personalizar tu MIO. Pule tus habilidades de lucha con muchos modificadores y convierte a tu MIO en una fuerza formidable adaptada a tu estilo de juego. ¿Utilizarás tu gancho de arpeo como una cuerda de lazo letal o para esquivar? ¿Sacrificarás tu escudo para aumentar el daño que infliges? ¡Siempre decides tú! ¿Aceptarás el desafío y salvarás el Navío de la destrucción? ¿Te atreverás a buscar y despertar sus recuerdos?

La entrada MIO: Memories in Orbit llegará a PC y Consolas en el 2025 – Screenshots y Trailer de Gameplay apareció primero en PC Master Race Latinoamérica.

Reaching orbit around Earth is an incredibly difficult feat. It’s a common misconception that getting into orbit just involves getting very high above the ground — the real trick is going sideways very, very fast. Thus far, the most viable way we’ve found to do this is with big, complicated multi-stage rockets that shed bits of themselves as they roar out of the atmosphere.

Single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) launch vehicles represent a revolutionary step in space travel. They promise a simpler, more cost-effective way to reach orbit compared to traditional multi-stage rockets. Today, we’ll explore the incredible potential offered by SSTO vehicles, and why building a practical example is all but impossible with our current technology.

A Balancing Act

The SSTO concept doesn’t describe any one single spacecraft design. Instead, it refers to any spacecraft that’s capable of achieving orbit using a single, unified propulsion system and without jettisoning any part of the vehicle.

Today’s orbital rockets shed stages as they expend fuel. There’s one major reason for this, and it’s referred to as the tyranny of the rocket equation. Fundamentally, a spacecraft needs to reach a certain velocity to attain orbit. Reaching that velocity from zero — i.e. when the rocket is sitting on the launchpad — requires a change in velocity, or delta-V. The rocket equation can be used to figure out how much fuel is required for a certain delta-V, and thus a desired orbit.

The problem is that the mass of fuel required scales exponentially with delta-V. If you want to go faster, you need more fuel. But then you need even more fuel again to carry the weight of that fuel, and so on. Plus, all that fuel needs a tank and structure to hold it, which makes things more difficult again.

Work out the maths of a potential SSTO design, and the required fuel to reach orbit ends up taking up almost all of the launch vehicle’s weight. There’s precious mass left over for the vehicle’s own structure, let alone any useful payload. This all comes down to the “mass fraction” of the rocket. A SSTO powered by even our most efficient chemical rocket engines would require that the vast majority of its mass be dedicated to propellants, with its structure and payload being tiny in comparison. Much of that is due to Earth’s nature. Our planet has a strong gravitational pull, and the minimum orbital velocity is quite high at about 7.4 kilometers per second or so.

Stage Fright

Historically, we’ve cheated the rocket equation through smart engineering. The trick with staged rockets is simple. They shed structure as the fuel burns away. There’s no need to keep hauling empty fuel tanks into orbit. By dropping empty tanks during flight, the remaining fuel on the rocket has to accelerate a smaller mass, and thus less fuel is required to get the final rocket and payload into its intended orbit.

So far, staged rockets have been the only way for humanity to reach orbit. Saturn V had five stages, more modern rockets tend to have two or three. Even the Space Shuttle was a staged design: it shed its two booster rockets when they were empty, and did the same with its external liquid fuel tank.

But while staged launch vehicles can get the job done, it’s a wasteful way to fly. Imagine if every commercial flight required you to throw away three quarters of the airplane. While we’re learning to reuse discarded parts of orbital rockets, it’s still a difficult and costly exercise.

The core benefit of a SSTO launch vehicle would be its efficiency. By eliminating the need to discard stages during ascent, SSTO vehicles would reduce launch costs, streamline operations, and potentially increase the frequency of space missions.

Pushing the Envelope

It’s currently believed that building a SSTO vehicle using conventional chemical rocket technology is marginally possible. You’d need efficient rocket engines burning the right fuel, and a light rocket with almost no payload, but theoretically it could be done.

Ideally, though, you’d want a single-stage launch vehicle that could actually reach orbit with some useful payload. Be that a satellite, human astronauts, or some kind of science package. To date there have been several projects and proposals for SSTO launch vehicles, none of which have succeeded so far.

One notable design was the proposed Skylon spacecraft from British company Reaction Engines Limited. Skylon was intended to operate as a reusable spaceplane fueled by hydrogen. It would take off from a runway, using wings to generate lift to help it to ascend to 85,000 feet. This improves fuel efficiency versus just pointing the launch vehicle straight up and fighting gravity with pure thrust alone. Plus, it would burn oxygen from the atmosphere on its way to that altitude, negating the need to carry heavy supplies of oxygen onboard.

Once at the appropriate altitude, it would switch to internal liquid oxygen tanks for the final acceleration phase up to orbital velocity. The design stretches back decades, to the earlier British HOTOL spaceplane project. Work continues on the proposed SABRE engine (Syngergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine) that would theoretically propel Skylon, though no concrete plans to build the spaceplane itself exist.

Lockheed Martin also had the VentureStar spaceplane concept, which used an innovative “aerospike” rocket engine that maintained excellent efficiency across a wide altitude range. The company even built a scaled-down test craft called the X-33 to explore the ideas behind it. However, the program saw its funding slashed in the early 2000s, and development was halted.

McDonnell Douglas also had a crack at the idea in the early 1990s. The DC-X, also known as the Delta Clipper, was a prototype vertical takeoff and landing vehicle. At just 12 meters high and 4.1 meters in diameter, it was a one-third scale prototype for exploring SSTO-related technologies

It would take off vertically like a traditional rocket, and return to Earth nose-first before landing on its tail. The hope was that the combination of single-stage operation and this mission profile would provide extremely quick turnaround times for repeat launches, which was seen as a boon for potential military applications. While its technologies showed some promise, the project was eventually discontinued when a test vehicle caught fire after NASA took over the project.

Ultimately, a viable SSTO launch vehicle that can carry a payload will likely be very different from the rockets we use today. Relying on wings to generate lift could help save fuel, and relying on air in the atmosphere would slash the weight of oxidizer that would have to be carried onboard.

However, it’s not as simple as just penning a spaceplane with an air-breathing engine and calling it done. No air breathing engine that exists can reach orbital velocity, so such a craft would need an additional rocket engine too, adding weight. Plus, it’s worth noting a reusable launch vehicle would also still require plenty of heat shielding to survive reentry. One could potentially build a non-reusable single-stage to orbit vehicle that simply stays in space, of course, but that would negate many of the tantalizing benefits of the whole concept.

Single-stage-to-orbit vehicles hold the promise of transforming how we access space by simplifying the architecture of launch vehicles and potentially reducing costs. While there are formidable technical hurdles to overcome, the ongoing advances in aerospace technology provide hope that SSTO could become a practical reality in the future. As technology marches forward in materials, rocketry, and aerospace engineering in general, the dream of a single-stage path to orbit remains a tantalizing future goal.

Featured Image: Skylon Concept Art, ESA/Reaction Engines Ltd

There have been all kinds of wild ideas to get spacecraft into orbit. Everything from firing huge cannons to spinning craft at rapid speed has been posited, explored, or in some cases, even tested to some degree. And yet, good ol’ flaming rockets continue to dominate all, because they actually get the job done.

Rockets, fuel, and all their supporting infrastructure remain expensive, so the search for an alternative goes on. One daring idea involves using airships to loft payloads into orbit. What if you could simply float up into space?

Lighter Than Air

The concept sounds compelling from the outset. Through the use of hydrogen or helium as a lifting gas, airships and balloons manage to reach great altitudes while burning zero propellant. What if you could just keep floating higher and higher until you reached orbital space?

This is a huge deal when it comes to reaching orbit. One of the biggest problems of our current space efforts is referred to as the tyranny of the rocket equation. The more cargo you want to launch into space, the more fuel you need. But then that fuel adds more weight, which needs yet more fuel to carry its weight into orbit. To say nothing of the greater structure and supporting material to contain it all.

Carrying even a few extra kilograms of weight to space can require huge amounts of additional fuel. This is why we use staged rockets to reach orbit at present. By shedding large amounts of structural weight at the end of each rocket stage, it’s possible to move the remaining rocket farther with less fuel.

If you could get to orbit while using zero fuel, it would be a total gamechanger. It wouldn’t just be cheaper to launch satellites or other cargoes. It would also make missions to the Moon or Mars far easier. Those rockets would no longer have to carry the huge amount of fuel required to escape Earth’s surface and get to orbit. Instead, they could just carry the lower amount of fuel required to go from Earth orbit to their final destination.

Of course, it’s not that simple. Reaching orbit isn’t just about going high above the Earth. If you just go straight up above the Earth’s surface, and then stop, you’ll just fall back down. If you want to orbit, you have to go sideways really, really fast.

Thus, an airship-to-orbit launch system would have to do two things. It would have to haul a payload up high, and then get it up to the speed required for its desired orbit. That’s where it gets hard. The minimum speed to reach a stable orbit around Earth is 7.8 kilometers per second (28,000 km/h or 17,500 mph). Thus, even if you’ve floated up very, very high, you still need a huge rocket or some kind of very efficient ion thruster to push your payload up to that speed. And you still need fuel to generate that massive delta-V (change in velocity).

For this reason, airships aren’t the perfect hack to reaching orbit that you might think. They’re good for floating about, and you can even go very, very high. But if you want to circle the Earth again and again and again, you better bring a bucketload of fuel with you.

Someone’s Working On It

Nevertheless, this concept is being actively worked on, but not by the usual suspects. Don’t look at NASA, JAXA, SpaceX, ESA, or even Roscosmos. Instead, it’s the work of the DIY volunteer space program known as JP Aerospace.

The organization has grand dreams of launching airships into space. Its concept isn’t as simple as just getting into a big balloon and floating up into orbit, though. Instead, it envisions a three-stage system.

The first stage would involve an airship designed to travel from ground level up to 140,000 feet. The company proposes a V-shaped design with an airfoil profile to generate additional lift as it moves through the atmosphere. Propulsion would be via propellers that are specifically designed to operate in the near-vacuum at those altitudes.

Once at that height, the first stage craft would dock with a permanently floating structure called Dark Sky Station. It would serve as a docking station where cargo could be transferred from the first stage craft to the Orbital Ascender, which is the craft designed to carry the payload into orbit.

The Orbital Ascender itself sounds like a fantastical thing on paper. The team’s current concept is for a V-shaped craft with a fabric outer shell which contains many individual plastic cells full of lifting gas. That in itself isn’t so wild, but the proposed size is. It’s slated to measure 1,828 meters on each side of the V — well over a mile long — with an internal volume of over 11 million cubic meters. Thin film solar panels on the craft’s surface are intended to generate 90 MW of power, while a plasma generator on the leading edge is intended to help cut drag. The latter is critical, as the craft will need to reach hypersonic speeds in the ultra-thin atmosphere to get its payload up to orbital speeds. To propel the craft up to orbital velocity, the team has been running test firings on its own designs for plasma thrusters.

The team at JP Aerospace is passionate, but currently lacks the means to execute their plans at full scale. Right now, the team has some experimental low-altitude research craft that are a few hundred feet long. Presently, Dark Sky Station and the Orbital Ascender remain far off dreams.

Realistically, the team hasn’t found a shortcut to orbit just yet. Building a working version of the Orbital Ascender would require lofting huge amounts of material to high altitude where it would have to be constructed. Such a craft would be torn to shreds by a simple breeze in the lower atmosphere. A lighter-than-air craft that could operate at such high altitudes and speeds might not even be practical with modern materials, even if the atmosphere is vanishingly thin above 140,000 feet.  There are huge questions around what materials the team would use, and whether the theoretical concepts for plasma drag reduction could be made to work on the monumentally huge craft.

Even if the craft’s basic design could work, there are questions around the practicalities of crewing and maintaining a permanent floating airship station at high altitude. Let alone how payloads would be transferred from one giant balloon craft to another. These issues might be solvable with billions of dollars. Maybe. JP Aerospace is having a go on a budget several orders of magnitude more shoestring than that.

One might imagine a simpler idea could be worth trying first. Lofting conventional rockets to 100,000 feet with balloons would be easier and still cut fuel requirements to some degree. But ultimately, the key challenge of orbit remains. You still need to find a way to get your payload up to a speed of at least 8 kilometers per second, regardless of how high you can get it in the air. That would still require a huge rocket, and a suitably huge balloon to lift it!

For now, orbit remains devastatingly hard to reach, whether you want to go by rocket, airship, or nuclear-powered paddle steamer. Don’t expect to float to the Moon by airship anytime soon, even if it sounds like a good idea.