Road 96: Mile 0 Review (Xbox Series X|S)

Around a year ago, Road 96 finally made its way over to Xbox and into our hearts. Digixart's narrative adventure ended up being one of our favourite indies to grace Xbox in a long time, thanks in large parts to its captivating narrative that took us on a journey to the fictional border of 'Petria'.

A year on, the team is back with a standalone prequel that follows one of Road 96's core characters - Zoe. While this follow-up lacks the breadth of the first game both in terms of its cast and its various gameplay styles, we can happily say that Road 96: Mile 0 captures pretty much everything we loved about Road 96, wrapping it all up into a more focused affair.

That focus is on Zoe and one of her best friends - Kaito. The two of them are living close by in the commune of 'White Sands', although their families live very different lives there. Zoe's family is closely tied to the game's authoritarian government, while Kaito's family work manual labour jobs under the regime. The two characters come together as they both question what's really going on in Petria - a theme that leads directly into some of the events of Road 96.

We won't go much further with the story setup because it's a major aspect of this game and deserves to be experienced first hand. We will say though that if you missed Road 96 last year you could absolutely play this game first before rolling into the events of the original; Mile 0 is a prequel after all. Whichever way around you play both titles, they're equally captivating.

If you're unaware of what type of game genre this series falls under, it's quite hard to categorise to be honest. They're first person story-driven adventures at heart, but they're not pure 'walking simulators'. Road 96 mixed in lots of different gameplay segments in-between its telltale-style dialogue sequences, while Mile 0 incorporates rhythm game-like skating sequences as its main gameplay mechanic. As odd as that sounds it works very well, at least thematically.

It does mean that Mile 0 lacks the gameplay variety of Road 96 though. The skating sequences are fun and add to that sense of open road freedom, but they can feel a bit quick time event-ish at times. There's nothing wrong with them, but we preferred how Road 96 continually kept us guessing what gameplay segment was coming next.

That extends to the story a little bit as well. Road 96's narrative was surprise and delight pretty much throughout, as you discovered how each misfit teen was planning their escape. Mile 0, as we mentioned, focuses on just Zoe and Kaito for the most part - looking at how each character lived before making their decision to try and leave White Sands.

Thankfully, the story is still hugely engaging and we loved learning more about Zoe's backstory in particular. She was one of our favourite characters from Road 96 and her story was well worth exploring some more - it put a huge grin on our face from time to time. Fantastic voice acting helps the story beats hit as well - that's the case for pretty much every character in Mile 0, and this prequel definitely retains the high voicing standards that Road 96 introduced.

The game's graphics and music are also fantastic - Digixart has crafted a wonderful visual style with this series, backed up by an amazing soundtrack that's perhaps one of our favourites in all of gaming. Yep, this soundtrack is just that good and it adds a lot to the game's overall style; we've done plenty of listening outside of the game itself as well!

If it seems like we're talking about Mile 0 and last year's Road 96 a lot as a pair, that's because it's quite tough not to link these two titles together. While it really shouldn't matter which way around you play them, both games just have to be experienced together, one way or another. Yes, Road 96: Mile 0 is a prequel to Road 96 but they really do feel like two halves of the same game, and we can't imagine you'd want to play one without the other.

It definitely helps that the launch price for Road 96: Mile 0 is just £10.99 on Xbox!