Man’s affinity for flight becomes apparent in Mesoké – a non-combat, free-flowing game of gliding through some absolutely gorgeous settings. Emphasis on the term ‘non-combat’ and not anything like casual, wholesome or relaxing. Mesoké has all of these as part of the package; however, your attention is required, else you’ll hit the deck and lose some important resources.
There’s no dialogue; if anything, everything is represented by symbolism that is understandable enough. You play as the titular female who sits on the cliffside meditating, until launching themself into the void below, then gliding gracefully through the skies. This game is stunning and buttery smooth, paying close attention to how the glider reacts and handles. It’s excellent.
Your job in Mesoké is to collect energy orbs, a.k.a. chi, which can be deposited into a hub that, in turn, opens up pathways to new worlds. Chi is scattered throughout the world, which you skillfully have to fly through. Of course, this isn’t a platformer, so you can’t simply land to collect everything, and instead will do a couple of passes either because you missed your turn, or you’ll end up hitting the deck/hitting a wall due to not being able to lift in time. What happens if you crash? Ah…
Collecting energy is one thing, but fortunately, you don’t have any to worry about, so there’s no health or lives to lose. When you do crash, you will lose a portion of the chi collected. The flipside is that those you’ve collected in that area will respawn, so if you’ve figured out a flightpath that works but were unfortunate in clipping something, simply repeat and then return your orbs to the hub to access another area. That’s the positive, but the negative is how easily you can lose everything after a couple of bad decisions.
This burst the bubble for Mesokê, as up until this point, it was excellent. Again, there’s no proper story here, and while there are extras to collect, such as paintings and set pieces that showcase the landscapes, there’s not much else to it, but that’s what’s so good about it. I’d prefer that you didn’t lose orbs, yet you need some risk to make this a challenge, right? Do the controls need tweaking to make it easy? Not at all. The handling is fantastic, and I wouldn’t change it. Likewise, if you hit the deck, it’s not like you’re gonna do a Spider-Man and launch back in the air, so it all makes sense.
If you’re looking for something that is predominantly a relaxing, feel-good experience with little demands in the way of story investment and learning complicated control systems, then Mesoké is one I’d recommend you look at – especially if you like the spectacle. Again, there are elements of frustration when crashing and mis-timing a flight path, but Mystik’art’s game isn’t unfair, and I can’t fault the controls. Besides, this is beautifully poetic – from the visuals to the meditative elements, but most importantly, that feeling of natural flight.
