It’s rare that you see two games in the same franchise differ more wildly than Road 96 and its prequel, Road 96: Mile 0. While the former is a story-driven, first-person adventure about people trying to escape from a dying country, the latter is like if you took Subway Surfers or Sayonara Wild Hearts and added story beats in between the levels. Some might find this wild change in the core gameplay off-putting, but it’s these differences that make the prequel so fascinating.

The first Road 96 is a straightforward but offbeat tale about people trying to reach the border of the fictional dystopia Petria as a world-changing election looms. Along the way, you meet characters on opposite ends of the political spectrum who are being riled up by the tyrannical incumbent, Tyrek (you know, like "tyrant") and propaganda that seems to follow you wherever you go. You encounter procedurally generated events that can either aid in your quest or create a lethal obstacle, and if you fail, you’ll have to switch to one of the other characters. It’s not subdued by any means, but compared to Mile 0, it’s downright subtle.

Mile 0 follows two characters: Zoe and Kaito. The first will be familiar to Road 96 players, but the second is more obscure. That’s because he’s actually from developer Digixart’s first game, Lost in Harmony. Turns out Zoe and him are good friends despite their class differences: Zoe is the daughter of a prominent politician, and Kaito grew up in poverty. However, as the game begins, a massive governmental cover-up and Kaito’s subsequent efforts to expose it threaten to tear them apart. 

Each level depicts huge events in the two’s story, depicting how Zoe comes to be the character we know in Road 96. However, unlike the first game, Mile 0 portrays and then abstracts them. Digixart pulls the gameplay it introduced in Lost in Harmony to create colorful, rhythm-focused runner challenges called “Rides.” These are psychedelic skating experiences that express what Zoe and Kaito are feeling at different points throughout the game, and they range wildly between cartoonish, comedic dreams to somber journeys into literal darkness. One level has Zoe trying to escape her bodyguard as he gets gradually larger and more dangerous, while another has her reckoning with the truth about Petria’s government and her relationship with Kaito as she skates through a crumbling hellscape. 
The game will grade your attempt to avoid obstacles, but getting a high score isn’t necessary for progression. Mile 0 is a super casual experience, with these sequences mostly serving as unique ways to move the story forward. If you fail enough times, the game will even ask if you want to skip it entirely. This gives the player room to actually absorb the story instead of focusing too much on simply beating the levels.

In the end, Mile 0 is a bit of an experiment. Digixart went back to its first game, recycled gameplay and characters, and incorporated it into the Road 96 universe. Few teams would explore a completely different genre in a prequel, but Digixart somehow manages to make it work by integrating characters, themes, and bits of world-building to keep it all connected. It’s a lot shorter than its predecessor and provides a completely different experience, but it’s worth checking out just for its sheer existence. At the very least, it shows that the developers aren’t afraid to try something new.