A Space for the Unbound is an endearing story-driven adventure game set in Indonesia in the late 90s. It explores mature themes like depression, anxiety, and suicide through a relationship between two high school sweethearts, a boy called Atma and a girl called Raya. These aren't just any normal students, however, since they're both blessed with supernatural abilities that help them in exploring environments, solving puzzles, and getting to know each other better.
You play as Atma throughout this 14-hour experience and will spend most of your time exploring the beautiful, rural Indonesian pixel-art backdrops and using your dream-hopping abilities (think Inception) to solve fun but simple puzzles. These ultimately uncover the touching personal stories of both the locals and your fellow high school students.
Atma's dream-hopping ability is the core mechanic used in solving puzzles, which can range from simple item fetch quests to complex maths equations that must be solved to open safes and doors. Although challenging in areas, we found the puzzles struck the right difficulty balance, allowing you to return to the engaging narrative without so much as a scratch of your head. There are also a couple of side activities that flesh out the experience; collectibles are scattered throughout and a few enjoyable minigames can be found along the way, the most notable being Future Fighter, a Street Fighter-inspired arcade game.
The deep, meaningful narrative, partnered with the lovely pixel art and outstanding music composed by Masdito Bachtiar, create a mysterious title that we couldn't put down until we had seen it through to its satisfying conclusion. We would highly recommend A Space for the Unbound for anyone who loves a good story-driven adventure game — just expect to be run through the wringer in this powerfully emotional tale.
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Comments 15
Looks good. I have been thinking about getting a Switch or Steam Deck exactly for games like this (Spiritfarer, Forgotton Anne, etc.) but just can't decide which one to buy. Switch is cheaper but games are more expensive and is less powerful in general. Steam Deck on the other hand is more versatile device but more expensive.
@Matej I wouldn't call the SteamDeck an usable handheld. It's big, ugly, heavy and the battery won't last long.
The Switch is very obsolete hardware.
I would just wait for the Switch 2 at this point.
I love the revival the point and click adventure genre seemingly has received over the past year. Looks like this will be another added to my backlog.
I already pre-order the physical edition for my PS5, can´t wait!
Looks good, I think I'll get this on my steam deck 😃
@Matej I can’t speak about the steam deck but the switch oled is great for indie games and Nintendo first party games the oled screen makes a huge difference for pixel graphics
@Matej. I was reluctant to buy a Steam Deck at its price point, but my son really wanted one. I must say that it is a truly impressive piece of hardware. Seeing something like Red Dead Redemption 2 run on a handheld is nothing short of amazing. And we got a docking station for Christmas, so now he is able to play on a big television using a PS5 controller. It’s great for those games that are not available on PlayStation. That being said, the new Zelda is coming out soon and I don’t think a successor to the Switch is coming any time soon.
@Stevemalkpus I have almost zero interest in Nintendo exclusives, especially Zelda. Only game I want to play is Astral Chain. Battery life of Steam Deck shouldn’t be a big issue for me, I really would use it for indies, primarly at home, for AAA games there is a PS5. So yeah, probably a 256GB model of Steam Deck is best for me.
Looks gorgeous and has a cool premise. Unfortunately, I have so many games right now in my immediate backlog. I haven’t even started One Piece Odyssey despite pre-ordering it, Persona 3 & Persona 4 come out soon, and I really badly want to try God of War 1 HD via PS+ premium. Disco Elysium took me longer to platinum than I thought but I loved it.
Are the challenging puzzles in this realistically & reasonably solvable or is it that type of game where you’ll need some hints online? The math equations shouldn’t be that bad. Are trophies tied to the mini-games? Gonna add this to my wishlist when I get the chance.
@Matej Yeah, I usually have my Steam Deck plugged in and had forgot to plug it in and after about 5-6 hours of Chained Echoes, I got a 10% battery life message. Battery is pretty good on that device.
@sanqet A friend told me they look good on a Steam Deck too.
@CWill97 the puzzles are perfectly doable without any guides which is nice since it doesn’t pull you away from the story for too long
@Matej For the record, load time differences for the vast majority of games on the internal SSD vs Micro SD are, surprisingly, pretty negligible. You could grab the base model and then put the extra money you would have spent on the higher-tier model on a way bigger MicroSD card.
@Matej Or: buy a Backbone, use Remote play while you have the controllers attached to your mobile phone. These type of games work well on a smaller screen indeed.
I also find it hard to make a choice here: performance and loading times are clearly not an issue on Switch for this game, so the only reason to get this on PS4/PS5 is trophy support. Having an internal debate, once again, about the (in)significance of trophies.
@Ralizah I wasn't considering the cheapest model because of memory technology (eMMC vs NVMe). Thanks a lot for the info, appreciate it!
@NielsNL Not interested in solutions like this but thanks for a suggestion.
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