In all my years of covering games, only a coveted few games’ stories have pulled onto the heartstrings and brought tears to this reviewer. This is one of the few that had me emotional by the end of the prologue, mind you.
A Space For The Unbound is a roller-coaster of an adventure game, with the joy of everyday school life from the perspective of our main protagonist, Atma, and his girlfriend, Raya. One that’s filled with anguish that compliments the main arc of the story fairly well.
Essentially, even if you’re only reading this part of the review, this game is a must-play is what I’m saying.
Presentation
The pixel art design is quite vibrant, with emoticons being used to show emotions, making it quite inviting for the players to join in on this quirky slice of life from a small Indonesian town, filled with stuff like a road-side Bakso stall to a local arcade cafe (which is an actual thing!). It fills the world with the charm that many would find interesting to stick around.
And while there’s no voice acting per se, the music does carry itself to highlight the lighter side of the game, or even during the more emotional bits that make the scene more memorable for me. You can tell how the story will go from the start of the first scene within the prologue, a great music and scene setter before the main show.
UI-wise, it does its job fine, as you would expect from an adventure game, which scales rather well from a monitor to a small screen like the Switch’s screen. So no complaints from this department either.
Gameplay
Not much to say since it’s on paper, a point-and-click adventure title where you play as Atma, a high-school boy who has a special book which he can go inside the souls of a person via Spacedive, a mechanic where you dive inside a person to mend their issues internally and make them better from the outside world.
It’s quite a simple mechanic that actually ties in both worlds as some puzzles would require items from the outside world to solve Spacedive puzzles, a pretty unique way to combine both elements into one story within the game.
And it’s not an adventure game without some mini-games sprinkled in, like the Street Fighter parody where you have to mash combos to defeat enemies in the parody game and even during some enemy encounters. There are many sprinkled around the game which forms a nice side-activity to do as you enjoy the main story bit.
There are even many different cats you can pet and give out names to, which you can see around the game’s town area doing cat things (besides being an important story point), so there’s that aspect as well.
Altogether, it is a delight playing this game as it unravels itself into something complex that perhaps has some pacing issues (looking at you, letter collection quest), but fits together well enough for the story to shine.
Content
Without spoiling its contents. A Space For The Unbound is a pretty good 10-hour romp that will pull on your emotional cords fairly well.
A story that brings together characters that might not even feel interconnected until a moment when it just clicks. It might not be a perfect game but it strives on the imperfections of the world to make its narrative more relatable than one would assume.
Personal Enjoyment
Nothing really resonates with my high school life more than this game (fun fact: it’s been a decade since I graduated high school lol), mostly due to its settings being in Southeast Asia, with the same time setting for my schooling days, so this speaks to me more than the usual JRPG school stuff.
And from the get-go, I was fully invested due to its incredible introduction scene with the Sky Princess. Its writing is just amazing too, for someone who’s also been into Indonesian literature recently, with the writing feeling super Tere Eeve but has the grounds to stand on its own, thanks to its characters, both Atma and Raya, being two incredible vessels to this story and world.
It’s already one of my favourite games of 2023 and it’s still only February, mind you.
Verdict
It is such a pleasure to get a story experience such as A Space For The Unbound, with how welcoming its world is, with all of its intrigue and suspense that delivers well on the hype. And being a small team working on it like Toge Production is, they deserve all the plaudits. Get this game now, at full price, and you won’t be disappointed at all.
Played on PC, Review copy purchased by reviewer.
A Space For The Unbound
A Space For The Unbound, with how welcoming its world is, delivers well on the hype for an adventure game that's made in South East Asia. A must buy.
- Presentation 9.5
- Gameplay 9.5
- Content 9
- Personal Enjoyment 10