A Space for the Unbound (PS5)

Teenage years come with a powerful shift in perspective. Your more mature mind now better understands how the world works and you’re starting to reach the point you can influence your life’s course since you’re not as dependent on your parents. The adolescent perspective may be wider in scope, but it also contains some of the selfishness of youth and the belief you know best since experience has yet to hone your budding world view. A Space for the Unbound is a story focused game about a young couple with special powers that let them easily exert their influence over their lives more than usual, this coming of age tale going down roads that will eventually pull on your heartstrings as the extreme emotions of youth are also pushed to their limit.

 

In A Space for the Unbound you play as a high schooler named Atma who lives in the type of small town in Indonesia where most everyone knows each other’s name without asking. While his memory is a bit hazy after waking up from a distant incomplete memory of his time with a lonely young girl named Nirmala, he finds he is dating the darling of the town Raya, the early moments of the game focused on their cute budding romance and getting to know the little town they call home. Even if you don’t catch the name of everyone standing around, you will come to recognize faces as the game’s different chapters see people living their lives, it easy to notice the small differences as you become familiar with the locals while you and Raya work on trying to clear out a joint Bucket List of activities. Atma and Raya aren’t just typical teens though, both of them having unusual supernatural abilities they can use to influence the otherwise humble and realistic world around them. While the exact nature of Raya’s powers are something gradually revealed over the course of the adventure, Atma’s are put int the player’s hands early on to get a taste of that teenage desire to control the world around you, his power being something psychological called the Spacedive.

When you activate Spacedive, you enter the mind of whoever you wish to influence, the mental landscape shaped by the person’s personality, past, and whatever current problem they’re facing. Some are almost just mirrors of memories like an old homeless man remembering better times picking cherries, but others lean more on visual metaphors. A man who struggles to regulate his temper can view himself as a werewolf or a woman who feels trapped sees herself as a bird trapped in a cage, but the Spacedive space is often a bit messy and broken as well, perhaps hinting at its intrusive nature. Atma does try to use the Spacedive most of all for good, assisting people who have powerful issues they need to work through, and there is a legitimate threat hanging over the young courtship at this game’s center as the crack in the sky hints at. Spacedive will have to counter other unusual events too, but Atma does gradually start to become self-aware he’s using it in situations that maybe involve him pushing his own desires onto whoever’s mind he’s entering, the high schooler grappling between his growing maturity and that desire to make things the way he desires. Raya’s own part of the story connects into different themes about fighting fate, especially as you both learn more about what her powers can do.

 

With Atma’s powers being so closely tied to entering the mind, there is a reasonable degree of depth added to the game’s cast of characters, even ones who might have seemed one note initially. To help them out, to stop a threat, or get what you want at times, you will have to learn their story, especially for some of the more in-depth interactions like essentially performing a court case to disprove someone’s delusions about who they are. Beyond Raya and Atma, there are other recurring characters from the high school like the delinquent Eric and the nerdy Marin where the moment you enter their mind can pay off a larger building narrative, but there are many smaller people around town who have shorter Spacedives where the point feels like it’s to provide smaller gameplay challenges. A Space for the Unbound is mostly concerned with telling an emotional story realized with pixel art that looks great in special scenes and appealing during regular moments, but there are moments that involve more than interacting with people and watching the plot unfold. Admittedly, a good bit of it will involve tromping about town, the small size not taking out how often it feels like you’re in transit, especially if you’re going for the side tasks in the bucket list like trying to hunt down bottlecaps. When it comes to more involved action though, there are the Spacedive puzzles and the fights.

Fights in A Space for the Unbound are somewhat simple but still require some reflexes to overcome. Often you’ll have a short period to put in a sequence of directions or button presses to fight back against some foe, as well as time a moving marker on a meter properly to defend. Fights are rarely difficult, even ones complicated with extra elements like having to dodge falling objects, and they can be retried without much of a fuss if you do slip up. Their simplicity makes it easy to accept their presence even if they’re not often that exciting, the game not really leaning on it too often save for some reasonable moments like when Atma and Eric clash. Spacedives are the real highlight though because of the puzzle solving built into them. Like how some are merely glimpses at a character and others are involved examinations of their personal struggles, the Spacedives can take on a range of material forms. That cherry picking memory takes the form of a simple minigame for example, but others might require some logic to figure out the clues presented or even see you bringing in items from the outside world to do little inventory puzzles. A Space for the Unbound keeps a good deal of its puzzles limited in their scope, this meaning even if you don’t understand it you can sometimes just work your way to the answer by trying all options. There are still enough that can make you think that a new Spacedive brings some excitement for a new challenge, but some ideas leaned on are a bit basic. Stealth pops up here or there, the sneaking never really evolving so it’s always about moving a bit and then stopping when you’re about to get caught.

 

A Space for the Unbound doesn’t rely on the substance of its gameplay as the main point of interest often though. While it can feel a bit like you’re doing errands at points, most of the time a sudden minigame or new puzzle is a way to enhance the current interaction and give you a more involved way to participate in the plot. Some come with rewards that make them worthwhile as well such as the pages to a storybook written by Nirmala, Atma only remembering her from a fuzzy dream and the tale clearly having greater significance than the imaginings of a young author. It’s truly learning more about Raya and the way her abilities can influence things that start to hook you in after a bit of a leisurely start though, the understanding of what she can do also joined by coming to understand that struggles that lie underneath her smile. That theme of trying to control your path in life and trying to defy the difficult parts of reality comes into focus more and more, Atma proving to be a reliable rock that allows this compelling side of the story to blossom without obstruction. Appropriately enough for the small town where everyone knows you, the exploration of the connections help us see the broader picture that one person alone could keep hidden, and with some effective music for when emotions are riding high as well as some nice touches of Indonesian culture to make the already layered townsfolk feel more real, A Space for the Unbound provides the kind of story you want to keep advancing quickly to get new answers even if some of the walking and weaker puzzles make you antsy to get back to more meaningful work.

THE VERDICT: A Space for the Unbound can be a cute story about young love, a cozy life in a faithfully realized Indonesian town, and a supernatural exploration of the struggle to influence our own lives across its slowly building narrative. The story starts slow, but gameplay does arise to keep you involved in events so it isn’t just walking from place to place, the Spacedive puzzles especially great at providing some more involved interactions and puzzles on top of fleshing out the small cast you repeatedly interact with. Atma and Raya’s relationship, the mysteries tied to their powers, and the culmination of that lingering threat literally hanging overhead bring together all the excellent work elsewhere as the music and lovely pixel art bring it home, the finale a superb emotional pay-off once you’ve gotten through those earlier sluggish moments.

 

And so, I give A Space for the Unbound for PlayStation 5…

A GREAT rating. I was teetering a bit on the edge of giving this game a GOOD because it can feel like you spend a good deal of time walking about only for some of those moments to break up the walking being too simple to really engage you. The early game needs time to plant its seeds, enough mystery still present near the start to catch your interest while the cute romance between the leads invests you in both of them. It becomes easier to accept the simpler moments when you start getting intriguing reveals, surprise twists, peeks at the deeper meaning behind it all, and those Spacedives where there’s more to figure out than a quick puzzle you could brute force if you had to. It is still wise to think of this as a narrative-first game, even though the ability to walk around town helps to establish the sense of community and there is some satisfaction in moments like the mental court cases where you have to properly present evidence to debunk delusions. A Space for the Unbound does try to keep you on the right path to avoid too much lollygagging or confusion and that does help it avoid becoming hampered by its slower sections or errand runs. As the depths of Atma’s and especially Raya’s issues come better known to the player, it pulls you in deeper and deeper as you want to find a happy ending amidst some inevitable tragedy, the coming of age elements intertwining supernatural powers with harsh realities in way that eventually feels surprisingly grounded and realistic. Coming out the other side, it’s hard to not feel something deep within you after you’ve come to know our dual leads so well and wish there could have been more you could do.

 

I’ve had to tiptoe around certain details about the exact themes of A Space for the Unbound that give it an extra layer of depth and some extra elements to ponder, the mysteries at its heart part of the appeal and a pretty important element for keeping some of those almost damaging slow moments early on worthwhile inclusions. The work does pay off and is worthy of experiencing in its proper context even if it’s not some earth-shattering underside, and certain elements of it are possible to pick up early even if you don’t understand the scope or implications until other details become apparent. Most importantly, elements like Spacediving into the minds of people you have come to know gives you a lot more to explore than just the gradually unveiled core story, the path to the incredible full picture still containing enough steps worth taking to make the whole journey worthy of seeing through up to that emotional resonant end.