A Space for the Unbound is an adventure video game developed by Mojiken Studio and published by Toge Productions. It was released on January 19, 2023, for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. The game is set in the late 1990s and follows Atma and his girlfriend Raya, who live in a suburban area in Indonesia, as they explore their newly attained magical abilities and deal with supernatural powers that threaten their existence.
The game director's focus was capturing what it felt like to grow up in Indonesia in the 1990s and preserving his memories as an Indonesian through the game. The game's release was initially planned to be in 2020 but was delayed due to a conflict within the game publishers. The game received positive reception from critics, with reviews focusing on the game's solid sense of place and heartfelt story.
Gameplay
Critics remarked positively on the game's distinctive pixel artstyle.
The player controls Atma, an Indonesian high school student who is getting close to graduation along with his girlfriend Raya.[3] Through the powers of a red book that Atma finds, he gains the ability to "space dive" into people's minds and help fix their problems through puzzles that the player completes.[3][4] These changes can affect the person's point of view and help them deal with their trauma.[3][4] His girlfriend Raya, through the same book, gains "X-Men-esque powers", including levitation and changing the nature of reality.[3] They face the issues that come from their new powers and investigate the supernatural forces that threaten their existence.[3] Later on, Atma obtains a magic wand and gains the ability to "rift dive" to another time in a location.
Throughout the game, the player can interact with people, objects, and animals.[3][4] Most of the game is at a slower pace and involves exploring and talking with people through point-and-click gameplay.[3][4] The game features several minigames that help ground the game in its place and time, like practicing football and dodging falling objects with button inputs; fighting minigames that involve pressing a sequence of buttons in a time limit to attack and pressing a button when the moving bar hit the target. The game also features some cats, which the player can pet and name.[4]
Plot
Atma and his girlfriend Raya, high school students in an Indonesian suburban city, are nearing graduation but remain uncertain about their futures. Instead of focusing on their plans, they create a bucket list of activities, starting with watching a movie. Atma also dreams of writing a story with a young girl named Nirmala, who gives him a red book that allows him to "spacedive" and enter people's minds. Each dream ends with him drowning while trying to save Nirmala and waking up at his school desk.
During their cinema outing, Raya reveals her reality-altering powers, creating a world based on the film Cat Wonderland. However, the couple is warned of an impending apocalypse, prompting them to escape back to reality. Atma notices the cinema staff behaving like cats and uses his spacediving ability to restore their sanity. Shortly after, Raya collapses, and a crack appears in the sky, signaling an anomaly.
Later, Raya collapses again while trying to halt the anomaly. With help from Admiral, their adopted cat who gains the ability to speak, Atma prepares a cake to restore Raya’s strength. Erik, a school bully, kills Admiral, takes the cake, and knocks out Atma. After Atma catches up to Erik and spacedives into his mind, he uncovers Erik's abusive upbringing. Nirmala appears, ejects Atma from Erik’s mind, and turns Erik into a monster. Raya restores Erik to normal but seemingly kills him before fainting again as the crack in the sky expands.
Atma reawakens to find Raya missing and the school preparing for a festival. He discovers that Raya has altered the minds of several townspeople in retaliation for past mistreatment. With help from his classmate Lulu, Atma restores them to normal. Raya, overwhelmed by the pressure of organizing the festival and trying to escape her trauma, has been rewriting reality. Nirmala transforms Lulu into a monster during a spacedive. Atma finds Raya on a bridge, where she seemingly kills Lulu and reveals her intent to control the town. When Atma attempts to spacedive into her mind, Raya destroys the book and summons a meteor to crash into the city.
Atma wakes up in the city's ruins while the festival continues undeterred. With Marin’s help, Atma reaches the school and protects her from Raya. In a spacedive dimension, Atma learns that Marin was once close with Raya but distanced herself after doubting Atma’s existence. Nirmala turns Marin into a monster, and Raya destroys her before passing out. Atma retrieves the spacediving book and enters Nirmala’s mind.
A flashback reveals that the events of the game occurred within Raya’s mind and that Nirmala and Raya are the same person: Raya Fitri Nirmala. As a child, Raya met Atma, who had run away from home seeking to start a career in writing, and the two became friends. One day, Atma, being unable to swim, drowned trying to save Nirmala. Raya, in a moment of resentment, separated "Nirmala," who represents her hope and positivity, from herself and blames herself for Atma's death. Raya’s inner conflict, compounded by her abusive father, led to Nirmala turning people who wronged Raya into monsters.
In the final confrontation, Atma spacedives into Raya's mind and learns of her abusive father and that the story he and Nirmala wrote was an allegory for her life. Atma and Raya's mother guide her through her traumatic memories and convince her to face her fears. Raya ultimately accepts her past and ascends from the dream world, leaving Atma behind as a memory.
In the real world, Raya, now visibly older, awakens in a hospital bed, having recovered from an unstated incident. Her mother, now separated from her abusive spouse, plans to move the family to a new city. She goes out for one last walk around the neighborhood, reflecting on her journey and healing.
If the player completes all the items on the bucket list, a post-credits scene shows Raya visiting the spot where Atma died, leaving a bouquet and the spacediving book.
Development
Dimas Novan Delfiano, Mojiken Studio member and game director for A Space for the Unbound, started development on the title in 2015. A team of two to three people began work on the game while the studio also developed other games at the same time. Dimas completed an initial prototype of the story in 2015, which served as a core for what would be developed. Dimas found the first few years of development incredibly difficult, as he struggled to build a substantial game from the prototype. In 2019, Dimas noted that he had found the "right formula for the game" and Mojiken released a demo that "was released to positive reception" on January 23, 2020. Around the same year, everyone at the studio (numbering about 12–14 people) was able to shift focus to working on the game.[5][6]
Dimas wanted to create a game set in an Indonesian high school from a young age, and was inspired by the concept of an "anime pilgrimage," where people travel to compare real-life locations against their anime-depicted counterparts. He wanted to highlight his personal experience of growing up in 1990s Indonesia, and wanted players to feel the same passage of time that he had experienced.[5][7] Dimas was inspired by multiple Japanese concepts during development, including "Mono no aware," or the "pathos of things," which Dimas described "as an appreciation for or awareness of impermanence and the passage of time."[5] As such, the game was heavily inspired by the works of Japanese filmmaker Makoto Shinkai,[3] and the setting of the game is inspired by locations in Surabaya, the city Dimas grew up in.[8] He noted that "every generation has its own memories and [A Space for the Unbound] is our memories and we want to preserve that before we completely forget about it."[5]
The game heavily features anxiety and depression in the story, and the developers consulted professionals for their input to help with telling it appropriately. The space diving mechanic was created to help explore these themes in more detail.[7]
Release and publishing conflict
A Space for the Unbound was announced to be released on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch consoles in the combined edition of Weekly Famitsu magazine of May 14–21, 2020, with Chorus Worldwide to be the publisher of the video game in Japan. It was also announced that the video game will be released in late 2020.[9]
On August 25, 2020, the release was postponed to the Q3 period of 2021. However, it was announced that British video game publisher PQube Games would be the global publisher of the console version of A Space for the Unbound. This announcement was accompanied by the release of the game's first trailer through PQube's YouTube channel.[10]
In April 2021, a new trailer and the game demo for A Space for the Unbound was released during the LudoNarraCon 2021 event. The game was also announced to be released sometime in 2022.[11] The trailer confirmed that A Space for the Unbound would be released for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.[12][13]
As part of the promotion of A Space for the Unbound, Mojiken Studio and Toge Productions collaborated with Indonesian comics publishing company Kosmik to create a webcomic titled A Space for the Unbound: Broken Memories. The webcomic was released on the LINE Webtoon application on May 20, 2022.[14]
On August 24, 2022, Toge Productions and Mojiken Studio stated on A Space for the Unbound official social media accounts that PQube Games had allegedly taken advantage of Toge Productions and Mojiken Studio to obtain diversity funds from "a well-known gaming console platform", a grant fund reserved for assisting under-represented game developers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Information about the funds was then withheld by PQube Games to “negotiate the increase of their revenue share.”[15] They denied the allegations, stating that Toge Productions had imposed unreasonable revisions to their agreement terms and that the allegations were the aftermath of Toge Productions' failure to reach the desired agreement. As a result of the conflict, Toge Productions decided to postpone the initial release of the game.[16][17]
The conflict was successfully resolved after Toge Productions, Mojiken Studio, PQube Games, and Chorus Worldwide jointly reached an agreement. In the agreement, PQube Games had provided their grant fund as previously promised and returned the publishing rights to Toge Productions, with the global publishing rights for the console version handed over to Chorus Worldwide.[18][17]
After the agreement, the game's developers released a new trailer as part of Nintendo's Indie World Showcase video.[19] In the trailer video, it was also announced that A Space for the Unbound will be released worldwide on January 19, 2023.[20] American video game publisher Serenity Forge released physical copies of the game and a collector's edition, which contains an artbook, on the Q1 period of 2024.[21][22] An upcoming mobile version on iOS was announced by Toge Productions on October 8, 2024.[23]
A Space for the Unbound received "generally favorable" reviews, according to review aggregate website Metacritic.[32]
Rock Paper Shotgun's Rachel Watts said that the game "takes a supernatural teen drama [and] gives it real heart," and called its release "a wonderful start to 2023."[3]RPGFan's Audra Bowling felt that the game succeeded in blending both despair and anxiety with themes of hope and healing, and that it could help players see their lives from a new perspective.[2]Nintendo Life's Lowell Bell felt that the game's length was padded out by unnecessary challenges, but still recommend it in a positive review for its touching story.[4]
Eurogamer's Chris Tapsell called the game "magic" and said that "in many cases you will be deeply, maybe profoundly, moved."[27]TouchArcade's Shaun Musgrave praised the game's support for the Nintendo Switch's touchscreen during dialogue sequences, and said it was "one of the best narrative driven indie games I've played."[31]Nintendo World Report's Joe DeVader felt it was a "must play" for people who enjoyed narrative experiences in video games.[28]
Awards
A Space for the Unbound appeared on lists of the best games of 2023 by Kotaku[33] and Inverse.[34]
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↑ 洋ナシ (June 28, 2020). "インドネシアの片田舎を舞台に、少年少女が終末の謎に迫るADV『A Space for the Unbound 心に咲く花』"[BitSummit Gaiden is the focus of this work: ADV "A Space for the Unbound: Flowers that Bloom in the Heart" is set in the Indonesian countryside and follows a boy and girl who approach the mystery of the end of the world]. IGN Japan (in Japanese). Retrieved November 14, 2024.
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