This review contains spoilers
A Space for the Unbound is a heartfelt story wrapped around gorgeous pixel art, a nice soundtrack, but frustrating gameplay, extremely on the nose hints that ruin surprises, and padding.
Ultimately this is a "story game", it is the main focus, and as such is the most important thing for this game. Overall, the game tells a beautiful story about inner struggles, depression, anxiety, self reflection, abuse, loss, bullying, and more. The main character's struggles are sure to be relatable, especially if you play this while you're still in school.
The main issue I have with the story itself is that every hint is so on the nose, you'll know most twists and turns before they happen, while not really looking out for or thinking about trying to solve the game's story. This section will contain spoilers:
The game opens with the South Star Princess dying, yellow (warm colored) flower petals used for magic, and a dark colored cat. One chapter later you hear of the North Star Princess, but you don't know much about her. You then see Raya's light blue (cold colored) flower petals used for magic, and she has a light colored cat. Complete opposites, totally not the North Star Princess. You know Nirmala wrote these stories, so either you are in her story, or Nirmala has a new identity and taken on the role as the North Star Princess. The game reveales both of these are true. Shocker.
This goes for a lot of the twists in the story. They're always very clearly explained before they even happen, and the only sense of mystery the game has comes from the game realizing they're being too obvious, so they have a cat tell you very ominously that "You don't know what's happening, fool, I am very mysteryous, nothing is as it seems". Then in the end the cat just gives up and starts explaining that it didn't want to be mysterious after all, they're all just here to help. This part of the narrative just felt and still feels out of place even after completing the game.
The hints are so on the nose, that when you launch the game, the first thing you see is a trigger-warning list. "Animal death", I haven't even played the game yet, and my first thought is "The main character's cat will die, ok". This alone ruined any emotional impact this scene would have had otherwise.
Other than that, the story itself is mostly fantastic, and handles the heavy topics with grace. The only thing that really took me out of the immersion was that they made the teenage characters censor themselves during fights. A late teenager would not censor themselves and say "You're such a B-!" when they're in a fight. It's not how people would speak, especially not a high school jock who isn't afraid to beat up people he doesn't like. This happens fairly often, so I thought I should bring it up.
Writing aside, the game's biggest issue is the padding. Everything you do has padding. I think the developers were scared that just writing a good story wouldn't be enough, so they needed to insert a ridiculous amount of steps to do literally antything in the game, and it's simply not fun.
For example, you need to go buy a cake, but you need to run around every part of town to gather each of the ingrediants. Fair enough. Actually, this wasn't enough, the chef is having a mental breakdown, so you need to sabotage her dream-food by pouring oil into it. The steps finding the oil alone is:
Leave dream > Find Oil > Can't buy it, so you find a secret password to get free oil > You need your own container > Find container > Actually the container is dirty, find the one place in town you can clean it lol > Get free oil > Finally sabotage the dish.
This was one of three foods you have to sabotage before the chef will help you. So to get the cake you need to run around town a minimum of 3 times.
Doing this adds nothing to the story, you can barely call it gameplay, and it makes for an incredibly dragged out experience. It's simply not fun to run around the whole town looking for a random button to press, often with no hint. If it was just a few times, sure, but it happens almost every time you need to get anything done.
The worst part is that you can't pick up items before you need them. For example that container you need for the oil, I found that ages before I needed it in a quest, but I wasn't allowed to pick it up.
Adding these extra steps is something the game does any chance it gets. You need to break into the school? Cool, find a hammer to break wall (we'll skip every step it takes to find the hammer) > Run back to the wall > Break it > Actually you can't break it now, run for 3 whole minutes to the same wall in the past, then break it > Run for 3 minutes to get back > Finally, breaking it in the past made it decay, so it's broken for real now. What did this add? Another 6 minutes of holding left on the control stick? It wasn't a puzzle because the game literally told you to do it. It's just frustrating.
I think if you take away this padding, keep the missions and dialogue generally the same, but without all the extra steps that add nothing, you'd probably save 3 or 4 hours of the game, and nothing would be changed otherwise.
Something else that is baffeling to me is when the game introduces combat. You have a quest to beat the "Future Fighter" high score. This is the first time you will fight. Funnily enough, this high score is the absolute most difficult fighting you will do in the entire game. Why make the hardest fight the first? Everything after that is easier by a long shot. It is honestly ridiculous. Sure, you can try it once and skip doing the high score, but the high score isn't difficult to begin with, I did it first try, but it's still weird that they choose to make it the first fight the most difficult.
This review is getting quite long, so I will end it here. In conclusion, the game features a fantastic story, gorgeous pixel art, nice music, but ultimately fails in the gameplay department. They should have toned down the gameplay and settled for a shorter playstime more focused on the story instead of tedious tasks, and they should be a bit more careful with the hints. Not saying a game can't be "figured out" before everything is revealed, but it should not be figured out without trying to pay attention to the finer details and without giving it much thought. I am glad I played it, I overall enjoyed the story a lot, but I can only hope they learn from their mistakes when their next game comes out.
Ultimately this is a "story game", it is the main focus, and as such is the most important thing for this game. Overall, the game tells a beautiful story about inner struggles, depression, anxiety, self reflection, abuse, loss, bullying, and more. The main character's struggles are sure to be relatable, especially if you play this while you're still in school.
The main issue I have with the story itself is that every hint is so on the nose, you'll know most twists and turns before they happen, while not really looking out for or thinking about trying to solve the game's story. This section will contain spoilers:
The game opens with the South Star Princess dying, yellow (warm colored) flower petals used for magic, and a dark colored cat. One chapter later you hear of the North Star Princess, but you don't know much about her. You then see Raya's light blue (cold colored) flower petals used for magic, and she has a light colored cat. Complete opposites, totally not the North Star Princess. You know Nirmala wrote these stories, so either you are in her story, or Nirmala has a new identity and taken on the role as the North Star Princess. The game reveales both of these are true. Shocker.
This goes for a lot of the twists in the story. They're always very clearly explained before they even happen, and the only sense of mystery the game has comes from the game realizing they're being too obvious, so they have a cat tell you very ominously that "You don't know what's happening, fool, I am very mysteryous, nothing is as it seems". Then in the end the cat just gives up and starts explaining that it didn't want to be mysterious after all, they're all just here to help. This part of the narrative just felt and still feels out of place even after completing the game.
The hints are so on the nose, that when you launch the game, the first thing you see is a trigger-warning list. "Animal death", I haven't even played the game yet, and my first thought is "The main character's cat will die, ok". This alone ruined any emotional impact this scene would have had otherwise.
Other than that, the story itself is mostly fantastic, and handles the heavy topics with grace. The only thing that really took me out of the immersion was that they made the teenage characters censor themselves during fights. A late teenager would not censor themselves and say "You're such a B-!" when they're in a fight. It's not how people would speak, especially not a high school jock who isn't afraid to beat up people he doesn't like. This happens fairly often, so I thought I should bring it up.
Writing aside, the game's biggest issue is the padding. Everything you do has padding. I think the developers were scared that just writing a good story wouldn't be enough, so they needed to insert a ridiculous amount of steps to do literally antything in the game, and it's simply not fun.
For example, you need to go buy a cake, but you need to run around every part of town to gather each of the ingrediants. Fair enough. Actually, this wasn't enough, the chef is having a mental breakdown, so you need to sabotage her dream-food by pouring oil into it. The steps finding the oil alone is:
Leave dream > Find Oil > Can't buy it, so you find a secret password to get free oil > You need your own container > Find container > Actually the container is dirty, find the one place in town you can clean it lol > Get free oil > Finally sabotage the dish.
This was one of three foods you have to sabotage before the chef will help you. So to get the cake you need to run around town a minimum of 3 times.
Doing this adds nothing to the story, you can barely call it gameplay, and it makes for an incredibly dragged out experience. It's simply not fun to run around the whole town looking for a random button to press, often with no hint. If it was just a few times, sure, but it happens almost every time you need to get anything done.
The worst part is that you can't pick up items before you need them. For example that container you need for the oil, I found that ages before I needed it in a quest, but I wasn't allowed to pick it up.
Adding these extra steps is something the game does any chance it gets. You need to break into the school? Cool, find a hammer to break wall (we'll skip every step it takes to find the hammer) > Run back to the wall > Break it > Actually you can't break it now, run for 3 whole minutes to the same wall in the past, then break it > Run for 3 minutes to get back > Finally, breaking it in the past made it decay, so it's broken for real now. What did this add? Another 6 minutes of holding left on the control stick? It wasn't a puzzle because the game literally told you to do it. It's just frustrating.
I think if you take away this padding, keep the missions and dialogue generally the same, but without all the extra steps that add nothing, you'd probably save 3 or 4 hours of the game, and nothing would be changed otherwise.
Something else that is baffeling to me is when the game introduces combat. You have a quest to beat the "Future Fighter" high score. This is the first time you will fight. Funnily enough, this high score is the absolute most difficult fighting you will do in the entire game. Why make the hardest fight the first? Everything after that is easier by a long shot. It is honestly ridiculous. Sure, you can try it once and skip doing the high score, but the high score isn't difficult to begin with, I did it first try, but it's still weird that they choose to make it the first fight the most difficult.
This review is getting quite long, so I will end it here. In conclusion, the game features a fantastic story, gorgeous pixel art, nice music, but ultimately fails in the gameplay department. They should have toned down the gameplay and settled for a shorter playstime more focused on the story instead of tedious tasks, and they should be a bit more careful with the hints. Not saying a game can't be "figured out" before everything is revealed, but it should not be figured out without trying to pay attention to the finer details and without giving it much thought. I am glad I played it, I overall enjoyed the story a lot, but I can only hope they learn from their mistakes when their next game comes out.