A Space For The Unbound is a story about the clash between the dream and reality. Our imaginations can be so vivid and beautiful. Yet, every writer, creator has times where they feel that their work is insignificant and unneeded in the larger scope. “It is not going to sell,” “my family demands me to be obedient”, “I am not fulfilling the standards of the society”. Lamenting in the process of these thoughts, we lose our voice and we open a prison inside our own minds.
Nirmala is a young girl who wants to tell a story about a princess with the power of miracles, but she is struggling to find the right words. Her real-life circumstances of being bullied by her classmates and being abused by her father is making her lose her voice. A part of her wants to tell a story where empathy triumphs all, another part of her wants the princess to take revenge on all the creatures who took advantage of her, and another part of her is just confused and lost.
You play as Atma, Nirmala’s best friend, the one who can help her find the story she wants to tell. Nirmala, of course, is not the only person with a story to tell. A core part of the game is to interact with strangers in the town and find out about the stories they have as well.
Sometimes, we are only able to see and judge each other on the surface and feel like just a data point on the performance report. But A Space For The Unbound is a reminder that behind the stereotypical labels, is a human, each with their own complexity and potentially struggling with a painful thought. One of the supernatural powers you have as Atma is space dive, where you can dive into other people’s minds and help them relieve their pain.
After playing the short 35 minutes demo of A Space For The Unbound, I loved it. As expected from the studio behind Coffee Talk and When the past was around, the demo was beautiful, concise, and polished. While living in the big city is nice and convenient, sometimes I feel nostalgic towards the rural area I lived in during my childhood, and A Space For The Unbound makes me feel reminiscent of it, a reminder of good old times.
The demo also did a fantastic job of making me feel curious about what will happen next. There is a mysterious girl in the background who is seemingly watching you, a comet that everyone in the town has a different interpretation to, and what really happened in the end? So many questions, so few answers…
While the theme of overcoming depression and anxiety has been told many times before, I nevertheless believe that this game is a necessary story to tell because it is so easy to fall into the prison of our own minds. A Space for the Unbound is a game that I will be wishlisting and anticipate its release.
This article was only possible thanks to The Indie Houses and The Indie Game Collective for providing us with the demo and the opportunity to cover these great games!
You can play A Space For The Unbound on Steam here.