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dkirschner's A Space for the Unbound (PC)
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| [November 12, 2024 03:47:08 AM]
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This is a narrative 2d sidescrolling game, pretty close to a point-and-click, but with a little more action. It's set in rural Indonesia in the 1990s, which was one of my favorite things about it, just the different setting and different perspective to offer. Some women have hijabs on, which is something you don't see in games. Characters dress is reflective of the culture, with the sandals, the uniforms of various people, and so on. It's got a neat story, often touching and sweet, but also serious and sad. It's about a couple high school kids and the end of the world, tackles death, grief, guilt, suicide, hope, community, and more. The pixel art has a great style.
Gameplay-wise, things are really simple, and I think this contributed to my overall gripe about it, that it is overly long and padded. You walk around the town where the game takes place talking to people. You'll get objectives and solve really easy point-and-click style puzzles, finding objects to use here and there to progress. Often, you'll get the object you need, whereupon you will then have to go find three more things. Collect those, and then you will need to go get three more things. It's rarely exciting, but they did try to add some action into the game in the form of "combat," which involves a button timing minigame to attack and block opponents.
A central mechanic is "spacediving," which is when the main character goes into the minds of other characters to solve their problems (by doing some easy puzzles). This was interesting at first, then it became tedious (how many people do I have to spacedive?!), and then at the end it added some complexity to it with the ability to spacedive and go back in time, which led to these inception moments, where you go inside someone's head, then go back in time, then go back some more, then go back some more, and you have like four timelines inside this person's head. As you make changes in one, things change in the others, and you need to figure out how to tweak various things to fix the person. Those last couple spacedives were the most interesting. I wish the game had more complex puzzle solving throughout!
So, things are definitely slow moving; the game goes at a deliberate pace. The fact that the gameplay is easy, repetitive, and fairly dull doesn't help when the story is also being slowly doled out, or, especially toward the end, when it repeats over and over what is happening to one of the characters and drags the finale. But it's a good story; otherwise, I would have put the game down. Still, it shouldn't have been as long as it was. Recommend? Eh, probably only if you really like these kinds of games.
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dkirschner's A Space for the Unbound (PC)
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Current Status: Finished playing
GameLog started on: Friday 25 October, 2024
GameLog closed on: Monday 11 November, 2024 |
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This is the only GameLog for A Space for the Unbound. |
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