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A Space for the Unbound
Cover featuring the main characters Raya and Atma
Developer(s)	Mojiken Studio
Publisher(s)	Toge Productions Chorus Worldwide
Director(s)	Dimas Novan Delfiano
Producer(s)	Eka Pramudita M.
Designer(s)	Eka Pramudita M. Elwin Lysander
Programmer(s)	Ahmad Fadlillah
Artist(s)	Dimas Novan Delfiano Roland Melvin Z. Wildan Rahmat R.
Writer(s)	Brigitta Rena Galuh Elsa A. N.
Composer(s)	Masdito "Ittou" Bachtiar Christabel Annora Bambang Iswanto
Engine	Unity
Platform(s)	Nintendo Switch PlayStation 4 PlayStation 5 Windows Xbox One Xbox Series X/S
Release	January 19, 2023
Genre(s)	Adventure
Mode(s)	Single-player

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 the experience of growing 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, particularly on the game's solid sense of place and heartfelt story.

Gameplay

A Space for the Unbound is a two-dimensional side-scrolling video game. The player controls Atma, an Indonesian high school student getting close to graduation with his girlfriend Raya. Throughout the game, the player can move left or right and can interact with people, objects, and animals by directing Atma to walk or run toward them. Most of the game is at a slow pace and involves exploring the town, talking with people, and picking up objects to move them through point-and-click gameplay to solve puzzles. The game features several minigames such as practicing kick-ups, dodging falling objects with button inputs, and fighting minigames that involve pressing a sequence of buttons in a time limit to attack and timed button presses to block attacks. Various game sections also involve stealth mechanics and cross-examination scenes similar to Ace Attorney. The game also features some cats, which the player can pet and name.

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. Solving the puzzles during the space dive can affect the person's point of view and help them deal with their trauma, which allows the player to continue to story. Atma also obtains a magic wand later in the game and gains the ability to "rift dive" to another time in a location, which is used to solve puzzles and advance the plot.

Plot

Atma and his girlfriend Raya, high school students in an Indonesian suburban city, create a bucket list of activities and start by 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 "space dive" and enter people's minds. Each dream as he drowns while trying to save Nirmala and then wakes 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 space diving 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, accidentally kills Admiral, takes the cake, and knocks out Atma. After Atma catches up to Erik and space dives 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 the 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 space dive. Atma finds Raya on a bridge, where she seemingly kills Lulu and reveals her intent to control the town. When Atma attempts to space dive 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 space dive 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 space diving 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 space dives 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 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 space diving 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.

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. 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." As such, the game was heavily inspired by the works of Japanese filmmaker Makoto Shinkai, and the setting of the game is inspired by locations in Surabaya, the city Dimas grew up in. He noted that "every generation has its own memories and is our memories and we want to preserve that before we completely forget about it."

The game heavily features anxiety and depression in the story, and the developers consulted professionals for their input in telling it appropriately. The space diving mechanic was created to help explore these themes in more detail.

Release and publishing conflict

A Space for the Unbound was announced to be released in late 2020. Chorus Worldwide would also be the publisher of the video game in Japan. However, the developers postponed the release to the Q3 period of 2021 in an annoucement on August 25, 2020. British video game publisher PQube Games was also announced to be the global publisher of the console version of A Space for the Unbound. In April 2021, the game was announced to be released sometime in 2022.

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.

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.” 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.

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, returned the publishing rights to Toge Productions, and handed over the global publishing rights for the console version to Chorus Worldwide.

After the agreement, the game's developers released a new trailer as part of Nintendo's Indie World Showcase video. In the trailer video, it was also announced that A Space for the Unbound will be released worldwide on January 19, 2023. 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. An upcoming mobile version on iOS was announced by Toge Productions on October 8, 2024.

Reception

Review scores

Publication	Score
Eurogamer	Recommended
Nintendo Life
Nintendo World Report	8.5/10
Push Square
RPGFan	89%
The Guardian	5/5
TouchArcade	4.5/5

A Space for the Unbound received "generally favorable" reviews according to review aggregate website Metacritic.

Reviewers provided positive critical reception upon its release for its visuals and setting, which contains "subtle but effective" references to Indonesian culture. The game's pixel art style and soundtrack was described by GamesRadar's Hope Bellingham as "your favourite anime and Game Boy Advance game rolled into one". Reviewers also praised the variety of the soundtrack's genres, which include lo-fi music and keroncong, a traditional Indonesian folk music genre. Rachel Watts of Rock Paper Shotgun called the game "part sci-fi drama, part high school romance", while Bellingham identified the game as slice of life.

EuroGamer's Chris Tapsell found the game's setting successful in its portrayal of both universal experiences and Indonesian culture as well as its confluence of mundane and familiar activities with paranormal and fantastical phenomena. Rachel Watts associated the setting to magical realism, a common theme of magical realism in Mojiken Studio games. The "space dive" mechanic, which critics compared to Psychonauts, was unexpected for a slice-of-life game.

The gameplay, meanwhile, received mixed reactions for its execution. Lex Luddy from TheGamer juxtaposed the slow pace of the game with the intense timing of quick time events in battle, which could have been more forgiving. One game section where the player must quickly dodge objects falling from the sky becomes difficult to do precisely, as the player must double tap to run in one direction. The variety of the gameplay mechanics, however, which include references to Street Fighter II and Ace Attorney, maintains the game's pace and prevents the game from being "a bit of a chore", Watts says in their review. Nintendo World Report's Joe DeVader and Nintendo Life's Lowell Bell, who described the gameplay as that of a standard adventure game, felt that the game's length was padded out by unnecessary tasks. The reviewers still recommend the game in a positive review for its touching story.

Reviewers praised the narrative of the game for its careful approach in tackling trauma and mental health. 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. represented the characters' emotional experiences However, some reviewers have commented on the plot's structure. The game starts off with a slow pace as a series of short-term objectives that lack a particular narrative but eventually develop a particular direction. Pierro Serra from Adventure Gamers also considered the first few hours of the game confusing for Atma's contradictory interactions with other characters, although a particular objective and side quests in the bucket list provided direction to progress the story. Rebekah Valentine of IGN perceived this confusion positively, as the structure's "sense of underlying mystery" urges the player to continue playing to uncover the plot. Chris Tapsell remarked that the eventual incoherence of the plot was necessary and that the game has "no tidy answers" except if viewed as a whole.

Awards

A Space for the Unbound appeared on lists of the best games of 2023 by Kotaku and Inverse.

References

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External links

• A Space for the Unbound at Chorus Worldwide
• A Space for the Unbound at Toge Productions
• Prototype download at Itch.io

• 2023 video games
• Adventure games
• Art games
• Dystopian video games
• Indie games
• Mystery adventure games
• Nintendo Switch games
• PlayStation 4 games
• PlayStation 5 games
• Retro-style video games
• Single-player video games
• Toge Productions games
• Video games about mental health
• Video games about suicide
• Video games developed in Indonesia
• Video games featuring female protagonists
• Video games set in Indonesia
• Video games set in the 1990s
• Windows games
• Xbox One games
• Xbox Series X and Series S games