A Space for the Unbound Review: Editing Your Slice of Life in Rural Indonesia

The central mechanism of A Space for the Unbound is a magical red book that allows one of game’s main characters to “dive” into the hearts of troubled citizens. There, their feelings and problems manifest as visual metaphors, which can in turn be interacted with and solved in classic adventure-game style, like convincing someone to remain a pastry chef in the real world by visiting their mental kitchen and sabotaging their “dream” dishes.

This pixel art game’s prologue—during which the player is introduced to Atma, a kind-hearted teen who’s befriended a young creative wunderkind named Nirmala—makes his specific type of manipulation even more explicit: Atma’s power is to edit. It’s only appropriate, then, that the sumptuous and at times surreal A Space for the Unbound feels so tightly streamlined, a seven-hour slice of life across a bustling four-block span of a fictional Indonesian city in the 1990s.

Nothing about A Space for the Unbound is wasted. Even the optional fetch quests are designed to get players to run back and forth across the town, to familiarize themselves with its uneven streets and residents, and to remember where they may have once seen a bitter melon or a discarded bike, should they ever encounter someone down the road in need of one.

At worst, Mojiken Studio’s game may initially come across as heavy-handed. Loka, where the game takes place, means “the world,” and at a certain point it becomes that. But A Space for the Unbound isn’t trying to be subtle, and where it’s blunt, it’s deliberately so. Raya, Atma’s girlfriend, casually demonstrates at the end of the first chapter that while he may have the power to edit, she has the WandaVision-like ability to rewrite reality itself.

This power dynamic is fascinating to play through, particularly because Atma isn’t trying to stop Raya so much as better understand and help her. At times, A Space for the Unbound too conspicuously recalls other games—from Yakuza’s exploration of Kamurochō to Ace Attorney’s objection-filled courtroom scenes—but it’s refreshing that it doesn’t have an obvious villain. The conflicts here arise from trying to make peace with those who once broke Raya’s heart.

Though the game uses its own fairy tale about a princess and her cat as the ur-text upon which all conflicts are founded, its structure borrows heavily from metafiction, with each chapter self-referentially building upon the last. Perhaps inevitably, the game’s opening chapters are consequently its weakest and easiest, especially where they rely on an amnesiac trope.

But even here, the blending of the magical and mundane goes a long way, as with a movie date where, if you choose, you can “accidentally” have Atma touch Raya’s hand if you both reach for popcorn at the same time. Part of the game’s charm is in the way it gives as much weight to building a home for a stray cat as it does playing a deadly game of hide-and-seek with a werebeast. After all, you never know which memories will linger. That said, practically speaking, once you start crossdiving—that is, a dive within a dive—and utilizing a power to influence not just hearts but time itself, the gameplay is more able to hold its own with the plot.

Above all, though, A Space for the Unbound triumphs in capturing what’s between the lines of the story: the life-and-death emotions of Raya. The game’s not afraid to peer at her faults right alongside everyone else’s, and if, as one character puts it, “The most perfect world is one with imperfection,” then, emotionally speaking, this is a pretty perfect game.

This game was reviewed with code provided by Toge Productions.