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Is That Vivi?
Funded through Kickstarter and developed by Romanian indie Alien Pixel Studios, Unbound: Worlds Apart is a metroidvania first released in 2021 where the player controls Soli, a tiny wizard who wears a long red cloak that hides his whole face expect his bright eyes. Soli’s design is strongly evocative of Final Fantasy IX’s Vivi, and he’s as silent, intriguing and charismatic a character as the beloved black mage.
Gameplay And Plot
The indie game ecosystem is inundated with metroidvanias, so it can be hard for a new title to stand out unless it has something unique to offer. Most of the time, Unbound: Worlds Apart combines lots of elements that are easy to compare with something else: from the character design that looks remarkably similar to Vivi, to the art and colour scheme that looks a bit like that beautiful super saturated aesthetic of Ori and the Blind Forest (although not as stunning), to the well known emphasis on platforming common to the genre, Unbound perhaps isn’t the best at anything but it is very good at almost everything. Its weakest point – and this seems to be a common thought about the game – is its narrative element. The story is practically just there as a formality. It is as simple as it can be, characters aren’t flashed out in any significant way, there is a bad guy with a tiny bit of backstory in lore you can collect as optionals, but that’s about it. There isn’t any humour either, like in the Guacamelee series (a pair of gems, by the way, if you haven’t heard of them!), so don’t expect much on the storytelling front.
But not all games need to have a plot that could be adapted into a Hollywood film, do they? What Unbound does is deliver an undeniably fun game with really tight controls and an innovative way to introduce traversal. As all metroidvanias, you will be doing a lot of revisiting of old areas that contained an alternative path you couldn’t reach before. Most games introduce the capability to access new areas via staples of the genre: double jumps, wall climbs, some way to crash walls, floors or ceilings in order to open a passage, a dash or float skill. Unbound does that as well, but Soli’s abilities are manifested in the form of portals. Thematically, that’s what his skill is: he can open portals to other worlds. And in those alternate worlds, he is sometimes big and fast, or sometimes he is a heavy rock which stops him from being blown away by strong winds, or it’s a world with inverted gravity, or one where otherwise docile creatures act aggressively. The portals are always opened in a circular area around Soli, and their effects only affect that area. This creates really visually interesting situations where parts of the screen act and look one way, and the rest behaves the opposite. This has allowed designers to create some pretty unique challenges for players to overcome. Especially in optional areas that have a pretty high level of difficulty from the need for surgically precise platforming.
Difficulty
There is a wide range of difficulty in the platform metroidvania genre, from the way too easy to the overwhelmingly unforgiving. Unbound only gets a bit brutal in two optional areas you might miss entirely unless you’re a completionist or you’re going for trophies / achievements. Those two may make some players rage quit a few times. Otherwise, it’s moderate. Bosses can be a bit tricky, but they don’t come close to the crazier titles where everything is shooting at you at the same time or where the tiniest mistake makes you instantly die. Soli does get killed with any one hit, but you will find avoiding danger not that hard. Also, thankfully, he always respawns very close to where he died, like in other ‘trial and death’ games such as Ori and Limbo.
Verdict
Unbound: Worlds Apart gets a lot of love from the gaming community. Online forums for indie games often mention it as a hidden gem, and I agree. It’s a short game for sure, probably less than 10 hours for the main story, but it’s neither too short nor bloated. It doesn’t have the clunky controls that can all but ruin a platform heavy game and it’s pretty to look at. I don’t know what the future holds for the studio that developed it, but this was definitely a success for them.