Unlike in most games that you see you teleport wholescale from one world to another, here Soli’s portals manifest in a circle around him like an aura, changing the environment within it.
Unbound worlds apart spider windows#
You can hear the scattered dripping of water and a slight murmur of wind over top of your own footsteps as you learn the ins and outs of the game’s central mechanic through small dialogue windows and simple challenges. You find yourself trapped in a dank underground cavern as the music ceases. You now have – with the keyboard or the trigger buttons on your controller – the ability to conjure localized portals to the other world at will. Upon contact with the crystal, you seem to absorb its power and the real tutorial begins. There is a brief and emotionally powerful interaction with your mother before the earth splits apart and you drop into the tunnels below and encounter another glowing crystal. Suddenly you're back in control of Soli, surrounded by a village in flames. The gate shatters and a portal to a dark and eerie wasteland opens up peering out from it, two flaming eyes appear. There are levers to activate to open doors, and blocks to push to help you jump onto higher ledges, but the action doesn't really kick in for a few minutes more.ĭuring a cut-scene the ceremony begins – and instantly goes wrong. You can interact with them with a press of a button, and each has some additional details about your world. You can use either a gamepad or keyboard to run left or right as you pass members of your village, similarly robed but older and taller. The wooden huts scroll past behind Soli as the foreground shows a big stone gate with a floating crystal suspended in it. You can hear the babbling of a creek, the ever-present howling of wind, and the chirping of birds and insects off in the distance. A piano plinks away a pleasing if ominous little tune in the background.
Unbound wastes no time introducing you to a peaceful, serene setting tinged with magic.
Tonight that occasion is being marked with a ritual in the center of town, and you're to attend – after you find your little visiting lynx friend, that is. But shortly before your birth, something terrible happened and the gates all had to be sealed. It turns out your people once used the power of crystals to open portals to other worlds and travel around freely. They share a moment before the creature takes off, dropping you into the game with control of Soli and a simple goal: Follow that animal!Īs you race around in pursuit of your new animal friend, you learn that the village has been built around a magical gate. Involuntarily he opens a small portal to another realm, from which a magical lynx-like creature leaps out. The game opens up as Soli, a loner among the other kids in the village, experiences a burst of power emanating from inside him. Soli is a little red-robed monk boy growing up in a mystical-looking forest village, a tiny flame flickering at the end of his pointed hood as he runs around this hand-painted and incredibly stylish environment. One such hybrid that combines twitch-based gaming with more cerebral elements is Alien Pixel Studios' Unbound: Worlds Apart, a highly challenging puzzle-platformer that's so charming and elegant, it feels like it's destined to earn a place in the pantheon of greats alongside its classic inspirations. The “Metroidvania” subgenre (so named for its origins in Metroid and Castlevania) is arguably more popular now than ever before, as developers continue to innovate on the concepts of side-scrolling action and puzzle solving by some charismatic little character double-jumping and dashing across expansive 2D open worlds, often gated by abilities you have yet to unlock.
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