Unbound: Worlds Apart

I followed the development of this game since its kickstarter and the demo it included. When I played the demo it was a relaxing and a really cute and beautiful experience with some nice and creative puzzles on top. So I expected a bit more of the same from the full game. Boy was I wrong. While the game still is a beautiful and cute experience it also has become extremely challenging (at least for me) in several places and the creativity the devs had when developing the different portal mechanics simply blew me away. Luckily it is up to you how you want to play the game. You will have the opportunity to collect missing villagers, scattered throughout the game and if you want to collect every missing villager in the game you should prepare for some really challenging areas and several moments of "how the hell am I supposed to do this?". However if you don't like such challenges you could just follow the main path leaving out those villagers you consider to be too hard to get and you will still be able to finish the game ... but you might miss out some of the lore then because some of the lore is connected directly to the villagers. Each villager holds a piece of the story and if you collect everything you will be able to read the full story. Having collected the full story also will provide a path to a different ending ... so there really is an incentive to find every (or at least most) of those villagers. The different portals inside of the game really offer a lot of variety and with each new portal you will have to find different ways to solve the many puzzles the game throws at you. Everything in the game is beautiful: the artstyle, the animations, the setting, the parallax scrolling, the lightning, the sound effects and the soundtrack - pure perfection. It is also worth mentioning that you can rebind keys as well as controller buttons - so you can set the controls the way you like them. Five stars with every one of them well deserved!

I was looking for another fun platformer after playing Ori and the Blind Forest and Unbound delivers. It's a fun, short title. Not a lot of story but the puzzles are fun and it looks great. Portal mechanics are neat. Some things to note are: - There are two endings depending on your completion of the "optional" levels. I skipped the optional levels because the first was super hard and consequently I got the "bad" ending. - A controller (vs keyboard) will help out a lot - There are a few bugs that aren't show stoppers. Boss music that doesn't stop after victory, double deaths, menus that can't be navigated when you change key bindings, etc. As mentioned elsewhere auto saves occur frequently so you lose almost no time restarting the game if, say, the music glitches. - My experience on Ubuntu linux was a little frustrating as the game would lag, causing me to die even more frequently. This could possibly be a driver issue, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

This is what I needed! Challenging platformer that eliminates frustration thanks to generous checkpoints and fast travel portals around every corner.

I haven't beat Unbound yet, but I'm having a blast so far! It's like Metroid but with platforming puzzles instead of shooting. The gameplay is accessible but also challenging, the story is cute. Lots of "a-ha" moments when I figured out how to progress or get secrets. Definitely recommend Unbound to anyone who likes platforming puzzles.