A Space for the Unbound, a unique adventure game set in 1990s Indonesia, has a surprising amount to do in the quaint, colorful town of Loka. Most of your time will be spent assisting an even more colorful cast as a high school student named Atma through five increasingly fantastical chapters as an overarching plot of depression expands outward – a plot that never strays too deeply into the melancholic, but handles the subject matter with poignant grace. Finding the correct items to give to the correct person, solving myriad little puzzles and mini-games within the minds of residents, and participating in this touching narrative will take up more than just a single afternoon, unlike many other games of the genre. So let’s talk about how long it takes to beat A Space for the Unbound.
How Long It Takes to Beat A Space for the Unbound
A single playthrough without completing all the side activities will run you about 10 hours depending on your proficiency with logic-based puzzles. The game holds your hand through most of the adventure-esque segments. When you’re finding a dog’s toy so it will stop chasing after a cat or convincing a chocolate-obsessed boy to share so you can make a Black Forest gateau for your girlfriend, helpful characters give you a clear direction to go in. These requests pad out the runtime quite a bit. However, when the protagonist Atma “spacedives” into people’s minds, some challenging puzzles await, especially late in the game. An algebra puzzle stumped me for half an hour, but someone who didn’t fail high school math might clear it in a minute or two.
At the beginning of the game, Atma and his girlfriend Raya make a bucket list, which includes a handful of side activities. Collecting 20 bottle caps scattered throughout each chapter, petting all the fluffy animals in the game, (There are a lot of cats to pet!) and getting the high score in a timing-based Street Fighter parody will extend the runtime a little, meaning it’ll take you 9 – 12 hours to fully complete A Space for the Unbound. The game makes it clear when these side activities will become unavailable near the conclusion. Once complete, there isn’t much reason to replay A Space for the Unbound unless you wish to experience the bittersweet, wonderful narrative again.
That’s everything you need to know about how long it takes to beat A Space for the Unbound!
