The puzzles are genuinely creative and require you to think carefully about the tools at your disposal. Those mechanics were challenging and different, with enemies and obstacles shifting in the shadows between worlds, but felt like it ended all too swiftly. Even though Unbound: Worlds Apart isn’t a particularly short game, I think it would’ve been worth extending the section of map where light reacts to your movements. There are some portals that you don’t spend a lot of time with. The portals introduce interesting elements of the game world in a way that I would’ve happily continued playing for a lot longer to push what those mechanics could do even further. The world you connect to, and by extension the mechanics it introduces, changes depending on where you are on the map. One plays with light in a unique way, lending a new edge to Soli’s relationship to monsters lurking in the shadows.

One reverses gravity so that you can jump between worlds in an ersatz form of flight. Some transform Soli or the creatures in one world into something else. These begin with mechanics that aren’t that dissimilar to ones you’ll find in other fantasy platformers – for instance, super strength – while others are more original. Your primary controls are running, jumping and opening portals that impact your surroundings in a variety of ways.

The game takes the form of a 2D puzzle platformer. You play as Soli, a young mage whose ability to open portals between worlds is tested when your community is attacked by a mysterious evil from a different reality. Unbound: Worlds Apart plunges you into a multiverse of chaos from the opening scene.

Unbound worlds apart metacritic