![]() This is the first book I’ve read by Tom Cox so, unlike some other reviewers, I’m not familiar with his nonfiction writing and as I usually scroll past images of dogs or cats on Instagram or Twitter I’ve not come across him on social media either. A landscape threatened by property development and superfast train corridors and speckled by the pylons whose feet have been buried across the moor. Connections are forged and broken across generations, but only the landscape itself can link them together. In 2019, a pair of lodgers discover a one-eyed rag doll hidden in the walls of their crumbling and neglected home. Two decades later, a couple of teenagers disturb a body on the local golf course. In the late sixties a Californian musician blows through Underhill where he writes a set of haunting folk songs that will earn him a group of obsessive fans and a cult following. But the fortunes of one West Country village are watched over and irreversibly etched into its history as an omniscient, somewhat crabby, presence keeps track of village life. Villages are full of tales: some are forgotten while others become a part of local folklore. So much in all these lives, so many stories, even in this small place. It will never end, I suspect, even when it does. And I sometimes felt cheated by the controls, with Soli diving headfirst into an obstacle that kills him while I was simply trying to position him right on the edge of some safe area.There’s so much to know. But there are also sections where the difficulty shot up a little too fast. There are fast-travel options to move quickly between areas, which cuts down on the backtracking. It might take a try or five to move through some of the areas, but the game clearly wants players to react quickly and then enjoy the feeling of solving a challenge in a single try. The actual platforming in Unbound: Worlds Apart is good and precise most of the time. The game does not feature direct combat, but the portal powers can be used to destroy evil creatures that block paths. As the game progresses there are 10 alternate worlds with their own mechanical changes to use. The other world can come with a quick that stops time, creating new possibilities based on what happens outside the bubble. He can also shift to bring in platforms where there were previously non (enemies also appear this way). Soli quickly gets used to flipping gravity to move on ceilings and to navigate underwater. Inside this bubble, the rules of another world apply and that will allow players to reach new areas and to deal with enemies. Very quickly Soli becomes able to open up a bubble around him using the touch of a button. The main attraction of Unbound: Worlds Apart is the gameplay, especially the way it uses portals to add complexity to classic platforming challenges. The writing does its job, but I never felt immersed in the world and, apart from the protagonist and his companion, I never really cared whether anyone survived or not. Along the way, he interacts with older but not necessarily wiser characters and creates a bond with the cat-like Leyrah, the only survivor of another world who wants to make sure that Soli succeeds. ![]() ![]() The main character is Soli, a young mage who is quickly thrown into a quest to try and save his world from demons that can move between realities using crystal-powered portals. ![]() I played it on the PC using Steam, but a player can also pick it up on the Nintendo Switch, as well the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One. The platformer is both developed and published by Alien Pixel Studios. And this is just a small sample of how portals to different worlds will allow the player to move through the fantasy universe of Unbound: Worlds Apart. It only took around 5 tries before I mastered how and when to flip gravity to power this graceful flight. A little while later I float, aided by the same other world portal, between lines of poisonous plants, finally settling on some cleared ground. A spider with too many eyes blocks my path forward, so I move forward, enveloping him in another world, force him to feel the effects of flipped gravity, and then drop him into some spikes.
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