A Space for the Unbound’s Developer Unravels the Game’s Biggest Unsolved Mystery

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A Space for the Unbound was one of the breakout successes of last year. Coming from a tiny studio in Indonesia, Mojiken Studio, players from around the world sat down to play the touching slice-of-life story about a high school couple dealing with mental health issues. Raya and Atma’s story is non-linear, and even once you see every part of the story, you will inevitably be left with some questions.

I was lucky enough to be able to sit down with the game’s producer, Eka Pramudita Muharram, to discuss how the game became such a huge success despite the odds, and to answer my burning questions about the game’s ending.

“At first we just wanted to make A Space for the Unbound to document our own hometown,” Muharram says about the game’s unexpected success. “We built the city of Loca based on Surabaya. But then we wanted to breathe life to the city by telling stories about our own experiences. It's based on personal stuff, that's why we wanted to make the game. We didn't really have the foresight that this was going to be a big hit.

“It's also because of the Covid era. You know that this game actually took seven years to develop and we were not planning that, but I think that the timing was very crucial. I think because basically the game is about loneliness. I think it was relatable because it's a personal story, it was at a time it had all happened to us.”

There were a number of reasons why it seemed unlikely that A Space for the Unbound would take off. Firstly, it was made by a tiny development team, which only had one minorly successful game before this in When The Past Was Around. However, this worked to the team’s benefit rather than to its detriment. “There were 14 people working on A Space for the Unbound,” Muharram explains, “and I think the strength of that is that if you want to decide something, it's very fast.

“At certain points, there were some disputes because this game represents all of us in the studio. So there's a tiny bit of us in the game. There's the Easter Egg for Street Fighter, that's from me as the producer. A lot of us had to pitch those ideas to everyone.”

A Space for the Unbound is also a distinctly Indonesian game. It is not just superficially set in Indonesia, but contains a huge amount of references to the culture. As the game relies heavily on the players’ relatability to the characters, it was important that everyone around the world could see themselves in Atma and Raya despite any cultural differences. “We were kind of worried when we made this game, because it's so based in Indonesian culture,” Muharram tells me. “What we did was just try to communicate with players through relatable topics.

“It's not just specific to the Indonesian market, but also has worldwide things like mental health issues, things like depression, or anxiety. These are international things that happen. I think because it's a personal story. The story is made of things that have happened to us. The way that we presented it was genuine. I think that is the reason why it's relatable to a lot of people.”

Alongside the themes surrounding mental health issues which required a lot of consultation with professionals in order to portray them sensitively, Mojiken used universal themes like the importance of pets in our lives. “The game is about loneliness, right?” Muharram asks, “and from our experience, when we are lonely, we tend to communicate with our cats, our pets.

“It's kind of like an escape from this reality and also an escape from other people. Pets don't complain when you communicate your feelings with them. That's what we do in our office. When the programmer or someone gets stuck with something, then we just talk with our cats. Something like, ‘Hey, I have to write this code, but there's a bug in there.’ When we talk with our cats, we find a solution to our problems. That's why it's important for us to put the cats and the naming the cat feature in our game.”

While players have been wrapped up in the game’s story, there is one question that is left unanswered even if you’ve played the game multiple times. The following portion of the interview contains spoilers about the ending of A Space for the Unbound. If you haven’t finished the game, we recommend you do so before reading this section of the interview.

Throughout the story, there are numerous references to False Memory Syndrome, a noted phenomenon where people can create memories of events that never took place. These allusions led many players – myself included – to believe that the protagonist, Atma, was never a real person and instead a figment of Raya’s imagination. While I only had a limited amount of time with Muharram, I had to ask him if the theory held up.

“We wanted players to go out and look into it,” Murraham tells me. “We were never planning to explain it. It's up to the players to conclude in their mind about how the story plays out. Every answer is correct. It's up to the players how to complete their own story. Personally, for me, he's real, but for the director, probably he has another opinion.”

I immediately began reeling off all the tiny details I had noticed while playing that had made me so certain that Atma had never existed, but Murraham was firm. It may not have been the answer I was hoping for, but at least now I won’t be kept up at night. A Space for the Unbound is available via Steam, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch, and Mojiken Studios’ latest game, Test Test Test, can be picked up for free via Steam.