Bound is a 2016 art and platform game where you play as a dancer submerged in a broken fantasy world chasing down a monster terrorizing her kingdom. As she tries to please her mother The Queen and chase after the monster unseen, she dances her way through the different levels from one obstacle to the next.
It is hard to pinpoint where to start to look at Bound. If we take the most basic and look at its story, it takes a parallel between two worlds: the reality and the fantasy world. The former is with a pregnant woman who arrives at a beach and as she walks along it, she stops various times to look at her notebook. Each stop flips her page to the next picture in her notebook that enters into the next chapter of the game. The parallel in the fantasy world is a world of broken pieces in its colorful 3D pixel glory. The world sheds away and opens up. It opens up the narrative of a princess facing her harsh queen mother as a monster calls out in the distance, trying to destroy the kingdom. The princess is tasked to protect her kingdom. However, the background of each chapter always ends with a first person view into a distorted image set in the past reality.
The story of Bound is done in an almost narrative without any words but just through the environment and the imagery presented. Some of the best indie games use this way to craft something that the player themselves can interpret. For this, Bound does a great job both in the fantasy and reality parallels. The reality is a much simpler world and it pretty much starts and ends there in opening and closing sequences. However, the fantasy world is where most of the action takes place.
As with any game reliant heavily on some artistic element. Bound‘s main angle is that the princess in the parallel world moves gracefully in dance movements. She leaps across platforms, pirouettes through dangers and elegantly tiptoes through places while twirling against the wall ledges. The platformer elements of the mechanics are achieved through her movements in this 3D world. As beautiful as the concept is and as lovely as the music and soundtrack is done here, the dancing mechanics in place of normal movements feels more like the gimmick of the game as there is no hint as to how this dancing element fits in with the story other than making it visually appealing.
It’s a pity because this is where Bound as a game falls flat. While everything works, despite some weird platform bit near the end that maneuvers the world around in one part and become a nightmare to control (not sure if its a glitch), Bound essentially feels like it relies too much on selling it on this dancing element that doesn’t find its place in the whole spectrum of things to give it more meaning than just being a means. However, credit is due for the fact that each level ends with this really beautifully constructed slide down a ribbon that reminds heavily of games like Abzu and Journey in their downhill or current push sequences where its just going along for the ride matched with some of the best orchestral background music to create a mesmerizing experience.