Bound is a dancing platformer / art world on the PlayStation 4. It was created by a small Polish developer named Plastic, working with Sony’s Santa Monica Studios. It is a platformer, where you run and jump through a landscape, looking for the way forward to the end. Here, though, through motion capture, the protagonist is a dancer who moves with grace, who not only does the running and jumping with beautiful agility, but also has a dancing button to move through tangles of vines, overgrowth of plants, and other obstacles.
Gameplay wise, it is pretty standard platforming stuff from the last 20 years, though the dancing mechanics add some variety. What really makes Bound different though, is its world. The game starts as a pregnant woman walks onto a beach, then gazes out at the waves. You then go to a surreal world in her mind. You are on floating platforms made of squares, a sea of white cubes undulating far below.
Level by level, you encounter more surreal uses of shapes and colors, chaotic rooms and twisting floors. Particles float everywhere, landmarks fly around, and levels spiral through the air. The geometry shakes and breaks as you gracefully move. There are towering monsters throughout the game that may attack you or attack one another, more overwhelming presences in an unreal landscape. It all helps offset the repetition of the gameplay.
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