Vindefiant Review

We’ve all had that one job which ended with you being fired for reasons you don’t entirely understand. If you haven’t, then Vindefiant will be a shock to your system, because that’s exactly what happens! And then you gain supernatural powers which cause weird tentacles to sprout from your back, and give you miraculous healing abilities — this isn’t as common a thing.

Utilising your new powers for evil, you embark on a mission to kill your boss as you make your way across platforming levels where you rarely touch the ground. I’m hesitant to call it a precision or hardcore platformer, but there are certainly elements of those in some levels. Your tentacles can’t stick to every surface; there are exposed wires, automated turrets, and just dudes with guns that will be obstacles in your way, but even though death is easy, the respawn checkpoints are fairly generous. Sure, there are a few instances where I got very frustrated by redoing bits over and over again, but I managed to complete the game eventually!

Since you rarely have a reason to jump, you have to rely on your tentacles to propel you through the air in any direction. I was never able to work out why I could sometimes do two “jumps” without touching a surface, but other times it was only one. Being multi-directional does come at a cost, as you can’t do a small “jump”, so in most cases, timing can be crucial.

Of course, having tentacles doesn’t just mean you can walk on the ceiling. They’re an offensive weapon, too! Chuck people through windows, shove them in toilets, rip off limbs, yeet paper shredders at faces — there’s a lot of variety to the deaths you can cause in an office building. While you can steal guns from those carrying them, you almost immediately unload the entire clip, rendering them basically useless for your purposes.

Vindefiant also has boss fights in some levels — and no, I don’t mean the CEO you’re after. These were a little frustrating at times, but as with any death, the checkpoints weren’t too far to travel to reattempt the battle.

I encountered two issues during play, though one seemed more like an accidental feature than a straight-up bug. The first caused gameplay to slow down to about 5 FPS, which was fixed by going into the menu and restarting at the latest checkpoint. The second kinda-bug happened when I managed to trigger a checkpoint without reaching it, so when I was killed by a guard on the right side of the screen I had just entered, I respawned in a pipe above and to the left of said guard. I hadn’t even realised that the pipe was accessible yet!

I really like the pixel art style, it’s very emotive, and yet doesn’t let the gory nature of decapitations get too graphic. That’s not to say it isn’t gory — I spent a couple of minutes waiting to see if a corpse would stop bleeding all over the floor — but it’s a cartoony type of gore.

It took me about three hours to complete Vindefiant, and I died a total of 397 times (110 of those were in one level!). I also collected 45 orbs, which I haven’t mentioned before now because they don’t appear to do anything? The game says they power you up, but I saw no actual evidence of bullets doing less damage or my tentacles becoming stronger. I think they’re just collectables, especially given how tricky some of them are to gather.

Overall, Vindefiant is a fun, challenging experience. The story isn’t going to win awards, but if you want to smash someone against a window multiple times so you can launch them through the broken glass, this is what you need.