Vane Reviews
Vane is an interesting, beautiful, and provocative indie platformer brought down by design inconsistencies and bugs, but fans of the genre will find something to like here.
Vane is a unique experience and for that in itself Friend & Foe should be applauded. As an artwork, it’s compelling. But as a game, it’s recommended with strings attached: this is a harsh, uncompromising world and you’re going to need to struggle to survive.
Vane is an intriguing game with a variety that encourages you to dig deep into its dubious world, but its sluggish controls hamper this peculiar experience.
Review in Arabic | Read full review
The industry can always use more risky passion projects like this, even if they don’t always reach their full potential.
Vane is beautiful in its expression. Players will find themselves stunned by the world the game depicts, but, unfortunately, the title seems to be an expression of style over substance. Vane looks and often sounds amazing, but the developer has pursued making a work of art at the expense of something that is fun to play. Overall, Vane could certainly be considered a work of art. Nevertheless, though it was clearly aiming to be the next Shadow of the Colossus, it hits wide of the mark, as Vane lacks the depth and impact of that classic title.
It's very clear where Vane draws it's influence from, the problem is that despite beeing a beautiful a project with satisfactory puzzles, it can not at any time reach the level of its predecessors, and worse than that, it inherits from these projects a bunch of technical problems that here are even worse. There are very good things inside VANE, but the sum of its factors does not result in anything remarkable.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Vane lasts 4 hours, and if we have to compare all the elements we defined till now in the review, sadly, we can’t promote this game. The whole product is chaotic, cause of bugs, a questionable gameplay, and a bad camera management…It’s not easy to be satisfied just by a pleasant graphic design and a great soundtrack.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Vane is a unique, almost-therapeutic experience with a magical world to explore. Unfortunately, the controls are pretty awful. If you can deal with that major issue, though, you'll find a somewhat worthwhile adventure.
Featuring deep puzzle solving mechanics, a unique graphical style, and a tale that will leave you guessing until the very end, it’s definitely a game worth experiencing at some point. The technical issues and bugs currently present at the time of release really do hold Vane back from being a good game to just being mediocre, and that’s unfortunate.
Vane is the kind of game where you can see what the developers were going for. It has moments where the vision comes together and perhaps you've turned a corner, but all too quickly it goes back to its old, disappointing ways.
Vane follows in the footsteps of many arty puzzle-platformers before it, but a lack of a strong voice and purpose keep it from being great.
Vane is a strange game. Its art direction and visual design frame a grandiose, otherworldly affair, but its puzzle design and narrative squash those expectations, ultimately providing a frustrating experience with fragments of its original vision.
Vane has some good ideas, but in stretching them out for too long across a pretty empty world, it soon becomes tiresome and frustrating.
The art of a game, however distinctive, matters little if it isn't accompanied by functionality.
While visually impressive at times, Vane suffers from an unclear purpose and far too many technical issues to recommend it.
Overall, this game lacks any specific direction beyond what you have to figure out for yourself. You get no introduction to the character or the situation they face. There are game breaking bugs and things that cause frustrations that make someone not want to play the game anymore. That being said, this game has good environments and music. The game is now available on PlayStation 4 and is priced at $24.99 USD. If you like clunky, buggy games that look good but make you fight for any meaningful fun then this game is for you. I would not pay the price for this game though and would wait for a sale or even just watch YouTube videos if you are interested in it.
Developers Friend & Foe wanted to give freedom to the players with Vane, and on that aspect, they succeeded. Unfortunately for me, this also became a major disappointment, as there was maybe a bit too much freedom to properly lead me through the story and through the experience it should’ve been.
In the pursuit of crafting an indistinguishable game world and granting advanced levels of autonomy, the developers forgot to make Vane any fun to play.
Beautiful visuals and suggestive atmospheres are not enough to save Vane, whose obscure and not always working mechanics make the player feel abandoned in a poorly conceived world.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Vane has a great premise, but it's overshadowed by glitches, bugs, graphics bugs, and a wild camera.
Review in German | Read full review