We know, we know, you’re sick of wave shooters. Who isn’t? Well you might want to take a look at Vindicta, then. Yes, it’s got guns, and plenty of enemies to use them against, but they’re not coming at you in waves, and you’re certainly not rooted to the spot; Vindicta wants to bring a full FPS campaign to your HTC Vive very soon.
Like many of you, this week’s teaser trailer for this new title from Game Cooks had us intrigued, so we reached out to the developer to find out a little more. We came away with more than we’d expected, including the first footage of gameplay from Vindicta, which you can see below.
Based on the clip, you might think the team’s been chipping away at development for six or seven months.
In reality, it started last December.
That’s what Director of Publishing Lara Noujaim tells me when we speak over Skype. “We’ve been really aggressive,” she says, explaining that the game really came together in January. “We set a very aggressive timeline, and I’m really happy because we’re meeting all of our timeline targets.”
Game Cooks seems to have accomplished a lot in that small amount of time; Vindicta is aiming to launch in Early Access in April with “four to six hours” of its campaign in place. The story sees you cast as Agent V, an elite agent tasked with infiltrating UB Industries, an evil company amassing a secret robot army. You’ll make your way through a sprawling facility dismantling your metallic enemies.
While sneaking does play a part in the game, it’s a shooter first and foremost. “A lot of effort was put on the shooting,” Noujiam explains. “We actually had weapon experts, ex-army who came to our office and tested it out just to make sure that the effect of shooting was realistic as possible.”
Weapons should feel chunkier and carry weight as a result. “The team are big FPS players, so they take inspiration from everywhere, even movies,” she adds, noting that one of the guns in the trailer reminds the team of Suicide Squad. In fact, as we talk, the rest of the team is apparently still in the office at 8:00pm, playing Counter-Strike.
To get about you’ll use a mix of both room scale tracking, allowing you to physically walk around spaces, and swinging your arms to simulate running, a method we haven’t seen used in many games of this caliber so far. The team was eager to avoid teleportation and other VR shooter tropes. “There’s nothing wrong with them, we just wanted to try something different,” Noujaim says. Instead, it wants an active shooter that keeps you moving, adding intensity to the action by keeping you on your toes.
Part of that comes through different enemy types. You’ll constantly be on the lookout for flying drones and crawling spiders that edge towards you as you fend off more traditional infantry. As you can see from the gameplay, you’ll also be able to shoot the heads off of friendly robotic scientists because, well, for the hell of it.
It’s hard to believe that Vindicta is really the product of just two months’ worth of work, but Game Cooks appears to be a committed team and there’s still another two months to go before release. Following the Early Access launch, Game Cooks will be looking to add more to the campaign, though the direction it takes will be dependent on how reception it gets in pre-release. The developer is also planning a multiplayer mode. Until April, you can follow the game on an official website.
Disclaimer: Vindicta will be on display at UploadVR’s GDC Mixer next week, though this content was arranged separately from that agreement. For more, you can read our Code of Ethics.
