Vinebound: Tangled Together Review

Welcome to Garden Lands, the home of a variety of produce-themed characters. This is not a happy place like you may expect; the lands have been corrupted (gone mouldy), and the magical Vine Fairy has selected you and your partner to rid this evil. The tricky part in Vinebound: Tangled Together is that the two of you are tangled together, like the title states, with a magical vine, but this allows you to access its powers. These two berries will need to cooperate to survive runs lasting 10 minutes that are filled with hazards, corrupted fruit-themed enemies, and bosses in this horde-survival title.   

Like other games in this genre, there is no button to shoot your weapon. Instead, flowers move down the vine, and when they reach one of the characters on either end, they shoot out. You have the option to play solo or co-op with someone locally. If you challenge the game independently, you will have a vine fairy as your partner. However, they don’t control themselves; you will control both simultaneously, the left thumbstick for one and the right for the other. This definitely adds a bit of difficulty, as you will need to multitask. 

When the two heroes get too close to each other, they are pushed apart, or if they are too far, the vine will flash and force them inward. In either mode, if one of the characters runs out of health and falls, the other will need to stand in the circle surrounding them for the required amount of time. This will revive them and bring them back to life. 

Vinebound: Tangled Together is a charming and whimsical title, full of cartoony fruit-themed enemies. Your corrupted foes look so angry, which makes sense, considering you have been slaughtering their friends and family members and to steal their juice... it sounds quite brutal when phrased like that. The thing is, that very juice is important to our berry heroes, as it makes them stronger. The music, like the visuals, is upbeat and catchy. I never found it to be too repetitive or overbearing while playing.

The juice you pick up (which comes in a variety of colours, ranging between pink, yellow, and red) with red giving you the most XP. When your juice meter is filled, both of the characters level up and are each given three different cards to pick one from. These cards can improve your attacks, increase your movement speed, or replenish your health. You can stack them to enhance each card’s stats. There will also be golden seeds dropped by defeated enemies that you will want to pick up, as they can later be redeemed for new attack cards.

During your run, you will face off against minibosses. These characters are stronger than the usual enemies and, as such, drop a chest when defeated. When opened, chests can reward you with new weapons like a Strawberry Rod that makes a ray appear between both characters and damages all the enemies that are inside it; or the Bow and Carrot, which shoots an arrow vertically and horizontally; or a Banana Sword, that slashes in the opposite direction of the second player. 

Once you battle and defeat the final boss of that stage, you will get to see the stats from your run showing you how many enemies each character defeated, how much juice they collected, and how many times they fell in battle. On the sides of the screen, you are shown all the different power-ups you collected on your run and how levelled up each was. If you acquired Golden Seeds during your playthrough, you pull fruit out of the ground and crack it open. Inside are rewards that you can pick one from to unlock; I got to choose from Fertilizing Elixir, which makes it so you earn extra XP from the juice, the Veggiepuff Pump, which increases the attack size area; or the Acai Blender, which creates rotary blades in the middle of the vine to destroy enemies. I opted for the blender and this seems like an obvious choice!

In the beginning, there are only two characters available to play, Boom the pink berry and Bloom who is blue. There are five others available to unlock that become available when you meet the requirements like collecting 300 golden seeds, defeating 3000 enemies, or acquiring 2000 juice. There are three different scenarios to play: an entangling forest, icy snow areas, and an area near a volcano where you need to avoid lava walls coming at you. Each has its own unique conditions that can occur, like being frozen and requiring your partner to drag you around. When the game is completed for the first time, you will unlock the Spicy Mode to challenge yourself with tougher settings.  

If you are a fan of bullet heaven type games, Vinebound: Tangled Together is a fun experience, especially when you are playing with someone else. Having to work together to defeat the enemies and save each other was a nice twist from other titles I have played in the genre! This game is also accessible for gamers of any age as there is no violence and the controls are minimal and easy to learn.