Game Summary

You begin by crash landing from your airship into the world of Geodia. Sparklite is what fuels this world, but it's being used and corrupted by the Baron. You must explore the world and gather Sparklite to improve the remaining floating island of humans to better equip yourself to explore and fight the Baron's minions. The world is fractured though, and it's layout changes upon each round of exploration.

Review Portion

I thoroughly enjoyed most things about this game. It's extremely pleasant to look at with varied enemies and environments. The soundtrack is terrific. I often play games with a show playing on the other TV, but I found myself turning off what I was watching because I wanted to hear the game instead multiple times. The combat works well and I never felt like a hit didn't connect that should have or that I got hit by a cheap shot from an enemy. The boss fights are enjoyable with fun designs and timing to get your hits in. If it wasn't for the flaws I'll discuss below, this would be a 10/10 for me, an amazing attempt from a new developer to create their own Zelda style game.

The random world arrangement is a cool idea, but doesn't feel like it really adds much. The gathering of Sparklite and modifications to improve the world and increase your combat capabilities is another fun idea, but it ends up just feeling like a way to add a few hours to your playthrough. The rearranging world ends up feeling more like a way to keep the grind from being overly monotonous, which works but it's disappointing to see it be used to patch another flaw and not shine on its own. The curve of getting upgrades feels a little out of whack at times, with enemies hitting very hard and not taking much damage in return until you can grind out a few defense and attack boosts, but not enough for me to want to stop playing. The character designs for NPCs are extremely charming, but I wish the game let you get to know them better as dialogue is pretty minimal.

Summary A thoroughly enjoyable experience with some issues that keep me from recommending it to everyone. Even with the bit of padding, I platinumed the game in about 10 hours. This makes it's current price of $25 feel a bit steep, but if you can get it for 20 or under I'd definitely recommend giving it a try. Keep an eye on Red Blue Games, at it's core this is a very well made game and if they can learn from this game's shortcomings their next game should be a real treat.

Personal Score : 9/10

"Objective" Score : 8/10

Sparklite is a charming indie Link to the Past-esque game with minor roguelite elements.

The soundtrack, environments, and enemy design are all delightful. Exploration is fun and it has a nice assortment of your action adventure puzzles hiding powerups. It's a very pleasant game, for the most part.

As far as combat goes, you mainly whack mutated creatures with a three hit wrench combo and sometimes shoot them with a crossbow in the name of saving the world from pollution. You get the energy to use said crossbow (and other gadgets) by hitting enemies with your wrench. There's also consumable items, but they're a bit awkward to use in battle generally. They fall out of your pockets if you get die, though, so there's not much reason to hold onto them. The controls are a bit stiff, but not too bad. The auto-aim is a bit wonky. Despite these minor issues, It's enjoyable enough.

The game loop is generally supposed to involve you collecting a bunch of sparklite and then using it to upgrade yourself and the floating village that serves as your home base before going back out into the world. Each time you die, there's a "fracture" and the world rearranges itself. You know, the standard roguelite stuff. Honestly, the roguelite elements didn't feel that necessary to the game's design. It just serves to make the progression a bit grindy and encourage backtracking to grind out some resources if you get stuck when the enemies jump in difficulty between zones. I'd rather have just had a linear experience with powerups becoming available at the appropriate parts of the game.

Except, I didn't grind because I didn't die between beating the second boss and finishing the game. I grabbed some really good defensive upgrades early on that gave me a lot of room for error. Flat damage reduction is always such a good way to break a games balance if the devs didn't fully think it through. Enemies were tanky as hell without having much in the way of offensive upgrades, but I also had a ton of energy recharge items from not dying. I made my way through the back half by spamming my crossbow with reckless abandon and hitting up energy recharge items if I couldn't get close enough to fill up the old fashioned way. Since I never died in zones 2, 3, or 4, I was holding onto a couple dozen of most of the consumables by the final zone, which just let me power through it. I don't think I had the intended experience. I beat the game in 5 hours, and according to howlongtobeat.com 7 hours 45 minutes is the expected time for rushing the main story.

The experience of fighting the last boss was really ruined by a just terrible visual design choice. There's a portion that has you fighting enemies recolored to red on a red background while they shoot red projectiles at you. I honestly have no clue how an otherwise visually pleasing game ended up doing such a terrible thing.

I also ran into a control decision that, combined with the visual issues, had me actually yell at a video game for the first time in a very long while. You have a slight "refractory period" after dashing. You hold down a button to use your consumables, which takes a second. If you start holding the button during the "refractory period", you'll just never start using the item. Learning this via repetition while trying to heal during a stressful, fully red fight was just a bit too much for me today. No matter how maddening the visual and control issues, I hate that I can still lose my cool in the moment like that. I've literally spent a couple of decades trying to get past the video game rage that plagued my teenage years. I did finish the boss on my first try, largely due to the aforementioned stockpile of consumables, but it didn't feel like much of a victory.

Anyway, personal issues and final boss aside, I enjoyed my time with Sparklite. Despite being a bit short and maybe a bit easy, I think it's a charming enough for anyone looking for a fix of Link to the Past style gameplay.