Sparklite (PS4) Review
Release Date: November 14, 2019
Publisher/Developer: Redblue Games
Platform: PC/Mac, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 (reviewed)
Price: $24.99
Sparklite takes place in the land of Geodia. Sparklite is everything in this world: the powerful ore is the lifeblood of the planet. When used correctly, a small amount of Sparklite can power a mighty flying fortress. There are those who have learned that consuming it directly can lead to massive power, and controlling the industry behind it can lead to immense wealth. An evil Baron has taken control of the land, and is mining Sparklite for his own nefarious deeds.
The planet has a way of defending itself. Strong earthquakes will hit, changing the entire layout of the terrain. This causes the Baron’s mining efforts to be interrupted and delays the destruction of the planet. This is a solid story that explains the core mechanics in how the world works. Sparklite plays like a more polished and randomized version of the new Switch Zelda’s Dungeon Creator. Each section of the world maintains a general idea: the woods are to the east, the swamps to the south, but each individual screen has the ability to open or close a route off of most every cardinal direction, allowing all of the screens to be swapped around in an excessive amount of combinations. Every time you leave the shelter of the floating islands, the world is in a completely new design. While scenes are familiar, the randomization of the orders means you’ll want to master a pattern for each area as later game objectives require you to reach outside areas with max health and energy in order to succeed. Think of it as the “Dead Cells” take on a top-down Legend of Zelda, and you’re pretty close. The grind through familiar areas can be frustrating on runs where you just want to escape the first area or are trying to clear out a new zone, but the enemies stay dead for the entire run, so cleaning them out is very satisfying.
The ore Sparklite quite literally does everything in this game. Storywise, it helps your floating base stay aloft. Mechanically, you use it to upgrade your tinker station, item shop, and badge board (where you apply your special power ups, maps, and abilities). Again with the Dead Cells motif, runs consist of maximizing collection of Sparklite while you power through enemies and tough bosses. Throughout the randomized world you also find special shrines that remind me of Breath of the Wild shrines (complete with Shiny Blue Stuff). Inside you get a taste test of a special item you can use to solve puzzles or take down enemies. Instead of taking it with you, you get inspiration to build it later (with Sparklite to pay for it, of course).
Next, I’d like to discuss the multiplayer, which is both a positive and a negative. Our hero, Ada, has a robot assistant who gets captured early on in the game. Defeating the first boss rescues him, and also unlocks the ability for two-player mode. Perhaps it is my recent running of Luigi’s Mansion 3 with my family, but I was hoping for a type of asynchronous multiplayer akin to that, where both players have value but different strengths. Instead, Player 2 is delegated to a very simplistic robot, who in the start can pull things out of the ground, be it switches or Sparklite, and soon after gets the ability to light torches. So far in my playtime I haven’t seen a single instance where Player 2 can do anything to impact combat. Might be good for those players with a significant other who isn’t much of a gamer but wants to get in on fun time but doesn’t really do a good job at making them feel worthwhile. It’s better than nothing, but disappointing at the same time.
I did run across a couple few glitches in my runs. A few times an enemy close to the screen transition would swap to the new area and get stuck on the bottom. No big deal, but it was an annoying graphical glitch. Another time, I hit an enemy with gadgets and ended up knocking him into the scenery and ultimately off screen. I was in a basement zone where the only way out was killing all enemies, forcing a hard reset. The worst was when dying: rarely (mostly when dying to that first boss), I would get extremely loud audio glitches while the game was transitioning back to the sky city. Like, it woke my kids up kind of loud. I’m hoping the devs will be able to at the very least patch that one out early in the game’s life. Lastly, there’s no “return to ship” button. You literally have to die to head back to the sky town, which is the only place you can level up. If you find yourself out of Sparklite to hunt and know you are underpowered for the next section, you have no choice but to get yourself knocked out to return to the ship. A couple times I found myself actively looking for an enemy to down me just so I could go customize my character.
Overall, though, I can easily recommend Sparklite. It’s a value-based budget title that makes good use of the cute sprite motif. Our hero Ada reminds me of another red-headed steampunk character with a robot companion for a game I reviewed before, Vesta. So far, Sparklite’s storyline is rather straightforward and simple, but the meat of the enjoyment is slowly leveling up Ada’s gadgets, patches, and abilities and aiming for that perfect Sparklite hunt run. Bosses have that classic feel to them: impossible at first, but find the right pattern and you can take them down with ease. It really is a feat to see nearly every screen on the overworld map be able to be mixed and matched into any combination, making each run on the surface into a new experience. Sparklite is a wonderful game that keeps you on your toes with it’s procedural generation and offers just enough progression during the roguelike gameplay to help you feel you are reaching toward a goal, despite seeing familiar scenery frequently. Sparklite will easily keep you coming back for more adventures in the land of Geodia.
Pros:
-Procedural generation does a genius job of keeping boilerplate world maps unique and interesting
-Dead Cells meets Legend of Zelda
-Wonderful music and cute animations
Cons:
-Asynchronous multiplayer could stand to be a bit more balanced
-Individual world tiles remain pretty standard, so you eventually may tire of seeing them despite being in random orders
-Personally ran across a few rare but really annoying bugs: one ear-splitting, the other preventing progression
Special thanks to Redblue Games for providing a code for review!