⏰ In a rush? Don't worry, I gotchu'! ⏰
What Works:
✅ Strong Visual and Audio Design: The game features vibrant, clean pixel art and a nostalgic soundtrack that enhances the ten-hour campaign.
✅ Engaging Roguelite Mechanics: Bosses with learnable attack patterns and progressively challenging gameplay keep the experience engaging without becoming frustrating.
✅ Innovative Upgrade System: Upgrades via sparklite improve both the town of Refuge and Ada, reminiscent of Mega Man Battle Network 3's grid-based system.
What Doesn’t Work:
❌ Long Loading Times: Transitions between levels and post-death load times are excessively long, interrupting gameplay flow.
❌ Frustrating Consumable Mechanics: Delayed effects and random useless consumables hinder their utility and occupy inventory space.
❌ Repetitive Optional Dungeons: Initially fun, these dungeons quickly recycle content and become tedious, detracting from the main adventure.
🎮 A Familiar Adventure with a Unique Twist: Sparklite
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and after spending several hours with Red Blue Games' new title, it's likely this is its central argument. Fitting within the action, adventure, and roguelite genres, Sparklite borrows heavily (really heavily) from The Legend of Zelda series. However, what's most surprising is that this is so obvious, yet it doesn't prevent Sparklite from sparking (pun intended) its own identity.
🏞️ Simple Story, Rich World
Structurally, the story is simple: Ada, an engineer in the vast world of Geodia, finds herself temporarily living in a town called Refuge after a disastrous event. Due to the greedy actions of those in power, there are occasional earthquakes caused by the relentless extraction of sparklite, a mineral representing the planet's life force, leading to aggressive changes in the behaviour of local wildlife.
🎭 Thin Line Between Inspiration and Copy
Despite Sparklite possessing its own identity, there is still a thin, barely dense mist that distorts the line between inspiration and copy. The camera, for example, always shows the action from the same perspective and shifts focus as the main character crosses the screen's edge. The movement patterns and hostile behaviours of basic enemies recall Link and his adventures in Hyrule. Geodia is also a peculiar place, filled with small puzzles that are simple enough not to hinder Ada's natural progress but follow the same rhythm found in Zelda games.
⚔️ Distinguishing Features
However, Sparklite distinguishes itself positively not only with its roguelite formula, but also other aspects, such as its bosses. All hostility from a boss in Geodia is divided into patterns, and as in other series that popularised increased difficulty in video game culture, it's a matter of learning via death. For example, the first major challenge in the forest area performs three consecutive attacks before changing its behaviour, and this pattern is what the player must keep in mind during the conflict. It's worth noting, however, that all these patterns grow in difficulty as the adventure progresses, making the journey challenging, but never frustrating.
🎨 Audiovisual Excellence
Another positive aspect of Sparklite is its audiovisual experience: The artistic direction features a very clean and vibrant pixel style, full to the brim with various colour palette options that the world of Geodia offers, and the roughly ten-hour campaign benefits greatly from this. Combined with a soundtrack reminiscent of old Japanese role-playing games and modern interface and controls, Sparklite finds its own driving force that elevates it to a renowned level.
🔄 Roguelite Progression
However, roguelite progression implies not only a lot of death, but also long-term improvement, and in this world, these upgrades reveal themselves through the use of sparklite. Some upgrades affect the town of Refuge, using the aforementioned energy to modify its functions, all advantageous in the long term for the player. The other part concerns Ada and is reminiscent of the Game Boy Advance classic, Mega Man Battle Network 3. In a specific building in the aerial city, there is a machine that grants access to an exclusive grid for the main character, and thanks to various devices, each with its size, several advantages such as more hearts or increased combat damage are conferred.
🔫 Gameplay Mechanics
The gameplay from this latter part of the game is like many other works within the initially mentioned genres. Ada has gadgets at her disposal that allow for ranged confrontations, unlike her melee default. For limited use, the heroine can also use small consumables around Geodia. There is also the exclusive possibility of cooperative multiplayer after the first few initial hours of the story. However, this feature is limited to the heroine's robotic companion and does little more than the unlocked abilities to date or digging up hidden objects.
⏳ Flaws in the Design
However, not even the most beautiful melody achieves pitch perfect perfection, and Sparklite’s is no exception. During level changes or even post-deaths, loading times are somewhat excessive in duration. The use of consumables scattered around Geodia imposes a usage time until it takes effect, which theoretically carries a kind of risk and reward duality but ends up being frustrating, invalidating their potential utility. The same random consumables sometimes do not favour the player's situation, occupying space just because. The small optional dungeons Ada stumbles upon during the game, amusing during the first glimpses, quickly recycle themselves, and since roguelite progression is tied to acquiring various items, these small deviations from the main adventure become more of a chore than anything else.
🌟 Charming Yet Familiar
Full of its own charm that still reminds of another Nintendo property, Sparklite is a fun and exciting roguelite to explore. Despite lacking perfection in its genre, whether due to long loading times or repetitive optional dungeons, all other systems present work so well that it would be almost criminal not to recommend Ada's adventure and her adorable robot companion.
🌟 M I S C 🌟
◻️ 🌳 Visit my Linktree for more content.
◻️ ⚠️ Review originally written for FNintendo (defunct website) and published on December 5th, 2019.
◻️ 🙋♂️ Explore more reviews written by me.
◻️ 🎮 Discover Nintendo Switch video games I've played.
◻️ ✍️ Reviewed in European Portuguese.
◻️ 📜 Review Number 010
✨ F I N ✨
What Works:
✅ Strong Visual and Audio Design: The game features vibrant, clean pixel art and a nostalgic soundtrack that enhances the ten-hour campaign.
✅ Engaging Roguelite Mechanics: Bosses with learnable attack patterns and progressively challenging gameplay keep the experience engaging without becoming frustrating.
✅ Innovative Upgrade System: Upgrades via sparklite improve both the town of Refuge and Ada, reminiscent of Mega Man Battle Network 3's grid-based system.
What Doesn’t Work:
❌ Long Loading Times: Transitions between levels and post-death load times are excessively long, interrupting gameplay flow.
❌ Frustrating Consumable Mechanics: Delayed effects and random useless consumables hinder their utility and occupy inventory space.
❌ Repetitive Optional Dungeons: Initially fun, these dungeons quickly recycle content and become tedious, detracting from the main adventure.
🎮 A Familiar Adventure with a Unique Twist: Sparklite
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and after spending several hours with Red Blue Games' new title, it's likely this is its central argument. Fitting within the action, adventure, and roguelite genres, Sparklite borrows heavily (really heavily) from The Legend of Zelda series. However, what's most surprising is that this is so obvious, yet it doesn't prevent Sparklite from sparking (pun intended) its own identity.
🏞️ Simple Story, Rich World
Structurally, the story is simple: Ada, an engineer in the vast world of Geodia, finds herself temporarily living in a town called Refuge after a disastrous event. Due to the greedy actions of those in power, there are occasional earthquakes caused by the relentless extraction of sparklite, a mineral representing the planet's life force, leading to aggressive changes in the behaviour of local wildlife.
🎭 Thin Line Between Inspiration and Copy
Despite Sparklite possessing its own identity, there is still a thin, barely dense mist that distorts the line between inspiration and copy. The camera, for example, always shows the action from the same perspective and shifts focus as the main character crosses the screen's edge. The movement patterns and hostile behaviours of basic enemies recall Link and his adventures in Hyrule. Geodia is also a peculiar place, filled with small puzzles that are simple enough not to hinder Ada's natural progress but follow the same rhythm found in Zelda games.
⚔️ Distinguishing Features
However, Sparklite distinguishes itself positively not only with its roguelite formula, but also other aspects, such as its bosses. All hostility from a boss in Geodia is divided into patterns, and as in other series that popularised increased difficulty in video game culture, it's a matter of learning via death. For example, the first major challenge in the forest area performs three consecutive attacks before changing its behaviour, and this pattern is what the player must keep in mind during the conflict. It's worth noting, however, that all these patterns grow in difficulty as the adventure progresses, making the journey challenging, but never frustrating.
🎨 Audiovisual Excellence
Another positive aspect of Sparklite is its audiovisual experience: The artistic direction features a very clean and vibrant pixel style, full to the brim with various colour palette options that the world of Geodia offers, and the roughly ten-hour campaign benefits greatly from this. Combined with a soundtrack reminiscent of old Japanese role-playing games and modern interface and controls, Sparklite finds its own driving force that elevates it to a renowned level.
🔄 Roguelite Progression
However, roguelite progression implies not only a lot of death, but also long-term improvement, and in this world, these upgrades reveal themselves through the use of sparklite. Some upgrades affect the town of Refuge, using the aforementioned energy to modify its functions, all advantageous in the long term for the player. The other part concerns Ada and is reminiscent of the Game Boy Advance classic, Mega Man Battle Network 3. In a specific building in the aerial city, there is a machine that grants access to an exclusive grid for the main character, and thanks to various devices, each with its size, several advantages such as more hearts or increased combat damage are conferred.
🔫 Gameplay Mechanics
The gameplay from this latter part of the game is like many other works within the initially mentioned genres. Ada has gadgets at her disposal that allow for ranged confrontations, unlike her melee default. For limited use, the heroine can also use small consumables around Geodia. There is also the exclusive possibility of cooperative multiplayer after the first few initial hours of the story. However, this feature is limited to the heroine's robotic companion and does little more than the unlocked abilities to date or digging up hidden objects.
⏳ Flaws in the Design
However, not even the most beautiful melody achieves pitch perfect perfection, and Sparklite’s is no exception. During level changes or even post-deaths, loading times are somewhat excessive in duration. The use of consumables scattered around Geodia imposes a usage time until it takes effect, which theoretically carries a kind of risk and reward duality but ends up being frustrating, invalidating their potential utility. The same random consumables sometimes do not favour the player's situation, occupying space just because. The small optional dungeons Ada stumbles upon during the game, amusing during the first glimpses, quickly recycle themselves, and since roguelite progression is tied to acquiring various items, these small deviations from the main adventure become more of a chore than anything else.
🌟 Charming Yet Familiar
Full of its own charm that still reminds of another Nintendo property, Sparklite is a fun and exciting roguelite to explore. Despite lacking perfection in its genre, whether due to long loading times or repetitive optional dungeons, all other systems present work so well that it would be almost criminal not to recommend Ada's adventure and her adorable robot companion.
🌟 M I S C 🌟
◻️ 🌳 Visit my Linktree for more content.
◻️ ⚠️ Review originally written for FNintendo (defunct website) and published on December 5th, 2019.
◻️ 🙋♂️ Explore more reviews written by me.
◻️ 🎮 Discover Nintendo Switch video games I've played.
◻️ ✍️ Reviewed in European Portuguese.
◻️ 📜 Review Number 010
✨ F I N ✨
Uma garota e sua chave inglesa contra o mundo.
Sparklite é um roguelite bem gostosinho, com controles responsivos e combate simples, porém suave e satisfatório.
O jogo se passa no mundo de Geodia, que tá sofrendo com terremotos e fissuras, obrigando seus habitantes a se refugiarem numa cidade flutuante.
O Mundo conta com 5 mapas, cada um com seu bioma próprio e inimigos temáticos.
A gameplay se repete do início ao fim: explora o mapa atual, derrota o boss da área, e libera uma nova habilidade pra poder acessar o próximo mapa.
No decorrer da aventura você encontra uns patches pra equipar na chave inglesa que aumentam seus atributos, como dano, vida, energia, etc.
Tem uma arte muito bonita e paisagens agradáveis, e é um jogo curto mesmo fazendo 100%
Sparklite é um roguelite bem gostosinho, com controles responsivos e combate simples, porém suave e satisfatório.
O jogo se passa no mundo de Geodia, que tá sofrendo com terremotos e fissuras, obrigando seus habitantes a se refugiarem numa cidade flutuante.
O Mundo conta com 5 mapas, cada um com seu bioma próprio e inimigos temáticos.
A gameplay se repete do início ao fim: explora o mapa atual, derrota o boss da área, e libera uma nova habilidade pra poder acessar o próximo mapa.
No decorrer da aventura você encontra uns patches pra equipar na chave inglesa que aumentam seus atributos, como dano, vida, energia, etc.
Tem uma arte muito bonita e paisagens agradáveis, e é um jogo curto mesmo fazendo 100%
The final boss was an annoying difficulty spike and the story is basic.
The game has nice music and it looks good. the gameplay was fun and satisfying. short game, I finished in 10 hours
The game has nice music and it looks good. the gameplay was fun and satisfying. short game, I finished in 10 hours
Nice but I don't think roguelikes are for me probably
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. 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.
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. 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.
Fica bom após algumas horas, mas o inicio é bem bunda
so FUN
In all honesty, Sparklite has everything that I enjoy in a videogame. I love how it looks, I love the gameplay, the soundtrack, some of the characters. If anything, I wish it was longer. It isn't necessarily difficult, I just took so long to finish it because I wanted to get all achievements, but my impatient ass couldn't wait any longer to finally mark it as finished.