Sparklite Review

The most important thing you need to know about Red Blue Games’ Sparklite is sparklite. That may sound confusing but sparklite is everything in Sparklite’s world Geodia; it’s the energy source, the currency, the life-force for nature and it’s the key to this entire operation.

Sparklite is an action-adventure game with rogue-lite elements. The rather forgettable story has you controlling a girl named Ada and her robot Wingnut as their ship crashes in Geodia and they get immediately taken out by a sparklite miner. As the residents of Geodia rescue Ada, you learn that sparklite is more than just an energy source/currency and there are people who have been consuming it to become more powerful beings. In this case, it’s a man who goes by the name Baron as he begins to mine sparklite in large quantities causing the world to become unstable and its inhabitants mutated. It’s up to you, Wingnut and your multi-tool to travel to each zone on the map and take out the Baron and his sparklite miners before it’s too late for Geodia.

Geodia is separated into five zones with four of them containing sparklite miners and the final one being home to the Baron. The zones have their own biomes along with their own enemy types, even if some of them are just a variation of an enemy you’ve seen before. The world and its zones are split into sections similar to what you’d see from A Link to the Past as the screen moves from panel to panel. It’s filled with creatures to fight, grass to cut, and treasure to find and there are even small side quests like racing an old man with a jet-pack or helping some siblings who are always getting lost. There is also an impressive number of enemies for each zone, which makes the zones feel different from one another plus there is a learning curve to a vast majority of them. The map is also procedurally generated and changes every time you die, but you’ll see a lot of the same sections if you’re dying a lot.

Ada and Wingnut are very simple characters and don’t really change gameplay-wise throughout the eight hours you’ll spend with them other than the upgrades they receive. You have a dash for dodging, a multi-tool that acts as a wrench to swing around for a normal attack and a hammer that you can charge up for a more powerful attack. The combat never really evolves past that, there are vaults in each zone that contain gadgets for you to use, but none of them ever really felt useful. Most of them felt uncomfortable to use with weird controls like the Boom Balloon, which is a mini blimp with a bomb attached, plus they are more of a risk since you are stationary when using them. The gadgets use energy, but because you may never use them, the energy aspect feels like a waste.

Your robot buddy Wingnut has his own abilities as well as you beat the sparklite miners and these abilities will be the only way you can progress to other zones. They don’t help you so much in battle since they also require you to be stationary as you control Wingnut, but they can help you find secrets and help you gain more money.

The best way to get stronger in Sparklite is with its interesting patch system for the multi-tool. Once you are saved from the sparklite miner in the beginning, the local engineer enables patches to be equipped to your multi-tool. The patches will help you immensely since they could increase how many hearts you have, the damage of your multi-tool, decrease damage taken and even show you locations for vaults and the sparklite miners. Some patches are different sizes than others and could take up more room on your patch slots. For example, the heart patch only takes up a single slot while increasing the damage for your multi-tool will take up four and while you start out with nine slots, you can upgrade for more.

Patches are also rated based on bronze, silver, and gold but you’re able to combine bronze and silver pieces to turn them gold. These patches can be bought from the engineer – who has a terrible selection most of the time – but can also be found in the world. It’s a cool and fun system, but the biggest issue with the patches is that getting them is randomised, so you may not get something you’re looking for unless you’re willing to grind for it. You may be having trouble with the enemies later on because you don’t do enough damage and the only thing you can do about it is push through or go back to older areas and hope you find the right patch. Since the combat doesn’t really evolve past the opening sections, it can get tedious rather quickly.

There are items as well that do a range of things like increasing damage for a short duration, light up a dark cave, throw bombs around you, or the most important one: revive you if you die. This game can be quite challenging, especially in the earlier hours where you don’t have many hearts or do very much damage. But dying is a key aspect of the game because it seems to be the only way to go back to the town and use the money you’ve collected.

As mentioned previously, sparklite is also the money you earn from killing enemies or doing other activities in Geodia and is used for basically everything that was mentioned above. You use the money to buy gadgets (once you find them), combine and purchase patches, upgrade your patch size and more, so you’re going to want to die eventually. The only things you will lose when you die is the items you were carrying, which can be an irritation when you’re carrying a ton of health pots or have a revive.

Visually, Sparklite is a great looking game and having different biomes for each zone helps keep the style of the game fresh as you go through the story. You could also see inspirations from Digital Sun’s Moonlighter since the visuals are fairly similar. The boss fights could have been more interesting if they all weren’t set in the same room, but the fight with the Baron was awesome because it was a change in scenery and the visuals are at their best. The music is good as well, it does a great job of giving each zone its own theme and feel.

Sparklite has some interesting ideas, but the second-to-second gameplay can get tedious since the combat doesn’t really evolve and you’ll be fighting a lot of the same enemies, despite there being a respectable amount of them. The patch system is fun to mess around with as well, but it can help with the tediousness and make you feel weak because of the randomized nature. The final fight was the best part of the forgettable journey, but if you don’t have the right patches, Geodia will be doomed.