Sparklite is a game that blends a variety of influences, and the end result plays like a blend of early Zelda games and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. From the former, it borrows the early sense of helplessness and a world map that’s divided into individual screens. From the latter, it borrows the bite-sized dungeons and emphasis on collecting things rather than solving puzzles. There are also traces of Moonlighter, with the game giving you a home hub to upgrade while everything else is procedurally generated. Sparklite is a randomized dungeon-crawler at heart, then, but the twist is that it’s the overworld that changes every time the main character dies, with almost all of the game’s action taking place on this overworld map. The randomization is a blessing and a curse. Early on, the ever-changing world map allows for a real sense of discovery as you relearn where everything is, but it doesn’t take long before you begin to recognize how empty and featureless areas tend to be as a result.

Sparklite review navigation (click to jump directly to section): Story review | Gameplay review | Bugs and issues | Visuals and music review

Sparklite‘s story is enjoyable in a broad-strokes, no-details kind of way

Interestingly enough, Sparklite‘s store page lists Iconoclasts as a somewhat similar game. It’s probably for the best that the only similarity between it and that fetish and self-pity simulator is its mute, wrench-wielding heroine. Storytelling simply isn’t Sparklite‘s priority; the main character, Ada, crash lands on a planet that continually “fractures,” rearranging itself because of seismic activity linked to the mining operation of a greedy baron, and decides to save it because it’s a video game and someone needs to save something for all of the gameplay to be possible. She does end up having a connection of sorts to the world, but if this was ever expanded on beyond allowing her to be a generic hero of prophecy, I somehow managed to miss that elaboration. Sparklite‘s story is a “janitor of destiny” tale: something is broken, so someone gathers their tools and fixes it.

It’s a little disappointing sending a one-dimension hero up against a one-dimensional villain without any real buildup between the two, but that doesn’t mean that Sparklite‘s story is bad. Each boss that you defeat unlocks a little backstory about how the world was created, and while that only adds to the questions about how Ada just happened to crash land there, I found myself interested enough to continue playing.

Nothing summarizes the writing better than how Wingnut, Ada’s helper robot, is handled. It’s an adorable little flying companion that’s upgraded over the course of the story, and yet the descriptions of those upgrades are the only time you’ll see its name. Wingnut functions as Ada’s mouthpiece when conversations require it (since there appears to be a law mandating techy heroines to have techy names under penalty of tongue-removal), and yet its name is unlikely to stick.

Sparklite‘s story is defined by its broad strokes—an evil baron is literally tearing the planet apart for selfish purposes, only to be opposed by a starfaring hero who’s helped along by a flying fortress largely populated by characters who she’s rescued—and can be enjoyed on those terms, but those looking for something in-depth are bound to be disappointed by the near-complete absence of details. It manages plenty of charm regardless; when you lose all your health to an enemy, your flying fortress rescues you from a sudden fracture to explain both the world’s randomization and Ada’s survival. Your repeated failures don’t result in death, canonically. Ada’s lack of caution simply leads to earthquakes, and it’s hard not to find the absurdity of it all utterly charming.

Gameplay, or: the positives and negatives of Sparklite‘s map randomization

Ada’s wrench multi-tool is her primary attack, allowing her to perform quick slashes or charge up her attack for a hammer blow. My first few steps were helpless, with even early enemies being capable of doing large amounts of damage, but your wrench is soon upgraded with a Patch Board that you can equip Patches onto. Patches can increase your health or damage, reveal one of the map’s biomes entirely or just specific locations, and reduce the amount of damage that you take from enemies. Even better, you can combine your Patches into more powerful variants after upgrading the hub area’s medbay, allowing you to create powerful Patches that take up the same amount of space. Since you’re balancing a limited number of slots against an increasing number of Patches, combining them causes you to become significantly more capable the more you explore, giving Sparklite a real sense of progression. That’s important because you don’t gain anything but story abilities from bosses.

You always disembark in the Vinelands, a central area connected to the other four biomes, and the goal is to find and defeat each area’s boss and obtain the upgrade that’s needed to open the way to the next area. Sparklite is remarkably linear despite its procedural generation. Even the area transitions to other biomes are always in the same direction, so only the vague outline of the world changes.

The procedural generation has its upsides, though. Patches can either be bought with currency from defeated enemies or found in the world, and there are more small environmental puzzles than Sparklite can use at once. Even if you explore the entire world, you’ll still have a chance of stumbling across a new Patch the next time everything is randomized. There are also some chests you can’t reach until you have optional items obtained from vaults in later areas, so Sparklite does a decent job of keeping everything fresh throughout your runs.

However, that does come at the cost of general blandness. Hand-designed areas can cleverly point you toward secrets, and there are a few rooms that appear to be hand-designed in this way, but Sparklite‘s secrets are mostly placed out on the open. If you see a pool of water with one square area that you can dive in, there won’t be anything there. If the trees look to be hinting at something, it’ll turn out to be nothing. Most of the secrets here are surface-level and consist of listening for the sounds of collectible Beats (little quarter note critters who hide underground and are worth collecting for some of the best Patches in the entire game). Sparklite‘s world remaining fresh is nice, but it’s never as interesting as a Zelda world.

Gadgets and widgets are interesting options, but woefully underutilized

Sparklite doesn’t have dungeons per se, but it does have a small number of “vaults” containing long-lost technology. These are where the comparison to Breath of the Wild (specifically, its shrines) is most valid. Vaults are short, often lasting no more than a minute. There’s one exception that took me several minutes to brute-force, but that’s only because I failed to notice some icons on the ground that explained what to do. Every vault begins with you being given a new type of technology—something that allows you to swim or shoot, typically—that can be used with impunity. Once the vault is completed, you gain a blueprint “epiphany” that can be crafted using sparklite (the world’s currency) and then equipped, at which point you can use it at the cost of energy that’s generated from melee attacks. In theory, this mandates a balanced approach.

In practice, Gadgets are practically worthless. There’s one that can be used to inflict lots of damage on slow enemies and destroy rocks (which often have hidden caves hidden beneath them), but Gadgets require sitting still for long enough that they quickly stop being viable in combat. Some of them are useful for reaching chests, but they’re otherwise useless.

Widgets are consumable items that function kind of like Gadgets. Some are undeniably useful, especially the healing and resurrection ones, but you can never count on them because they’re random drops. Sometimes you’ll die before seeing a single healing Widget, amassing 12 Widgets that create a spotlight instead. You’ll never once need to do that.

Much like Gadgets, Widgets require sitting still for untenably long periods of time and are therefore useless in most combat encounters. By the time your explosion-creating Widget has activated, your foe has likely moved out of range. Sparklite‘s boss fights are where Gadgets and Widgets would be most useful because of how spongey bosses tend to be, but most bosses attack and move far too fast to use either. As a result, these fights largely consist of slowly dodging the same attack patterns and whittling down oversized health bars with fast wrench attacks. The rare fights where you can manage to incorporate a Gadget or Widget are much more entertaining, and halving the activation time of all Widgets and the slower-charging Gadgets would go a long way toward making Sparklite‘s boss fights more engaging.

I didn’t experience any bugs, but we need to have a talk about hit detection

Many of the problems that I’ve mentioned are minor and easily forgiven. Sparklite is the latest in a growing trend of pixel art indie games that have hit detection issues, though. Even with seemingly perfect timing, you can be damaged by attacks that you’ve visibly avoided. Part of the problem is that some enemy attacks are nebulous and telegraphed poorly. Platforming has similar issues, too, and the underlying problem becomes obvious when you dash to a ledge and fall through what appears to be solid ground. That’s not hugely common, but it’ll happen. You also don’t count as having landed on moving platforms until a moment after you arrive, so you can reach a platform, only for it to continue moving under you and leave you behind. You can’t trust what you see and instead have to compensate for Sparklite‘s strange approach to physics and hit detection.

The music mostly just goes through the motions, but the sprite art is great

Sparklite‘s sprite art is quintessentially indie, and its palette is so vibrant that I can’t help but be reminded of Game Boy Advance games. I adore the colorful trees, the skull over the mine that you quickly learn indicates that the area’s boss is inside, and the little details like some of the plants lighting up as you pass through them. It’s also remarkably easy to see the spots where you can use Wingnut to unearth a Beat, extra Widget, or just extra money. That’s a really big deal. Being able to quickly read a screen is important when the entire world map is randomized and you have to recheck every corner of the world while looking for secrets. As for Sparklite‘s soundtrack, it makes an effort and I can respect that. One song was clearly inspired by The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. I find most of the soundtrack to be forgettably generic, though. That said, I do like the percussive desert music. I’ve always felt that Dale North is at his best with percussion, even going back all the way to his OCRemix days.

Story: 2/3 Gameplay: 2/3 Visuals: 2/2 Music: 1/2 ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ – 7/10
*Click here and scroll to the bottom for a detailed explanation of what these numbers mean

*A Steam key was provided for this Sparklite review. It took me 7.7 hours to finish and collect most things, so it’ll last most people 5-10 hours depending on skill and completion.

Sparklite review – Light on content, heavy on style first appeared on Killa Penguin