Sparklite sold me on its pixel art alone.

Seriously, my interest in this game was entirely down to the pixel art I’d seen online. It looked gorgeous. I wanted to play it. I didn’t have an inkling of what the story, gameplay, or even genre were gonna be. Upon playing, it became obvious.

If you took a top-down Legend of Zelda game and strapped on rogue-lite elements, you’d essentially get Sparklite. But does it work as a game? You’ll have to read on to find out! That hook blatant enough for ya?

Developer: RedBlue Games

Publisher: Merge Games

10 Hours Played // Review Copy Provided // $24.99

Of course, we cannot begin without covering the options. Seven languages, vibration, screen shake, and volume sliders for the master volume, SFX, music, and the UI. Options covered. One day, I’ll stumble across another game with remappable buttons on Switch [Editor note: I can count the number I know on my left hand!], I swear. For now, Sparklite settles for a basic set of options to work with.

Sparklite begins with Ada, the protagonist and player character, caught in a storm above Geodia. As the lands shift much like the raging winds around the craft, you’re given a brief tutorial to learn the fundamentals. Dashing, slashing, and smashing are all covered. For context, that’s dashing with rocket boots, slashing with a wrench, and smashing with a hammer. Cause Ada is a mechanic/badass.

After crash-landing, you get a chance to see how the world map works. Surprisingly, it works exactly like the over-world in a Zelda game! Screen-based sections with entrances appearing on any of the top, bottom, or sides. You’re forced down a linear path for narrative purposes, cause you have to lose the first boss fight to be saved by The Refuge. I didn’t suck, it made me lose!

You’ll wake up here after every death, so get used to it

The Refuge serves as your base of operations for the game, and the safe space you’ll return to between visits to the surface. Using sparklite, the currency in Sparklite, you can expand this aircraft with more services and utilities to make each run that much more prosperous for you. By the end of the game, you’ll have access to all sorts of gadgets and gizmos before you even set off. These can include anything from a revival upon a single death, to a barrage of explosives you scatter around yourself.

This is also where you get to equip “patches” to your character, which boost stats or add additional perks to your benefit. Some are very simple, adding extra hearts or energy for your gadgets, while others may provide landmarks on your map or increase your attack speed. At first you’re pretty limited in what you can equip, but eventually, you become able to fuse patches together to save space. It’s like Resident Evil’s inventory system crossed with Hollow Knight’s charms. I like that. A lot.

“Nothing to be afraid of on the surface,” they said. “You’ll be absolutely fine,” they said

Now the rest of Sparklite steps in. The runs. The meat and veg of the game. The main thing you’ll be doing while you play. You traverse the overworld in search of bosses, secrets, and more sparklite. That’s it. I was kinda bored by the time I’d beaten the final boss (which isn’t great for a rogue-lite, which lives or dies on replayability). But to be fair, this was after a lot of playtime in familiar environments and against the small pool of enemies the game offers. And that’s not to say it’s bad. Just basic. It makes for a very relaxing experience, aided by the calm tones of the soundtrack.

I could definitely see myself running around just to kill 30 minutes in the future. In Sparklite, I mean. Not real life

See, my main gripe with Sparklite is that it takes the two elements of Zelda games I remember least, the overworld and the bosses, and removes the element I enjoy most, the dungeons. I understand with the constraints of random-generation it’s difficult to create a tailored dungeon experience, but the replacements Sparklite provides (called furnaces) are just gauntlets with a few rooms, where you may have to step on a couple switches. Very disappointing.

There’s the occasional glimmer of potential with side-quests, delivered by the colourful cast of characters you stumble upon. They often encourage you to search an area thoroughly or race to a spot while avoiding enemies. Variety is the spice of life, and these do a lot to keep things interesting.

The bosses do a lot to remedy the situation as well. Each of them is visually interesting and wonderfully animated, and as long as you’ve not over-equipped yourself they provide a genuine challenge. The highlight of the whole game for me was beating the fourth boss with only half a heart remaining for the latter half of the fight. Conversely, the third boss was a cake-walk as I had so many defense patches installed.

You have some control over difficulty through the patch system I suppose, but it requires a guessing-game on the player’s part. There’s little indication of how hard any new enemies will strike, or how difficult their attacks will be to avoid in a brand new area. That’s why I felt too strong for the Acid Bogs while the next stage, the Shifting Sands, was deadly and tense to wander around in.

This wasn’t even my final form. I did another run and got more patches later

See, I’m incredibly conflicted when it comes to this game. I’m not sure what it’s aiming to be, exactly. Does it want to be rogue-lite Zelda that you can replay dozens of times? Or does it want to be a game you play once, but with an overworld and loadout unique to you? I couldn’t reach a conclusion in the end, but I can safely say that this is not a game you can replay forever.

One of the main reasons I say that, is that the bosses do not respawn between runs. Once you’ve defeated a boss, it’s dead for good, and its arena is blocked off. Another reason is that defeating the final boss doesn’t unlock an ounce of new content. The game is sorely missing new game+, a boss rush mode, a speedrun mode, a hardcore mode, heck, any other mode to give players reason to keep playing after the final boss. There’s only so much motivation I can derive from a couple of patches and a few missing secrets (that may or may not spawn).

In the post-game, I easily explored the entire map in a single run, despite there being practically nothing left to do in it

I feel like I’m being overly harsh because I so badly wanted this game to be great. Instead, I can confidently tell you that it’s good but has so much unexplored potential. The combat is fast and cathartic but doesn’t require that you use the side-gadgets at all. The items you collect to unlock new areas open up rooms where there’s no puzzle; you just have to press ‘A’ to reach the chest. Loading screens between areas respawn every enemy on the map, making the time you spent killing them feel wasted during your run.

Throughout my playthrough, I encountered a few too many bugs for my liking. Stairs I couldn’t climb. The hidden birds spawning beneath treasure chests, rendering them inaccessible. Once I completed a side-quest to find that I received no reward. I nearly became soft-locked in a room cause the enemy jumped over the wall (thankfully I could shoot through it). Some more polishing would be nice, so I’d cross my fingers for a day-one patch.

Worst of all, the game crashed at one point, leading to the realisation that there is no option to save and quit mid-run. If you want to play something else without losing your progress, you have to finish your current run. And the only way to end a run is to die. No “return to ship” option exists, you have to die. Which in a way means that no run can truly be a success, especially since defeating the final boss wipes all of the progress in your run building up to it (which sucks, needless to say). The quit option doesn’t even warn you that you’ll lose your progress either, which seems like a major oversight.

This was my favourite room in the game, as it references the Monty Hall problem and I’m an absolute nerd

But despite all of these complaints, I can’t rightfully say that I didn’t enjoy Sparklite. At its core, it’s a pleasant and unique experience, and I enjoyed my playthrough in its entirety. The concept behind it isn’t so much flawed, as it is, just, slightly awkward. It’s a mixed bag of elements I find rewarding – upgrades, discovering secrets, exploration – with elements that don’t support the replayability of a typical rogue-lite – permanent progress, a single character, and no random effects.

It’s been a while since I’ve felt so torn over a game, but this is such an odd blend of genres and mechanics that it’s hard for me to even assess if it’s of high quality. I don’t think I can accurately convey just how mixed my feelings are towards it. When I first started playing, I thought it was golden heart material, that much is true. Alas, the more I think about it though, the more the unfulfilled potential Sparklite has saddens me.

Hard to believe I only played this game cause I saw a gif of this guy, isn’t it?

At the end of the day, what it comes down to is this. Did I enjoy Sparklite? Yes. And it’s too good to receive a half-heart, so it gets a full heart. I have no idea if anything I’ve written makes sense… Let me know on Twitter or something.

Thank you for reading! If you want to read my previous review, you can read my thoughts on New Super Lucky’s Tale. But if you’re in search of randomly-generated goodness, here’s one of our recent reviews, this time of Overland. Feel free to follow on Twitter or join our Discord to talk all things Nindie with us, or follow me personally here. And if you’re feeling especially generous today, you can support Nindie Nexus and my podcast, The Moncast, via Patreon.