I honestly did not know where to start with this review. Red Blue Games latest title Sparklite does so many things right, so it’s hard to know the best way to approach it. At its core, it’s a top-down action RPG, but there is just so much to tackle that it is hard not to dive deep into the reasons why it is so good immediately!

Story

You play as Ada, a handy mechanic with a lot of energy and spunk. One stormy evening, she and her little robot buddy crash into a sparse land filled with dangerous creatures and a small group of people with a nefarious plan. After being rescued, she knew that she had to go back to the surface and stop the evil people that we slowly breaking up the earth. Thus begins the adventure to hunt down this group and shut down their operation. The story is surprisingly entertaining even with no voice acting. there is a lot of personality in the character design and their conversations.

Gameplay

Sparklite is a “hack and slash” game, but it is very smart with its approach to combat: quick, difficult and keeps players on their toes. There are also some interesting RPG/adventure elements that really stand out, they can add a lot to the gameplay and help flesh out a player’s unique play style while being fairly simple and straight forward.

The combat is a great dance of move, attack, dodge, repeat. The fights always seem fair and simple enough to understand while the execution takes good practice and skill. There is a surprising amount of enemy variety that makes progressing through the game feel fresh and fun just about all the time. Along with all the enemies that you kill through the world, there are a number of really well-designed bosses. The bosses are brutal, yet fair. They are quick, but never without a telegraphed attack. It is ever so tense and satisfying to take on a boss and push through with just a sliver of health and come out victorious. Combat can also be enhanced with a number of weapons/gadgets and items that bring us to the more RPG side of things.

When building up your character, there are no levels, only upgrades. Upgrades to shops, item drops, or equipment all come at the game’s currency. This currency comes from just about everything in the game. From killing enemies to hacking certain plants down, this stuff rains down on players the whole game. These upgrades are expensive, and so choosing the correct ones at the correct times can be crucial, but focusing on different aspects really allows players to have some real freedom in character progression.

There are times that the game seems a little too brutal or unforgiving, but when players die, they will lose any held items, but all equipment and currency will stay with them, which is a nice change of pace compared to the brutal natures of things like Dark Souls or Bloodborne. The prices of upgrades can also be a little high and slow the pacing of the game, but overall, things run pretty smoothly.

Graphics and Sounds

For a pixel-based game, it is a great looking game overall. The pixelated sprites all move with a lot of personality and smoothness. The different areas and creatures all look unique and change in the different sections of the map. I was really impressed with the level of detail in making all the creatures and especially the bosses look and move in very unique ways. On a really large screen, the large pixels can be a little hard to look at and even look bad, but the motion and gameplay brush that to side and it becomes difficult not to love the graphics after an hour of playing.

They also manage to take simple approaches to music and general sound design, but the sounds feel very unique and specific to this game and this game alone. Just the odd ring, alien noise of walking into certain sparkling plants bring a lot of world-building into the game let alone every creature, weapon, and song. The music isn’t super, crazy catchy, but it never grows boring or annoying.

Replayability

This game’s campaign isn’t terribly long. Most players could get through it in probably less than 20 hours. But the ability to upgrade and change so many parts of your character’s approach to situations makes the game just fun to play in general, even when completely ignoring the storyline and following the written path.

What Could Be Better

It is hard to pinpoint anything particularly wrong with this game, it is a lot of fun overall and does a number of things really right. The only thing that bothers me is that every time a player dies and has to drop back into the world, they are always dropped in the same place in the middle of the map. The map isn’t terribly big, but traveling and grinding through the same enemies and stretches of terrain to reach the newer area where you died becomes a real hassle. Starting over and over again in the same area can really drag down the pacing overall. This could be totally avoided and the game wouldn’t lose anything if players could just begin in selected drop points at the start of each new area.

Conclusion

If you are craving some old school gaming with great core mechanics, visuals, sound design, and charm, then Sparklite is the great game to pick up! It may not appeal to all players because of its style choices and less forgiving respawning system, but it a good gateway game for those who want to venture into adventure games. Between the fresh RPG systems and slick gameplay, Sparklite is one of the better games to have been released this fall.