Sparkle 2 Evo

[stargatedalek]

I wasn't sure if there would be any interest here, but I wrote a review for this on another site and I figured I might as well post it here since I imagine abyssal animals must gather some interest.

Now I have no idea whether a Sparkle (1) exists or not, but if so I couldn't find it on Steam and I'm lazy like that. There is however a Sparkle 3 which was released fairly recently, and it seems to follow much the same style with a new OST and different animals and multiple environments (something this game lacks). I bought this game a few years ago, binged it for about a week, and then forgot it existed until today. It's basically Feeding Frenzy meets Star Trek chess. The game has essentially no lore beyond that you play as a fictional Copepod like animal that eats other abyssal animals most (if not all) of which are real animals.


_{This game has no Kanji support so for anyone who was still curious how to romanize my name there it is.}

When you launch the game the settings open in a pop-up which has detail and resolution and such, so the in-game menu only has a toggle for competitive mode and sound options. Speaking of sound this game has a really good OST, very calming. Even the effects for the animals fighting are very synthesized and fit in well with the music.


_{The HUD Menu's look really nice but all the sparkly bits that look like watery lighting make for bad screenshots.}

I deleted my old save so here I'm on level three, which only toke about ten minutes to reach but with later levels it can take hours to complete each one as they simply become so large and more of the goals become actual enemies as opposed to hapless jellyfish.


_{The numbers count down, so x/70 means there are x jellyfish remaining.}

The basic game play principle is that you can alter the development path of your Copepod by eating different kinds of food. Green planktonic algae makes it an herbivore, strange floating red blood-cells (or perhaps some creature I don't recognize?) makes it a carnivore, and blue jellyfish make it an omnivore. You might as well discard the titles herbivore, omnivore, and carnivore because they make absolutely no sense (especially omnivore eating jellyfish) and just say green, red, and blue. Green Copepods have slow movement speed and deal low damage but their bite can spam in rapid fire, red Copepods have faster movement speed for dodging enemies and have higher attack but they take a few seconds between bites, and blue Copepods are a balanced combination. But that's not to say each herbivore will be alike, and that's where this games real ingenuity shines. You don't have to eat just one hapless being, you can mix and match as desired to tailor fit your Copepod to your play style (or to which design you think looks coolest, because all three have a different look).


_{Mine is a carnivore because I goofed on the last level and ate too many blood-cells instead of jellyfish.}

Remember when I mentioned Star trek chess? You know the thing where it's on multiple planes, well that's how this plays. You can use scroll wheel to travel up and down between planes, with more hapless jellyfish to devour on each one.


_{I completely admit to being omnivore only because I prefer it's design.}

Most of the levels look pretty well the same, with the same rocks and corals. The animals change, and eventually you encounter things like glass squid and fish, but for now the species I can encounter are all pretty generic. Actually to be fair while the designs are all really appealing, they all look fairly similar with the transparent glowing abyssal thing going on. But hey, repetitive doesn't always mean bad, especially in this case.