Last year, 10tons games brought us a solid ‘match three’ game with Sparkle: Unleashed. The game was pretty solid but we didn’t like everything. If you want to learn more about Sparkle: Unleashed, be sure to read our original review. That being said, we’re here to talk about the sequel, Sparkle 2 now. Sparkle 2 follows the same path as its predecessor but manages to innovate and optimize the gameplay.
There’s a story now
The biggest innovation comes with a story and narrative this time. You’re not just going from level to level; no you’ll need to save the world in this one. Well, not actually saving it, you’ll need to look for a treasure so valuable everybody is looking for it but nobody seems to find it. The only way to find this treasure is to complete the 92 levels. In order to open the treasure, you’ll need to five keys that are spread on the map. It’s a fun idea to include a story but it’s not necessary at all. The plot isn’t that impressive and is rather boring to be honest. It’s fun at the beginning but the story is rather monotonous after a while. It’s great to have but the game could have done perfectly without it.
Solid gameplay
That being said, the gameplay remained as solid as it possibly gets. The goal of the game is to match marbles of the same color in a chain. If you manage to match three of the same color, they’ll disappear, making the chain smaller. If a marble falls down the hole at the end of the level, you’ll need to restart it. It works great thanks to the fluent controls. It’s easy to control your launcher to the exact spot you had in mind and firing out your marbles comes with ease. It’s very important for a game as this to have solid controls so it’s great to see that 10tons really nailed the controls. They also made sure everybody could enjoy the game, even gamers who struggle with color blindness. The game comes with a great little feature to assist those players, enabling them to enjoy the game, kudos to the developer!
Store your power-ups
Just like in the first Sparkle, you can unlock certain power-ups to assist you in the more difficult levels. You can collect certain enhancements like time slowing or rocket power-ups to make things a little easier. New in this game is the ability to store up to four enhancements on your launcher. This leaves room for experiments and results in a more fun game to play than the original. Since you’re allowed to store the abilities, they’re not as random as in the previous game and you can really adapt your way of playing to the power-ups you stored. It offers a new tactic to the puzzle game and we’re glad the developers included it. Thanks to this, we didn’t fail that much and the levels felt ‘more fair’.
The modes
This brings us to the last point worth mentioning, the game modes. Unlike the previous game, this one comes with two extra modes outside of the main story mode. There’s the challenge mode and the survival mode. In the challenge mode, you’ll need to solve several challenges in order to advance. To be honest, this looks a lot like the main mode but without the story to put everything together. The survival mode offers an endless chain of marbles to match. The longer you survive, the higher your score. This is the perfect mode for those who like to break their highscores.
| The Good: | The bad: |
| + The power-up system | – Story isn’t really necessary |
| + Challenging levels | |
| + Right level of difficulty |
Sparkle 2 offers more fun and the same solid gameplay that was found in Sparkle: Unleashed. The story wasn’t really necessary but it’s great to have anyway. Thanks to the fluent controls, the ability to store enhancements to your launcher and the different modes, this is for sure the best in its genre for now. The developers did their best to create a better experience than the original game and they really succeeded if you ask us! If you’re into these kinds of games, be sure not to miss this little gem!
4 out of 5:
