Lynked: Banner of the Spark Review – Cute, Colorful, Merciless

Lynked: Banner of the Spark Review

Lynked: Banner of the Spark is an interesting and ambitious mix of roguelite, RPG, and life sim with multiplayer elements. This game is charming, addictive, and surprisingly intense. However, the online mode was very disappointing.

Humanity has fallen, but before they went down, they created the seeds of Earth’s salvation. Unibots are helpful little robots designed to restore the damaged planet. After their progenitor went rogue, most of them have been jailed. Along with the remnants of humanity.

Players take on the role of a human survivor who bonds with the Unibot Buddy to escape captivity. Once you’ve broken free, you join Buddy in rescuing other Unibots and managing the secret base. Soon, you have an entire town of freed robots to manage and a ton of new friends to look after.

A Rogue-Life RPG

Lynked: Banner of the Spark is an action adventure game with roguelite and RPG elements. In combat, you race through procedurally generated levels, unlocking new abilities to fight and traverse obstacles. No two runs are the same.

You use melee weapons, special attacks, and the long-ranged Wyre to manipulate objects and fight enemies. Like most roguelites, you start each mission with a basic weapon and gather upgrades throughout the levels. However, you can purchase permanent upgrades to make the combat easier.

Outside of combat, you unlock new weapons and upgrades by interacting with Unibots and upgrading the town. In-town resources respawn after completing a mission. This makes for a compelling core gameplay loop.

In town, you design landscapes, add buildings, gather materials, and interact with Unibots. Some of them are shop owners who offer upgrades. Others are residents who can accompany you into combat. All of them have relationship values to rank up and quests to complete. Unibots you have saved on missions can join you in battle afterwards.

Lynked: Banner of the Spark is Animal Crossing Meets Hades

Lynked: Banner of the Spark has a lot to offer. First of all, combat is slick, fun, and customizable. Every mission plays out in an interesting way. And roguelite fans will be delighted by how difficult the game can be as the missions get longer.

There is a lot of substance in this title. It’s clearly a multiplayer title, but the single-player campaign still has a lot of meat to it. Most of the game mechanics on display here involve fast reflexes, though the building part is more relaxed.

Speaking of which, when this game isn’t being a colorful roguelite adventure, it’s Animal Crossing. Right down to the cute residents who wander around and make cheerful beeps. There are tons of collectibles. I kept getting distracted from the main story by fishing and hunting for Bitibots. Designing my town’s layout and filling it with crops was satisfying in its own right. And the fishing minigame was downright addicting.

However, I’m not sure why you can’t clear multiple quests on a single mission. Attaching every quest to a distinct mission feels like fake difficulty, or at least fake length. Especially when each of the missions can get quite long.

No Connection

Lynked: Banner of the Spark looks great and sounds fine. The game is fill of cute 3D graphics and adorable robot designs. The bright colors make for a very friendly and inviting world. And it’s easy to pick out enemies as they pop against the backgrounds. I like the variety of customization options on offer here, though there could certainly be more.

The music is okay. I don’t have too much to say about it one way or another. Buddy’s beeping can get really annoying, however, in a way that Animal Crossing noises usually aren’t. Also, some of the item descriptions are in unreadable runes, which is frustrating for lore enthusiasts.

On to my single biggest complaint: Online Mode. I don’t like that you have to start with Online Mode in order to turn on Offline Mode. This feels backwards. Maybe I’m showing my age, but I think offline gaming should be the default when it’s available. And if you accidentally click Online Mode, you have to close the game and restart it. You can’t just cancel out of it while it’s loading. That’s annoying.

When I attempted to play in Online Mode, I was met with ridiculously long loading screens. I could easily get up and get myself a drink between levels. And I wasn’t even playing online multiplayer–I was just going through the tutorial. Offline mode has much better loading times. Again, why isn’t this the default?

All in all, Lynked: Banner of the Spark is a fun idea with a cute aesthetic and an addicting gameplay loop. Unfortunately, its implementation of Online Mode is incredibly frustrating. I sincerely hope the developers polish that element up in the future. At least it has enough substance to make its single-player campaign worthwhile.

***Steam code provided by the publisher***