Sparklie is an incredible roguelite game that released recently. I wrote about 5 things I loved and 1 thing I hated about it, but something that I didn’t speak much about was the fact that there’s no End Run function. In most roguelites, players have the option to end a run early, unless a particular element of gameplay forbids it, such as the souls mechanic in the Dark Souls games, but even those games have items that mimic ending a run. However, no such mechanic exists in Sparklite, in fact the game would have benefited from launching with the ability to end runs early and return to base with all of your currency. Well now Red Blue Games has added that feature to Sparklite, and it’s glorious.
End the run
Check out the End Run function in action below.
We've added an "End Run" feature to mitigate some of the lameness of having to Quit your game or die to get back to town. Your game will save too on Quit and End Run.
If you're playing on PC/Mac you should already see this feature.#sparklite #updatepreview #gamedev pic.twitter.com/KA3zllm0Ld
— Sparklite Team – Red Blue Games (@redbluegames) November 24, 2019
In the beginning, it pays to push yourself as far as you can go in Sparklite, which always ends with Ada getting knocked out and being returned to base. Fortunately this lets you collect as much Sparklite, the game’s currency, as possible, allowing you to spend it on new patches, upgrades for the various vendors, or in upgrading your patch board. The trouble is that once you get close to the end of the game, your runs can go on for longer than you need them to, meaning that once you’ve collected enough Sparklite for the thing you want to do, you have to let the enemies kill you in order to get back to base.
This process becomes tiresome at the end of the game, when you have all five biomes unlocked for exploration, because you can pretty much collect enough Sparklite to achieve the next level of a vendor, or buy a new patch, by running around and killing enemies in the Vinelands, the game’s first area, for a while. Even if you have to enter a second biome to get enough Sparklite, that will always be the Golden Woods, the game’s second area, and never one of the much more challenging areas.
At this point in Sparklite, all you want is to have the best patches and possible loadout for encounters with the last couple of bosses, or even the final boss. Some of the later areas have enemies that can kill you in a couple of hits, but they only give you the same amount of Sparklite as weaker enemies in the Vinelands do. I wouldn’t ever opt to be pulverised for less currency in Sparklite, because it’s a game about upgrading your character as much as possible, and gearing her towards your style of play.
The End Run feature that is now available in most versions of Sparklite is just another option in the menu. You can select it and return to base with all of your currency and none of your items, just as if Ada had been defeated by a super tough enemy. It’s a small quality of life change, but it makes you feel much better about playing, and makes the system of progressing through each area, upgrading the vendors and Ada herself as you go, much more manageable than it was with the constant death loop.