It's Full of Sparks review - A stylish but flawed platform-puzzler
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iOS
| It's Full of Sparks

Fireworks are built to explode, but what if they were sentient? Would they thrill at the prospect of a noisy demise, or rail against it?

That's the unlikely stoner-philosophy behind It's Full of Sparks from Dabadu Games.

The game casts you as an endless line of anthropomorphic firecrackers, all out on a mission to find a way to not explode. Every time you fail a level - and you will fail, multiple times - a new sparkler with a fresh name falls under your control.

Big bang theory

You could read the game's story as a Pixar-esque take on human mortality and religion. Or you could just ignore the story and get stuck into what is a pretty straight forward, bright and breezy platform-puzzler.

The goal is to move from one side of each compact level to the next as quickly as possible. We're talking a travel time of seconds here, but in the way are a bunch of obstacles and pitfalls.

Some of those obstacles are colour-coded, and you soon get the ability to make those obstacles disappear and reappear with a dedicated button press.

As these colour-switching mechanics increase in frequency and complexity, It's Full of Sparks emerges as some kind of rhythm-action puzzler.

Short fuse

Figuring out the timing of the colour switches is one thing when you're against the timer, but executing your plan is another level of challenge entirely. In fact, It's Full of Sparks can get quite annoying.

The game's general control responsiveness doesn't seem to be quite sharp enough given the required level of precision. Nor does our hero's vague and wallowy movement, which leads to frequent deaths as you misjudge the positioning of gaps and reappearing objects.

You can learn to live with these shortfalls, and there's still a lot of tactile fun to be had simply bombing through each level. The game certainly looks the part, too, with cute boggle-eyed characters and chunky 3D levels.

If you're like me, though, you'll find yourself wondering why you don't love It's Full of Sparks more than you do. It's a fun and fresh platform-puzzler, but a few grating gameplay imbalances stop it from fully igniting the passions.

It's Full of Sparks review - A stylish but flawed platform-puzzler

It's Full of Sparks is a fun, colourful platform-puzzler that doesn't quite ignite as it should thanks to a few mechanical imbalances
Score
Jon Mundy
Jon Mundy
Jon is a consummate expert in adventure, action, and sports games. Which is just as well, as in real life he's timid, lazy, and unfit. It's amazing how these things even themselves out.