Lynked Banner of the Spark is a title befitting a game seemingly pieced together from a jumble of words on a dartboard. It’s an action RPG roguelike a la Hades, but it’s also a life sim like Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing, but it also has a flavor of Mega Man to its world.
The melting pot of ideas is a fascinating thing because, at its best, you get brand-new concoctions using the key ingredients of recognized success stories, and thus, new success stories are born for others to be inspired by later. Taking a step back from Lynked Banner of the Spark, you could simplify it as a life sim with robots and a larger focus on combat. Because let’s face it, there’s already combat in a life sim such as Stardew Valley; it’s just a more optional aspect of the game. So Lynked is just taking that formula and switching out the combat ingredient with another.
But all that guff aside, what’s important to note here is that Lynked’s change to the formula really does make it stand out. We’ve got enough cozy life sims, and the action RPG roguelike could do with a bit of variety, so Lynked Banner of the Spark, daft name, and all, offers a refreshing compromise.
In the year 30XX, the natural world has been overwhelmed by an evil legion of robots. You come in as a potential savior by joining forces with friendly machines known as Unibots to build a new community and take back the world from the evil machinations of these machine bastards.
But let’s get into the humble beginnings of this mission. First, you must rescue some Unibots and smash a few clunkers along the way. You’re quite literally armed with a multi-purpose grapple arm called the Wyre, which you can use with whatever weapons you acquire. The grapple arm being a multi-purpose tool is a small thing that ties the two sides of the game together in its own way. It can drag bad bots about to taste your own steel and be used for more casual tasks like fishing. It’s always helpful and never truly overshadowed by the increasingly glorious arsenal you unveil.
The art style is reminiscent of a Saturday morning cartoon, which gives the combat a lovely visual kick that helps it stand out from the games it apes. It’s initially a bit jarring, but I quickly found it was a crucial part of Lynked’s vibrant joy.
Lynked Banner of the Spark – Scrapping Metal
By utilizing the roguelike bag of tricks, there’s a compelling reason to invest time and resources into becoming a mechanical ass-kicker. That visual style is enhanced by the fantastic animations for the various weapons you can forge and upgrade. Each serves as its own little treat to watch in action.
I did wonder if there would be a sort of compromise on either the action or the life sim aspect of the game, but in fairness, developer FuzzyBot has done a decent job in maintaining a fair balance between the two. It’s actually lovely to have proper downtime between brawls to build homes and grow your community, and the action is a great escape from getting too deep into the weeds of the life sim. It’s a complimentary pairing of game types where you can see the intent was not to tick genre boxes, but to harmonize the two sides.
The action is enjoyable. It’s not going to rival the greats of the roguelike sub-genre, but it has enough kick to be worth coming back to. The life sim side similarly isn’t quite as comprehensive or engagingly deep as the best examples, but it’s still got plenty to offer and rewards your progress with visual evidence of your growth.
Something that really pulls all this together is co-op. Teaming with pals is nothing new in either roguelikes or life sims, but teaming for both is a great time. The community feel is crucial to the game, so building something with a real community of sorts only enhances that, and going to battle with your buds to help build that community up even further adds a nice hook to teamwork.
While there’s replayability to Lynked Banner of the Spark, it does feel a little light on longevity for a life sim RPG at present. The reason for that would seem to be down to refining what the game is first, and there’s clearly room for expansion here, be that in this game or a sequel. For now, the combat and co-op are enough to keep it fuelled until then.
Score 7/10 – Good
Developer: FuzzyBot
Publisher: Dreamhaven
Reviewed on PC (Steam)
Lynked Banner of the Spark copy was purchased by the review author.
Lynked Banner of the Spark is available now on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam.
