So, I’m not really sure how Lightracer Spark landed up on my review schedule. All I really remember is being on holiday with very limited signal and during a brief moment of roaming Arielle mentioned to our review group that I was definitely the one who needed to review it.
At least I had some work to do, all that relaxing I was getting done was just getting way too much for me.
What is Lightracer Spark? It’s not a racing game, even though it sounds like it should be some sort of Star Wars Racer-esque clone. No no, Lightracer Spark is a visual novel. Its Steam page lists RPG and Strategy and yes, while these are elements of the game, its foundation is that of a visual novel. While I’m not opposed to them, I prefer my novels to be paperback. I just don’t find it easy to connect to a game-style novel where I have to read blocks and blocks of text before choosing my next path on my PC or console. Maybe I just like ye olde’ pencil and paper.
In any case, I took on the review with an open mind and was hoping that Lightracer Spark would blow me away.
In the beginning, I was kind of excited; the visual part of the visual novel is really well done. There is a lot that the developers have done to try and draw you into the world. The audio is also amazing, creating the perfect atmosphere for the story being told. Beyond that is where the game starts to lose me. It starts off with a tutorial that I didn’t completely understand. I’m an Amender, a being from outer space that intervenes in a planet’s destiny. I amend it, and once I’m done with that I just… leave? Is it because I’m happy that this is the path the planet should go on, or is it because I have gained all the resources I need from this planet to carry on amending things in the future? Maybe I’ll leave because I’m bored with the planet. I’m still not really sure why my omni-present-outer-space-being got involved with these planets; the fact is, it did.
During the first part of the tutorial, I thought the game was just going to be a whole lot of reading and clicking and then some artwork would appear and then I would read some more and click some more. I wasn’t too excited, to be honest, but slowly the game let me get a little more involved. I had to take control of land on the planet I was “amending”, kind of like a government, I think, and then use this land to build a structure to help me towards my desired end goal for the planet. This is where the strategy element was supposed to come into play, I assume.
In the tutorial it didn’t really feel like it provided much of a difference no matter what extra buildings or things I had clicked on, I was hoping this would change in the main game. It didn’t. There was also an element of war, where you would create an army and send them to conquer the other AI governments that were in play on the planet, this all mainly boiled down to ‘my number is bigger than yours, and therefore I win’. The strategy felt non-existent to me. These extra bits of the game felt like fillers to try and entice me to carry on with the story. Sadly I was not enticed.
It’s a bit of a pity because there are some cool elements to this game that I feel could really make a cool visual novel experience, but most of the time I didn’t really know what was going on or why. The flow just wasn’t there, and it made me enjoy the game less and less as I struggled through it. Perhaps this may be more up someone’s alley who enjoys the visual-novel experience more than I do. It’s possible, the Steam reviews are positive, but I personally did not enjoy it.