If you gotta go fast, you don't have to wait for Sonic Frontiers.
Would you believe that one of the best Sonic games in years doesn’t contain a single blue hedgehog? Recently released on Steam,—a mouthful of a title—caps off a trilogy of heavily Sonic-inspired platformers by Brazilian solo developer Felipe ‘LakeFeperd’ Daneluz, who first broke into game development making Sonic fangames. While I’ve enjoyed the whole trilogy, Spark 3 is the first to transcend its inspirations and give Sega some genuine competition.
Much like A Hat In Time and Demon Turf take heavy inspiration from 3D Mario games while doing their own thing, Spark 3 has its own feel while being immediately intuitive if you've played 3D Sonic. The first key difference is combat. Spark spends most of his time running extremely quickly and bouncing off smaller enemies, but sometimes slows down to engage bigger foes in some Devil May Cry-lite combat, building up a combo multiplier that also amplifies damage done.
While familiar, the movement has its own feel. While the fundamentals are very Sonic-esque , there’s a consistent physics engine at work here. With the right combination of speed boosts and wall-jumps it’s possible to launch Spark through levels at preposterous speeds and into areas that look otherwise unreachable.
Areas off in the far distance that appear to just be bits of backdrop are often alternate paths, filled with fights, surprises and hidden exploration medals. While a first run through a level may feel like the entire experience was on rails, replay reveals that it’s possible to jump off the tracks and run wild whenever you see fit, and you’ll probably find something interesting in the process. It’ll take four or five runs through many levels before their full scope becomes clear.
The sheer scale and variety of the levels makes it all the more impressive that this was a mostly-solo project. Aside from the soundtrack and a few art assets, this is a one-man show, and yet it puts the almost purely linear design of many of Sonic’s bigger outings to shame.
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