Sparkle Unleashed (PS Vita) Review

There are two modes to play through: a survival, and then a story mode that has a ridiculous 108 stages to conquer, and the difficulty increases over the course of the game by having longer snakes to take on, faster-moving snakes, and having survival stages which require staying "alive" for a set amount of time.

The stages that these snakes wind and wend their way across start simply enough - basic spirals and corkscrews - but as levels progress, extra types of paths are added, and they can introduce additional kinds of challenges, like having two different paths to take care of at once, or adding bridges, tunnels, and obstacles that block the line of sight - not to mention adding two independent snakes of marbles to take out which pass in front of each other.

There are extra mechanics to give further life to the title, though. As stages progress, the marbles can be protected, requiring two matches to be destroyed, and flaming balls of fire can be mixed in with the marbles, which can only be destroyed by having marbles matched beside them. To help deal with these special obstacles, a series of special powers can be unlocked. Regularly throughout the story stages, there are checkpoints entitled braziers which unlock those powers to be used in subsequent stages.

There are Explosive shots which blow apart entire sections of marble, comets raining down from above, and flaming butterflies appearing to destroy the marbles closest to the whole. The random nature of which power can be unlocked makes the stages completely different on each play-through. A lucky series of power-ups can make the most difficult of stages a complete joke.

The presentation really helps the title, the graphical style is sharp, the audio tracks are highly enjoyable, and the whole final product feels highly polished. It's a shame there aren't more tracks here, though; there are some very catchy earworms here, but since they're repeated so often, they begin to feel tiresome.

That's the one fatal flaw to the game, however, and it's something that can be an absolute killer to a puzzle game - this soon begins to feel very repetitive. This is mostly due to a lack of variation in stage design. With so many levels in the story mode, it has to be somewhat expected that the same routes are used over and over. Thankfully, there are the extra mechanics that stop the repetition ruining the title, and instead end up making Sparkle Unleashed an enjoyable game, but not something special.