Spark in the Dark has a simple premise: you play one of four heroes, each with their own unique skills and proficiencies, as you try to make your way out of a dark, seemingly endless dungeon. Along the way, you’ll have to deal with dangerous foes and other threats, like traps, that can quite easily end your journey. To help you deal with these threats, you’ll also get your hands on new equipment and other tools, like potions. However, you won’t necessarily know what these potions do from the moment you pick them up, and it’s left to the player to experiment with them, either by consuming them or tossing them onto enemies.

When it comes to the story, Spark in the Dark doesn’t spend much time giving players a detailed narrative rundown of its world. Rather, it gives you a couple of lines about waking up in a dungeon and tosses you right into the run. You do, however, get a few more hints about the larger world, with references to things that may have been going on outside of the dungeon, as well as warnings for menacing things that might be resting in its deeper levels. Aside from this, the storytelling is quite sparse, and Spark in the Dark is ultimately driven almost entirely by its gameplay.

Let’s get one thing out of the way: Spark in the Dark is an incredibly difficult game. Even though it offers three distinct difficulty options—the equivalent of an easy mode, the “intended” mode, and a hard mode that includes permadeath—you’re almost always going to feel incredibly vulnerable any time you step into the dungeon. This comes down to the fact that the pace of gameplay is slow, you are severely limited in your movement options, and enemies tend to be quite hardy. Your starting class also affects the difficulty, since it determines your initial stats, gear, and skills. This means that starting out as a Fighter, for example, can be a bit easier than starting out as a Blacksmith, who doesn’t start with a shield for blocking. Similarly, picking Rogue or Ranger can also make things easier or harder, depending on how confident you are in your dodging and damage-dealing capabilities.

"Let’s get one thing out of the way: Spark in the Dark is an incredibly difficult game."

The procedurally-generated dungeons of Spark in the Dark are, as the game’s name might imply, quite dark. A faint aura around the player illuminates only your immediate surroundings. However, the darkness also tends to hide a range of enemies, from giant spiders to zombies and skeletons that were once heavily armed soldiers. There are also several traps that you will have to keep an eye out for, since they tend to cause heavy damage while also giving you other impairments, such as reduced movement speed or bleeding.

Your choice of weapon essentially defines your play style for that run as well. Swords and daggers, for instance, tend to be much quicker to use than bows or two-handed hammers. You’ll also find several other weapons as you continue your descent into the dungeon, promoting a healthy dose of experimentation. Loot only makes up one half of Spark in the Dark’s progression system, with the other half tied to player behavior and build choices. Using a one-handed sword, for example, gradually increases the associated passive skill. Similarly, wearing heavy armor and surviving attacks will let you eke out more defense from your armor set.

This is also where some of the more interesting differences between the four heroes come into play. Aside from different starting gear and skills, each character also has their own unique proficiencies. The Hunter, for example, can gut the monsters he kills to get his hands on crafting materials. The Blacksmith, on the other hand, starts out with a crowbar, allowing him to open locked chests, as well as an edge in repairing weapons and armor. While still relatively minor differences, these add up to make each character more fun to play, giving players things to consider when they strategize their next run.

"Aside from different starting gear and skills, each character also has their own unique proficiencies."

The healing system in Spark in the Dark also deserves a mention, since it’s quite unique. Aside from single-use potions that you may or may not find during your journey, certain light sources will also heal you up to full, assuming there aren’t any enemies nearby. You can also find beds, where you can rest for a few moments to recover from significant damage or negative effects you might have been suffering from. This means that, while there is often a way to proceed, you will be quite heavily penalized for mistiming your blocks or getting too greedy with your attacks and getting hit instead.

Dying in Spark in the Dark throws you back to the last resting spot you may have found. If you managed to die before you could find a bed to sleep in, the run is essentially over, and you’re going to have to start all over again. You also don’t keep any of the progress you may have made between deaths, with the penalty essentially working like an auto-load from a save file. It is worth noting that there isn’t much in the way of meta progression in Sparks in the Dark. Each run is its own thing, and you don’t get to carry over gear you may have found on one character into another run with a different hero.

Unfortunately, some of the gameplay aspects also betray the fact that Spark in the Dark is very much an Early Access game, and still far from a polished final product. Movement and action feel quite clunky at times, especially when there are multiple enemies involved in a fight. Similarly, the game also does a terrible job of explaining many of its important mechanics, like how weapon and armor durability work, and how you can go about repairing them once they have fully broken. There is also a distinct lack of enemy variety, and even venturing deeper into the dungeon will often have you face off against stronger variants of enemies that you’ve already fought before.

"Unfortunately, some of the gameplay aspects also betray the fact that Spark in the Dark is very much an Early Access game, and still far from a polished final product."

In terms of both visuals and audio, Spark in the Dark goes for simple effects that emphasize the horror of the world and the overall isolation that the player is meant to be feeling. There is little music playing in the game, which is a good thing since you don’t want to be caught unaware by a group of spiders patrolling the room you happen to be exploring. The visuals are also quite low-key, and raw visual fidelity clearly wasn’t the priority here. Despite this, the game sticks to a coherent art style that also has the added benefit of letting you scope out where you might want to go next. Background objects like pillars are also quite well-detailed, giving you a glimpse at what kind of structure once stood what kind of structure once stood here before it became a dungeon.

Performance was never really an issue owing to the lo-fi style of Spark in the Dark. Running on an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU, a Radeon RX 7800 XT GPU, and 32 GB of RAM, I was able to maintain the frame rate cap—which I had set to 120 FPS—while running at a resolution of 2560×1440. I never really felt any slowdowns throughout my time with the game, which is great since Spark in the Dark punishes missed blocks quite harshly.

Generally speaking, Spark in the Dark feels incredibly promising in its current state. While far from feeling complete—the lack of enemy variety, effective tutorials, and clunky combat stand out—I still found the game surprisingly addictive. The minimalist approach to storytelling, with plenty of vague hints and clues about what might be going on in the world, is great, and there is a certain “one more run” quality to the core gameplay loop that keeps bringing me back in. However, Stellar Fish certainly has its work cut out for it as it continues its journey through Early Access.

This game was reviewed on PC.