Lynked: Banner of the Spark

I’ve played several roguelike games over the years as the format for some of them is perfect for someone who may not have a lot of time to do a long gameplay session. You can jump into the game, take on a mission or two, return to whatever your hub or home base is to perform a couple of upgrades, come back to the game later, and the missions typically don’t take that long to accomplish.

However, Lynked: Banner of the Spark is the first game I’ve played that is considered a "Rogue-life," mixing roguelike gameplay with town building where you can build and customize your homebase however you wish. Does this combination work? In short, yes. In long, let’s explore deeper.

Humanity had entered the age of AI and the Earth’s environment began to collapse. Technology was used to try to solve the crisis but it was too late; humanity regressed as AI evolved. Unknown to everyone, the first Unibot was born and built more like itself to help heal the planet. Those it built became known as the Banner of the Spark.

Now it’s 30XX and with humanity scattered, the Banner’s work has become meaningless. The Banner was lost to time as the one who was built to save the world decided to build a world for itself instead and dismantle all beings that were built with the power of the Spark. With the Banner no more, it turns its attention to what’s left of humanity.

You play as one of the last remaining humans who’s being held in a robotic prison. There you’ll meet Buddy, a robot prisoner who wants to reform the Banner of the Spark. Buddy helps you break out of the prison while also getting you acclimated with, and actually becoming, a grapple known as the Wyre. The Wyre lets you grapple onto enemies and perform various actions, as well as grab objects to throw at said enemies.

You can’t defeat enemy robots with just the Wyre, but you’ll be able to unlock and utilize different weapons throughout your adventure such as swords, hammers, and claws. Each weapon feels different and has a special ability you can use, so you can use whatever weapon suits your playstyle. Make sure to get very acclimated to these weapons as they are because actually upgrading them beyond the temporary mods within the dungeons can take a while and make you feel a bit underpowered at times.

The combat in Lynked: Banner of the Spark can feel a little rough at first, but it’s not necessarily a game where you just mash the attack button to win. Many enemies will telegraph their attacks giving you time to move or dodge out of the way, but often times you’ll also have to learn how an enemy attacks to effectively avoid it and not take a ton of damage.

For instance, an enemy might telegraph when it’s about to attack you, but may attack two or three times in the same attack sequence, and not all of those attacks are telegraphed. This is where careful dodging comes into play. Learning how an enemy moves and attacks while counterattacking is key to surviving against a lot of the tougher enemies you’ll face.

Once you’re finished with the opening area you’ll be taken to a town, or at least where you’ll begin building one. Lynked: Banner of the Spark is part dungeon crawler and part town builder. The first chapter involves you completing several missions to rescue various bots that will help you setup your town with useful places like a shop, smithy, and a place to cook food.

What’s more is that Lynked: Banner of the Spark has multiplayer co-op where you and a couple of friends can go to one of your towns that was designed by that player in whatever way they like. While in town you can catch fish, collect little bots running around, harvest crops, and craft items to help make your town your own. You can also collect resources that you can use to help upgrade yourself with various powers that you can use to help in your quest.

Once you’re done in town it’s time to head out on a mission, be it a story mission, side mission, or special request by one of the bots. After starting the mission you’re given a chance to change your current weapon to one you’ve unlocked as well as give it an upgrade for the mission. You’ll get three options to choose from that range from upgrading your weapon by one level, adding a modifier that you’ve unlocked throughout the game, or modifying a mod you already have equipped.

These mods and upgrades only last until the end of the current mission. You’ll also find chests you can contain a weapon or scrap (one of the game’s currencies). You can either take the weapon and swap it with your current one, scrap it for, well, scrap, or just take the core and add it to your current weapon. Cores give the weapon different effects such as giving the chance to freeze or poison enemies upon dealing damage to them.

Besides the dungeon crawling and town building aspects, there’s also the ability to play co-op with friends. Once you’re done with the first chapter you unlock the co-op multiplayer ability which lets you play with a couple of friends, but if you don’t have anyone to play with, fear not! After the first chapter is complete you’ll have the ability to take a Unibot or two into battle with you.

Unibots perform as AI partners who have their own attacks to help you take down enemies. If you or a partner happens to get taken out, you can revive each other to keep you in the fight. In town between missions you can cook food using ingredients you find to power up the Unibots and make them more powerful.

Going into Lynked: Banner of the Spark I was a little curious about the town building aspect and thinking how it would mesh with the roguelike dungeon crawling aspects of the game. It actually works pretty well since instead of just going to some random town after each mission, you’re going back to your town after each mission. While I’m typically terrible with town construction and I simply just place a few buildings here and there, more experienced carpenters should be able to build some very nice looking locales to come back to and relax after a mission.

My only real issue I had was with the early game combat. There are times when the enemies may not completely telegraph what they’re about to do if their attack contains more than one move. While you can upgrade yourself early on for some additional health or more modifiers for weapons, it can be quite easy at times to get combed by an enemy and lose a good chunk of health rather quickly.

Thankfully once you have the ability to take a Unibot into battle with you, you now have a second target for enemies to focus on and, believe me, that comes in real handy during boss fights. Without going into too much detail, the first boss didn’t give me too many opportunities to get hits in and it has a lot of HP, so the battle went on for quite a bit. I’m fairly certain my Unibot helper and I revived ourselves about half a dozen times during that fight.

If you’re looking for a roguelike dungeon crawler and don’t mind it not looking as nitty-gritty as other games in the genre, Lynked: Banner of the Spark is a great choice. The combat may take some trial and error to learn how enemies attack, but the gameplay itself is a lot of fun and the town building may even outshine the dungeon crawling for some players. Personally, I’m a simple person and am content with relaxing in my house with two lamp posts and a bench to the right, a shop to the left, and the smithy a bit north. In other words I’m much better at dungeon crawling than town building, but if you’re a fan of either, Lynked: Banner of the Spark is well worth the price tag to check out.