Mana Spark Nintendo Switch Review

Mana Spark

5.5

5.5/10

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In Mana Spark for Nintendo Switch, explore a dreadful dungeon and fight smart enemies that will plan and collaborate between themselves to defeat you. This is yet another in a long line of rouge-like games for the Switch. Though it won’t blow you away, I think fans of rouge-like games will have fun with it.

You’ll be spending most of your time playing through generated rooms, picking up coins and mana runes. Thee allow you to upgrade your character and delve further and further into the game. Then when you die, you respawn back to the base and start again. The developers have gone for the pixel art style and I think for this kind of games it works.

Mana Spark Nintendo Switch Trailer

I will say performance wise I was disappointed. The loading screens took a lot longer than other similar games. Even with numerous updates, this is still an issue. There is also major lag whilst playing which has caused me to die multiple times.

The fact that the camera is attached to the aiming square instead of your character is a huge design flaw. There is instant motion sickness for anyone susceptible. I jerk the square around when my index finger on the same hand clicks R button to shoot. I wish they’d simply add the option to click down the right stick to shoot when you have your aim in place

Also, there is a lot less content than other popular rogue-likes. There are probably around 12 active items, and maybe around 25 passive items, and only three characters. I’ve put in about 8 hours, and I’ve upgraded most items and unlocked all 3 characters, but I haven’t gotten to the third and final boss. I can only reliably make it about two-thirds of the way through. I imagine I’ve got at least a few more hours of fun left with it, even more, if I aim to beat it with all three characters, and I probably will try because they all feel very different and are fun to play as.

Right now the game is 50% off and will cost £4.49, this is an acceptable price for the game. At £8.99 I feel you could do better. Finally, check out our other gaming reviews.