New-ish publisher Dreamhaven has been cranking out a string of releases this year, and I’ve been pretty darn happy with Wildgate and Sunderfolk. Unfortunately, Lynked: Banner of the Spark is the runt of the litter, combining roguelite missions with life sim building into a single sloppy serving, made worse by clunky combat and a mobile game aesthetic.
The Wyre
Lynked is set in a future world where humanity nearly destroyed itself, creating fully functioning, cartoonish robots as their salvation. Some of the robots went evil, however, attempting to rule the world and imprisoning humanity. The story kicks off with the player escaping with the help of a friendly robot, who is able to graft onto their arm as a spiffy grapple-claw, called a Wyre.
The Wyre ends up being the only really unique and interesting thing Lynked has going on.
The tutorial features a series of boring zones and tedious fights. All this future tech, but players mostly rely on standard melee weapons such as swords, hammers, and spears.
Everything about the combat feels slow and clunky. I’m not the most skilled gamer, but I have been able to finish runs of Hades and Dead Cells — yet battling in Lynked leaves me incredibly frustrated, and often resulting in a failed mission. I’m unable to time dodges, execute combos, or strike with special attacks before enemies dance away, bombard me with projectiles, or knock me around.
It may be a skill issue, but frankly the game isn’t good enough to make me want to improve.
It’s not uncommon to be surrounded by enemies
Missions, like the tutorial, present a series of similarly-tiny zones with randomly spawned enemies, hazards, and treasure chests. It’s trying to be Hades, with frequent upgrade options and limited health, but upgrades are disappointingly boring, such as a small chance to replenish tiny amounts of health on kills, or a 5% chance to set enemies on fire. Yay?
The Wyre should’ve been a bigger feature, and thankfully players can upgrade it after saving a certain NPC. But even adding some Wyre combos, swinging around enemies or charging up to them, my frustrations with the movement and combat didn’t abate.
Build-A-Home
Between the rogue-lite missions, players are dumped into a generous patch of empty land, with trees, rocks, fishing spots, a store, and a house. The early missions involve rescuing friendly bots that open up new buildings and shops, such as a crafting workshop to make furniture, or a forge for unlocking new weapons.
The building stuff is fine, if a bit under-cooked. Customizing my own hub base isn’t a bad idea, especially since I can show it off to friends and other players through co-op. The area is also fairly large, with rivers, beach, quarry, all the makings of a nice little starter home. The Build UI could use some improvement, however, and I couldn’t figure out to zoom out to get a better look when placing buildings.
It’s also not really a life sim, with NPC schedules and stamina. In many ways, building just adds another layer of tedium, running around harvesting trees and rocks so I can unlock a sword, or build a park bench.
The store is run by robots named Nickel and Dime
Part of the appeal for many rogue-likes lies in acquiring permanent upgrades, and advancing the story between runs. Lynked utilizes shorter missions (at least at first), and a nearly empty hub town that I have to build myself. Permanent upgrades are few and far between, and I’m annoyed that many are mutually exclusive. For example, I can equip only a single activated ability, such as a heal, shield, or stomp.
The story is mostly nonexistent, at least in the first few hours. On the plus side, the friendly robot townsfolk are a delightful bunch to chat with (once saved from various missions). I can tell it’s going for a Saturday Morning Cartoon vibe, though the overly bright, shadow-less colors and standard robot designs aren’t terribly exciting. At least their whimsical Sims-like non-speech is cute and charming.
Ultimately, Lynked: Banner of the Spark looks, and mostly plays, like a free-to-play mobile game. It combines two very different genres, both of which are very basic and stripped down. I question which chill life sim fans are aching for the difficulty of a rogue-lite combat system, and which hardcore rogue-lite fans want to spend time chopping down trees and designing a park. Even with seamless co-op, this is game that needs a lot more work.
Lynked: Banner of the Spark is available on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S. It’s rated E10+.
