DarkSpar Reviews
DarkSpar is like an 8 bit RPG that mostly plays itself. All of the classic grinding and leveling of an 8-bit RPG without having to mash the attack button 10,000 times. We have skill trees, base building, and item crafting elements, too. Check out the free demo for 30% of the games content.
App ID | 1911960 |
App Type | GAME |
Developers | Brian Conley |
Publishers | Litmusdragon Productions |
Categories | Single-player, Steam Achievements, Steam Cloud |
Genres | Indie, Strategy, RPG |
Release Date | 7 Mar, 2022 |
Platforms | Windows, Mac |
Supported Languages | English |

21 Total Reviews
11 Positive Reviews
10 Negative Reviews
Mixed Score
DarkSpar has garnered a total of 21 reviews, with 11 positive reviews and 10 negative reviews, resulting in a ‘Mixed’ overall score.
Reviews Chart
Chart above illustrates the trend of feedback for DarkSpar over time, showcasing the dynamic changes in player opinions as new updates and features have been introduced. This visual representation helps to understand the game's reception and how it has evolved.
Recent Steam Reviews
This section displays the 10 most recent Steam reviews for the game, showcasing a mix of player experiences and sentiments. Each review summary includes the total playtime along with the number of thumbs-up and thumbs-down reactions, clearly indicating the community's feedback
Playtime:
17497 minutes
Sadly, this game is just empty. There's just not much to do or care about in the game, very little flavor and little to no choice other than picking the initial character classes and what to build or research first. There are many better idle games out there to choose from.
👍 : 0 |
😃 : 0
Negative
Playtime:
2707 minutes
Very chill old-school idle RPG game. Fantastic for running in the background while you are working on that report you have to write. Runs smoothly on current MacOS, which is a plus.
👍 : 0 |
😃 : 0
Positive
Playtime:
19631 minutes
I enjoy this game at the end of the day. I would approach it like an idle game keep it minimized and let it do it's thing, it's not intensive. Save periodically though! I save once a day. My only complaint would be arrow fighting is the same damage, but is limited with ammo, even with the "ammo isn't used" ability, forget the name offhand, its' just better to melee (in that case a speed built character can dual weild daggers, and there's always respeccing.) It's worth 6$.
Not groundbreaking, but also fairly straight forward, I like the retro graphics, character creation, I like that there's NO gender selection (there's portraits for all the Kings, Queens and Cool Beans. Most games have this, but I feel it's worth mentioning) And I Like that all characters have access to all skill trees, it really can make for some neat combos but I would only do two of three at most.
I give it a 7/10.
👍 : 1 |
😃 : 0
Positive
Playtime:
16230 minutes
I've enjoyed this title and It's hard to describe why. The developer is very helpful and seems interested in fleshing out the system even further. If you like idle games with a light rpg touch give it try.
👍 : 3 |
😃 : 0
Positive
Playtime:
15 minutes
Stay far, FAR away from this game. I love minimalistic idle games. Increlution is one of my favorite of all time, and its just some bars and text.
So why is this bad? First, this is either someone's first game, or a college or high school project someone decided they could make some money off of. The first thing a minimalistic idle game needs is clear presentation of information, and some feeling of impactful progress.
There is almost no information presented as to what numbers mean. Cool, my exploration in fields is going up, but why should I care? Menu's are awful. There's a stat tree for each character. Stat points are not nicely laid out, and don't accidently click in the wrong thing, as you'll have to pay farmable in game currency to refund your accident.
When you find something special, a pop up window with OK appears. But if you're in that stat screen window? BAM, replaced with the pop up instead of it being on the side somewhere. To the developer, this is a proof of concept at best. If you're going to sell a game, polish it up. Get feedback from testers and put some effort into this. This feels like a lazy cash grab, and I'm seen and enjoyed some pretty bare bones idle games.
This COULD be good. I like the initial presentation. Adding the 500% speed option was great. Give MUCH more information to your users. Idle games ARE information and resource management games. Tell your player exactly what things do. And remove the targeted weapon material skills from tier one on the might tree. Your players have NO idea how your weapon system works, do NOT make them make a long term choice when they have no option to pick their weapons at that time, but you need to invest points to make it to other tiers of the tree.
Regardless, this is not worth $10 dollars in its current state, should be tagged as early access and needs a lot more work.
👍 : 3 |
😃 : 0
Negative
Playtime:
2469 minutes
This game should be labeled as "early access" and if it's not, that's kinda sad
What's good:
nice rpg art
it's a good idea for a game
you can play it for a long time
what's bad:
this game is SLOW! upgrades and buildings take 30 min to 4 hours! and that's just in the early game! it looks like it could get worse! combat is also super slow and kinda lame
no help guide. it's unclear what herbs do, why you want larger population, what exploring grants, how stats effect heros. worse yet, many resources aren't labeled ((you can even see it in the screenshots))
the upgrades are uninspired at best. . . nothing like grinding for hours to get +2 damage
it's a small game stretched out. there isn't much content, it's just VERY slow to see it all. and most content is just rehased
if this was some game on a website for free, i would be much less critical of it. but after paying 10$ for this game i feel ripped off
don't get this game unless much more content is added
👍 : 6 |
😃 : 0
Negative
Playtime:
27465 minutes
First blush, it's solid. Nice images, fun gameplay.
I don't know if I'd call it an idler or an incremental game though. I'ts more like a robust auto battler.
From what I understand there is no loop (no actual prestige systems) so the main draw of idler/incremental games is out. It plays more akin to Runescape or Melvor Idle. You level your 'systems' and beat dungeons/areas.
It is slow. Not glacially, as I've seen others say, but it'll be a game you play alongside ... other idle games, say.
I've only got 2 issues with it. The first is the loop/gameplay. Since it appears to meant to be done in 1 run the gameplay elements are built around that. I feel, however, that the multi-hero system, and even the town/settlement system could be expanded upon. I'm so far having a lot of fun but finding my play halted by materials. EVERYONE, MINE, NAOW. More Heroes/expanded settlement stuff could help this, but the gameplay would have to be expanded upon.
The second is the ui. It's not.. terrible. But it's not great. The menu for everything lays over the menu for everything else, for each character. Clicking outside of this gets you back, but it's still an annoyance. Actual tabs for skills and the associated option/achievement menus should be full... areas with easily distinguishable items. I didn't even notice the tabs to the right for awhile....
I feel, it might be a bit much, price wise, but really, it's a solid game with a lot of fun. Expand upon it a hundred fold and quicken it up a bit and I'd sit in here forever.
👍 : 5 |
😃 : 0
Positive
Playtime:
608 minutes
meh.
I would've refunded this but I accidentally left it running for too long. $10 is an insane price for this game.
👍 : 14 |
😃 : 0
Negative
Playtime:
281 minutes
not enough interraction for me. Feels much more idle with not much decision making. Research is really slow and there are only a couple of options at a time. Combat also feels really slow with a 10 second timer per action that you have no control over. If I'm watching an auto battle I'd rather just watch it battle not check back every so often to see if It's progressed.
There's random 10 second pauses for various popups and things which seems weird. The game is already glacially slow so pausing progression for 10 extra seconds feels kinda needless and bad.
Seems like there's some great foundation here but things need to be sped way up with a lot more decision making for it to be engaging for me. I don't see myself opening the game again after today unless big changes are made.
👍 : 16 |
😃 : 0
Negative
Playtime:
2304 minutes
This is a long term Idle game, that does not have an early gameplay loop.
At the start you can research (30 minutes), pick a character and have them gather (also 30 minutes) and build to unlock more buildings (also 30 minutes). Unlock a new character? 3 hours.
I am going to point out that there are lots of long term idle games, but many of them have an earlier gameplay loop. The fact that there is going to be nothing interesting for the player to do for around an hour is a flaw.
The game needs an early game tutorial/gameplay loop where you can experience some aspect of the game early.
Also, no auto save function? It just fastforwards from a save file that I have to constantly manually save? This is not a good idea for this genre of game.
I like the themes, I think the map is cool, I think the game lacks a lot of polish.
In my opinion, this is an ok start but lacks a lot of pacing and depth that other idle games might offer. It is because of these factors that I don't think the game is currently worth 10 dollars. I will look at it again with any updates made to the game.
Edit: Adding to this review due to developer comments in other areas.
The developer linked a post in the discussion boards about how the text guide was a replacement for a tutorial or intro to mechanics. No its not. If the game is unintuitive enough that it needs a guide like this just to be able to tell what resources actually are or basic game functions, then it is a flaw.
Devloper responded that it takes less than 30 minutes to build the first building. Sure, if you know exactly where to click to gather, which resource to go for, how to select your hero and send him there, it takes less than that (1 resource every 5 minutes which slightly improves over time, so 200 would take slightly less than 14 minutes, and then there is 5 for it to build. So lets go with 19 minutes. What did you unlock? Oh, now there are other building to purchase, which again are more long term idle components and the graphic changed a bit. The point is not the time, the point is that the pacing of the game is poor and could be better. Is the intended gameplay to launch the game then to read the text guide on the forums?
I am pointing out that this developer criticism of this issue is because the developer is blind to this feedback on their game. They understand the systems, they don't need to know which resource is which or how new areas unlock. The playerbase does.
The game is a long term idle game where the gameplay has an incredibly slow start and that pace never changes other than to get longer and longer. New tier of items cool, now we make iron swords, but the gameplay is still the same and its not very engaging.
I will be re-reviewing the game if their is an update to it, but based on the responses the developer has made on reddit, I do not have a positive expectancy.
-End of edited review.
👍 : 56 |
😃 : 1
Negative