Oddsparks Marches Out Of Early Access to Full Release
Work is work and it doesn’t really care who does it so long as it’s completed. Washing all the dishes by hand may bring a little spark of pride in a job well done, but tossing everything but the delicate stuff in the dishwasher and hitting a button works just as well. There’s also the question of time management, because the number of things that need to be completed is just about always greater than the worker-hours available for that artisinal hands-on approach. Automation goes a long way towards making sure that there are enough hours in the day to complete all the work within it, even when the machines used to simplify the work are fairly low tech. So long as they’re easy enough to operate it doesn’t matter, and you might even be able to assign simple helpers to the task like the enthusiastic little wooden workers, the sparks.
A Horde Of Enthusiastic But Not Super-Bright Helpers Working Within Their Limits
Oddsparks is a fantasy adventure automation game that’s been in Early Access for a little over a year now, and today it’s been released into the full version with a huge number of revisions, features, and an ending finally available. Running around town and eventually the world map as an industrial young explorer, one day you get zapped with the ability to read and understand mysterious ancient texts. This leads to the discovery of the sparks, little wooden sprites that can be manufactured and assigned simple jobs, and from there things soon grow completely out of control as new discoveries lead to new villagers and their quests for knowledge.
The woodsman, for example, needs resources to learn about harvesting trees and working the wood, bark, and leaves into new forms. The stonemason “sisters” (they’re obviously not sisters) help with rock-related research, the old researcher devises new ways to manufacture different types of sparks, the mayor’s requests lead to a bigger town, etc. Every single villager contributes to the growth of the rustic factory, which is a series of harvesters, manufacturers, and greenhouses connected by paths and all of it run by the sparks you assign to the endless tasks needed to build or grow everything.
Over the course of Early Access Oddsparks has added everything from new areas, refined tech, new sparks, and even trains, and today’s release sees the final zones plus a huge list of updates and changes that on the one hand means a new save is required, but also adds a list of features to make the game play the way you want. The ending, for example, has a lot more combat than the earlier sections, so if that’s not what you’re looking for the fighting can be toned down to focus more on the automation side of things. Making it too easy may disable trophies, of course, but there’s some good leeway to make the Oddsparks experience play as you’d like.
It’s been a lot of fun watching Oddsparks move through Early Access and grow beyond all expectations, adding systems both required and optional while expanding the types of buildings needed to manufacture all the bits and pieces needed to keep the factory rumbling along, and with the end of Early Access it’s also been released on PS5 and Xbox X|S. The release also comes with the traditional launch trailer, showing off everything from path setup, spark assignments, end-game base sieges, and a lot more, so give it a watch to see a small Pikmin-ish horde bring a charming low-tech factory to life.
