About SparkFyre

SparkFyre is a free to play action-based platforming video game, inspired by Super Mario Maker and The Binding of Isaac.

Who Created It?

Hello, my name is Spark, or at least that's my online moniker, and has been my nickname for as long as I can remember. I'm the solo dev on this project, and though I've received help from our OG playtesters, the development of this game is fully done by me. I love the problem-solving that building a game like this requires, but I'm always willing to accept help in the form of bug reports, ideas, sprite suggestions, music and sound effect submissions, etc. If I like something that you create, I'll add it to the game.

I love giving credit, especially where it's due. Thank you to everyone who has helped us get this far <3.

If you're interested in being a part of this process, or just want a concrete place to chat about this game, feel free to join our Discord. I hang out in there every day, and enjoy chatting with everyone.

What Is This?

The game engine is built from scratch, written in Javascript, using HTML5 canvas to render out animations. I checked out a few tutorials when I started creating the game, but since then I've tried to figure everything else out by myself. There are no plans to bring this game to Steam or rebuild it with a popular game engine, but you never know what the future holds. I like the simplicity of a browser-based game, I enjoy that I can make anything I can imagine, and feel that there's a lot of untapped potential here.

The original idea was to create a game with similar mechanics as Super Mario Maker, where you can build your own levels and share them with your friends. I loved playing Super Mario Maker and SMM2, but like others, wasn't happy with Nintendo's lack of updates and thought the general concept could be improved upon in many ways. With consistent updates, I'm sure we can keep this game fresh for years to come.

This is going to be one of those projects that is never finished. Yes, platforming is the focus. And yes, you can already create and share your own levels in our level viewer (if you're able to beat them through the 'upload' process).

What Else Is There?

First: a little backstory on my 'gaming career', if you can call it that.

I streamed on Twitch for a long time under the name of SparkWulfe, and during my time streaming Super Mario Maker 2, was able to get partner status. So, semi-successful. However, before I streamed SMM2 (and SMM for that matter) I streamed The Binding of Isaac. I loved the combat in that game and how the projectile of the character can be upgraded in interesting ways.

Thus, along with the SMM based idea, I wanted to pepper in mechanics similar to BoI, specifically speaking, giving the player a projectile that they can fire, and then offering many different ways to augment that projectile. By default you can punch, which fires a very basic, short lived ball of energy. From there, you can acquire different weapons that change its overall behavior, as well as different power-ups that upgrade your rate of fire, range, projectile speed, damage, etc.

Along with these concepts, I've built different game modes that challenge the player, like endless, where the goal is to see how many levels you can beat before you lose all of your lives. There's also an endless level that I'm continually tweaking, that allows you to fully take advantage of the the BoI idea. Enemies have a set health pool that grows as you progress. They spawn more frequently in more challenging variations, and they drop items to heal you, improve your projectiles, or give you different skills to use.

What Else Will We Have?

I'm thinking about building a linear story mode (adventure) and a rogue-like challenge. I do plan to have those be active parts of the game as well, but that's down the road. I'm thinking the main goal right now will be adding new features (enemies, weapons, blocks, etc) to use in the level builder and ironing out any bugs that are still in the game. There are lots of bugs. Building a video game like this is tricky. There are already tons of things to build with - all kinds of different block types, enemies, items, objects, bodies of water, etc - and they all interact with each other. It's not easy, there were a million glitches in Super Mario Maker 2 as well (just check my YouTube channel, I've detailed well over 200 of them), but we're definitely making a lot of progress.

I'm super proud of how far we've come, and am looking forward to the future of SparkFyre.

- Spark