Project Spark

At the beginning of 2016 Microsoft decided to stop further development of the game. On 13th May, the title disappeared from the Xbox Store and Windows Store, and on 12th August the web services allowing for uploading and downloading content created by the community were turned off.

Mechanics

Project Spark is a sandbox project, based on the assumption that creating games can also be a game, and thus a great fun. It is intended to resemble such titles as Populous, Minecraft or Little Big Planet. However, the developers of Project Spark have gone a step further than they did in the hits of the PS3 console, which offers huge possibilities for modeling the game's world. Using the workshop and tools provided by the authors, we design the world of our own game, which we can share with other players. Each of them can modify or expand our ideas, making sure that the universe created by us will change on an ongoing basis.

When you start playing, you receive an area where you can form mountains, valleys, lakes or rivers. The next step is to diversify the area - adding forests, meadows or animals. Then, we can start placing building but - which is worth noting - we can either use ready-made models or make them from scratch.

The real fun begins when we come to create a character. Here, in addition to choosing the appearance, we also influence its character - thanks to almost any manipulation of a set of scripts, which can be called the brain in a certain simplification. At any moment we can switch from the "god" view to control the hero, walk through the land created by us and evaluate the effects of our work.

Creating the world in Project Spark can take place in different ways - traditional, in which we decide on each element of the game ourselves, and in crossroads mode - where the game leads us through the whole process, asking a number of questions about the appearance and nature of the universe created by us. The control options are equally diverse, we can use the console pad, Kinect sensor, or SmartGlass technology, thanks to which most of the activities are performed by drawing with a finger on the screen of our phone or tablet.

Technical aspects

The graphics in Project Spark are detailed and colorful - although the appearance of the created world depends on us. Although the basic game provides tools and models that look like they belong to a fantasy universe, the library of elements can be freely expanded through official add-ons, as well as elements made and made available by other players. This gives you almost unlimited creative possibilities and allows you to easily play the game according to any idea. By manipulating the view, camera position, light and color, we can create a scenery characteristic for action or cRPG game, as well as a typical arcade or platformer.