Portugues
Sparkle
Saved games stay in this browser only.
About the game
After weeks on the road, a goods truck and a long hike up bad mountain paths, you reach the end of the road on Mount Shanshan: an abandoned cable car platform. The cableway leads straight to the top, where you hope to find the Pattern you have been searching for. You just have to get the cable car running.
The world around the platform is small, a deserted hotel with its garden, a hiking path and an engine room, but it follows an unusual rule. When you sit down somewhere quiet and meditate, you see that some things are really the same thing, and once you know that, you can change one into the other.
Sparkle was inspired by the song Equivalencies by King Missile, and it plays with that idea in puzzles that are odd, gentle and often funny. A dog who does not want to let you through the gate is only the first of them.
Playing it here
Click Play now and the story starts in the player. Type a command after the >
prompt and press Enter. The game understands short English sentences, such as
examine the gate or go east.
Commands
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
north, south, east, west (or n, s, e, w) |
walk; also up and down |
look (l) |
describe where you are again |
examine (x) something |
look closer |
inventory (i) |
list what you are carrying |
meditate |
reveal which things you have seen are secretly equal |
change something into something else |
use what meditation revealed |
hint |
a tip, more explicit each time you ask |
second person / first person |
change who the story is told by |
about |
the credits and a few notes |
save / restore |
keep your progress in this browser and load it back |
A few things worth knowing
Meditation needs quiet. It does not work just anywhere. If you are told the place is too noisy, look for somewhere calmer.
Meditate again after you explore. Meditation only tells you about things you have already seen, so new places mean new answers.
You cannot lock yourself out of the ending. Some optional puzzles can be missed, and there are ten achievements for the curious, but the main story can always be finished.
Credits and licence
Sparkle was written by Juhana Leinonen for the 2014 Shufflecomp, where it first appeared under the pen name Karly Di Caprio; the release played here is the third, from June 2014. It is released under the MIT licence. The cover art of the original file was adapted from a photo whose terms are not stated, so it is not distributed here. The licence text is linked from this page.