Announced during Microsoft's E3 2013 press event, Project Spark is a Game Maker designed by Team Dakota for the Xbox One, Xbox 360, and PC. While it started off Free to Play, in October 2015 all Downloadable Content was made completely free, and Microsoft Studios ceased to release future DLC. In early 2016, the project was cancelled altogether and taken offline. Players can still play locally saved games, and PC users can use SparkShare
to share assets.
Project Spark as a whole provides examples of these Tropes:
- All-Natural Fire Extinguisher: At the end of Conker's Big Reunion, Conker prevents the Cock and Plucker for being blown up by getting drunk so he can piss on the lit fuses and subsequently urinates on Birdy to extinguish the flames when he is set on fire.
- Alien Sky: Aside from other Floating Continents, the sky is filled with glittering currents, particularly around the sun, and the Well of Creation can be seen in the night sky.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: You're perfectly capable of giving all of your characters bizarre skin-and-hair coloration.
- Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: Your creatures can have any colors you please.
- And Your Reward Is Clothes: Leveling up champions changes their outfit at certain levels and unlocks additional pieces for characters in creation mode.
- Anti-Frustration Features: The games Creation mode has a steep learning curve due to all the options it lets the player have, so a good chunk of the time when you first use it is spent on a generous tutorial, concisely explaining just how to use it.
- Because tokens usually require spending real money to get them (and are quite difficult to acquire otherwise), the game allows you to alternatively unlock content with coins instead. As of late 2015, all available DLC content was made free anyway, and some players were even given refunds.
- Before all of the DLC was made free, If you unlocked the Conker's Big Reunion pack, Conker was automatically unlocked as a playable character in the Champions Quest mode, so you didn't have to gather 40,000 coins again to buy him separately.
- Ascended Extra: Birdy the Scarecrow is the other main hero in "Conker's Big Reunion" unlike in the original where he only showed up in the tutorial area.
- Badass Adorable: Conker retains this trait from Bad Fur Day. In the Champions Quest mode, he can kick ass and take names—he's armed with both a baseball bat and a machine gun with bottomless magazines, and collecting money enemies drop lets him use Context Sensitive abilities, including the option to throw flaming cocktails everywhere!
- The Berserker: Karlsnor normally isn't this, but when he's in his Berzerker mode, he's all about battling.
- Bottomless Magazines: One of Conker's default attacks in "Champions Quest" and "Crossroads" is a Machine Gun, which has infinite ammo and only needs a quick reload after a few shots.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: Before the DLC was all made free, it was entirely possible to unlock everything in Project Spark without spending a real world dime, but with the way the game is structured combined with how long it took to get credits, it took a long time, so the in-game marketplace gives options of buying tokens with real world money. And after the DLC was made free, Microsoft actually offered refunds to people who had recently bought them.
- Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": Several animals look very different than what their names might suggest. The Arctic Fox, for example, seems to have some turkey in its ancestry.
- Caltrops: One of Scarlett's attacks drops some explosive caltrops in front of her. Leveling up gives her the ability to gather the caltrops with charged attacks for additional effects.
- Call-Back: The first scene of "Conker's Big Reunion" has Conker reunite with Birdy the Scarecrow, and the scene plays out similar to his introduction in Bad Fur Day, complete with the same theme music. He even reexplains the ability to use Context Sensitive actions. Shortly after, Conker remembers how to use his tail like a helicopter. The first boss fight is a giant Tediz that shares an identical weakness to the Brass Boiler in Bad Fur Day (namely, you whack it in the happy sack).
- Censor Box: Conker has this covering his privates when he awakens in Conker's Big Reunion, even though we soon see he has nothing to hide at all. Just before he changes into his clothes, you even get a close up of his crotch area, with nothing unfortunate to see.
- Charged Attack: Scarlett can charge her arrows for more damage, and with level ups also gathers any caltrops she's dropped for even more damage.
- The Corruption: The Void, primarily featured in "Champions' Quest: Void Storm", is a force which warps the environment and creatures it touches into a twisted version of itself.
- Crossover: Content using assets from Conker's Bad Fur Day is available via the Conker's Big Reunion content pack and the Conker Mega Pack.
- Downloadable Content: New content packs are rolled out occasionally. Most of the time, they're creation parts, but they can include new champions as well. As of 2015, it has all been made free, although no more new content will be offered in the future.
- Energy Beings: The Spark and the Well of Creation.
- Endless Game: Aside from the Champions Quest episodes, Project Sparks has no long term goals or end to it. It's all about just creating whatever you want in it.
- Everything's Deader with Zombies: The Zombie Invasion resource pack.
- Excuse Plot: The premise of the creation mode. You are a Reality-Warping sphere of light that has been commanded by a Sentient Cosmic Force to create new worlds. That's pretty much it.
- Experience Points: You get two different kinds in the game—one for the Champions in real time gameplay (which allow you to upgrade to a maximum level of 20) and one for the players own Spark Level.
- Fartillery: One of Conker's special Context Sensitive abilities. It's exclusive to Crossroads and Champion's Quest, and does not appear in Conker's Big Reunion.
- Flavor Text: The resources in the marketplace tend to have short descriptions that shed a bit of light on the nature of the setting and its inhabitants.
- Game Maker: The main draw of Project Spark
- The Hero: The Champions are chosen based on these qualities. No matter what the situation, you can always count on them to do good.
- Jack of All Stats: Haakon is this among the champions, possessing close-range, long-range, and defensive abilities.
- Left Hanging: Future DLC packs for Project Spark have been cancelled, so the Champions Quest and Conker's Big Reunion stories will never go past the first episode.
- Lethal Joke Character: Some of the unlockable characters fall into this. Between the Champions, in Creation Mode you can even choose to play as a tiny squirrel enemy, or even Fajo the Money, who moves like molasses and can't jump to save his life, but can shoot a volley of fireballs to compensate!
- Life Drain: One of Karlsnor's level-up abilities is to drain health with his attacks when he's in Berzerker mode.
- Lighter and Softer: Conker's Big Reunion still has quite a bit of vulgar and gross jokes, but the humor and tone is nowhere near as crass or dark as Bad Fur Day, and it is completely absent of swearing and gore.
- Limit Break: Karlsnor has a rage meter, and when it's filled up, he goes into Berzerker mode.
- The Lost Woods: A place called Creep Woods is referred to a few times in the Flavor Text. It's generally regarded with supernatural dread, and is implied to be the source of the zombies.
- Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: One of Haakon's main abilities. He can block attacks with it and with level ups use it in offensive moves.
- Motion Capture: If you have the Kinect, you can record your own animation (as well as voice acting) for your characters. You can even edit down the recorded motion to whatever kind of animation you want the character to have.
- Our Goblins Are Different: There are two goblin entities, and Crossroads features a goblin hero.
- Play Every Day: There are daily and weekly challenges that are your main source of currency and experience.
- Player Character: You can have just about any entity in your world be playable (even a rock), but
Word of God states the true player character is the Spark, which serves as the medium for your world-crafting. - Reality Warper: The Spark, and by extension the player, is capable of shaping the landscape and populating it with living creatures with almost no effort at all.
- Scenery Porn: One of many qualities being promoted is how easy it is to create breathtaking scenery. The intro movie in particular is full of it.
- Shout-Out: In "Crossroads", if you get a gemstone that will give you money from smashing it, the narrator will quip that "This gem is truly outrageous!"
- As per tradition, Conker's Big Reunion has a few of them;
- At one point you have to go through a stealth game section that riffs heavily on Metal Gear, except you're under a barrel. Conker even comments "What's a guy have to do to get a cardboard box around here?" Early on in this section, Birdy even calls you on "Codec".
- In the same section, there are two Tediz pissing together; one of them says "Don't cross the streams!".
- At the start of the brewery section, there are a lot of barrels rolling down a ramp, which you have to evade. Conker wonders if there is a giant ape throwing them, and later asks if somebody could call a plumber.
- Super Mode: Karlsnor's Berzerker state, which increases his damage and eventually lets him drain health while it's active.
- Sentient Cosmic Force: The Well of Creation.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: When you finish Conker's Big Reunion, you find a note at the door of the Cock and Plucker saying that Conker's friends decided to have their reunion elsewhere as they were tired of him. But then the note continues with "P.S.: This is not a ransom note. We are not captured. We are all fine. P.P.S.: Don't come looking for us. We don't need your help." If the odd capitalization didn't hint it already, this should leave no doubt that the Tediz wrote the note and planted it there. Conker doesn't get it, wondering why everyone's mad at him and not remembering what happened that could have caused his friends to get mad.
- The End... Or Is It?: The ending of Champions Quest 1-6 has the two magical artifacts gathered, which saves the village and stops the invasion of the Void...for the time being, as they quickly see its presence growing in another part of the world. When "The End" appears, a question mark slowly fades in alongside it.
- Vocal Evolution: Conker's voice is noticeably lower sounding in Big Reunion than it was in his original games, understandably since Project Spark was released almost 15 years after Chris Seavor last played the character.
