Loop Hero

 

Release: 2021

Developer: Four Quarters

Publisher: Devolver Digital

Gameplay Stats: 42 hours, 43/50 Achievements

The new rogue-lite hotness. The past few months have been really good for rogue-lites! I think Hades, Spelunky 2 and now Loop Hero have released in that time and apparently they're all bangers. I think I'm done with the latter two, so Hades is likely my next one.

Aesthetic: This game goes for a chunky, old-school aesthetic that I thought was pretty reminiscent of old DOS games in the 90s. The visuals and audio both follow that pretty well. The game is a little simplistic looking, but it communicates well. My only complaint here was the font they made for the game, but apparently that's a common complaint because there are other options that are way easier to read. I ended up using the anti-dyslexia font and had no issues reading anything. The monsters, bosses, and backgrounds all do a very good job conveying what they mean to. The music in this game is surprisingly catchy and I found myself humming the boss theme between play session fairly often. The battle noises were a bit repetitive, so I ended up turning down the sounds a bit, but they weren't bad. I think this was done intentionally on the part of the developers to recreate the games of yesteryear.

Plot: Actually the plot here was surprisingly interesting. They included the dying and retrying as part of the narrative which I am always a sucker for. I think they were a bit wordy with some of the hero/boss communications but it kind of fit the theme here. I don't think I paid quite enough attention to fully explain the plot, but here we go. The world has ended in a void and you as the hero are slowly clawing things back from that void. People, resources, and strategies all come with you after more and more exploration of the void.

Gameplay: The main "loop" of the game is an idle game where your hero marches around a circle battling monsters and gathering resources automatically. You get to choose the types of terrain that are in your deck and can add them when the hero collects cards from his battles. You place the terrain in such a way that you challenge your hero to grow and hopefully overcome a boss after you have placed enough world tiles. After beating or dying to the boss you head back to camp and can create structures to enhance your hero and give yourself more choices for your deck. Hopefully that makes sense? I haven't played a game like this and a lot of the discourse I've seen surrounding the game alludes to this being a fairly unique concept. I'd recommend watching a trailer and playing the demo on Steam. Mechanically the game makes sense quickly, but it is hard to put into words.

This game is unique and I sincerely hope it inspires some spin offs. This is a really unique video game concept and I would highly recommend that everyone at least tries the demo. You don't have to finish it, but your save does carry over to the retail game, so you might as well? Either way, it's hard to put into words but this game is really fun. It does feel more and more grindy as you go on, and I think that's intentional, but it didn't fully jive with me. The beginning is extremely fun, but I felt that fun kind of taper off as I did purposefully grindy expeditions to build up my town so I stood a chance against the next boss. Maybe I'm bad though [9/10]