Developer: Four Quarters
Publisher: Devolver Digital
Rrp: £12.49 (Gog.com, Humblebundle and Steam)
Released: 4th March 2021
Available on: Gog.com, Humblebundle and Steam
Played Using: Mouse and Keyboard
Approximate game length: 30 Hours
Darkness has come. No worse, nothingness has come. It is the end of all things, not even darkness remains, just an infinite void where reality used to be. Except this one stretch of road, this road exists, and you, you also exist. There’s only one thing you can do, walk the road to where ever it leads.
Loop Hero is a strange cross between an autorunner, a deck builder and a roguelite. You play as an unnamed warrior who awakens to find the world, nay the universe is just… gone. All except for one looped path upon which your hero will automatically walk along.
As he walks along this path monsters will appear and your hero will automatically fight them with no involvement from you… well almost none, you do get to swap out the items etc they have on and can swap out mid-combat but other than that you have no control. As your hero defeats enemies he will gain a cards, items and experience (although not every time for the items and cards as sometimes monsters don’t drop either and some classes don’t collect items upon killing an enemy). Any cards that you gain can be placed on the world to change the terrain. But they not only add to the world but also have a tangible effect, such as Grove cards which create a grove which will provide sticks to bring back to camp (which I will cover later) but it also spawns an enemy called a ratwolf every two days.
Ah yes, the days. So, even though the universe and the Sun itself have ceased to exist time still passes on or at least it seems to. On the top left side of the screen are two meters, the upper one is the day meter, every time the meter if full (or empties, I forget which) a new day begins. For you, this means certain monsters will respawn, you’ll gain a bit of health and certain terrain that you’ve placed may come into effect. The one below is the map completion meter, each time you place a card down in the world this meter goes up. Once it’s completely full the boss of the chapter you’re on will appear. You can continue to put down cards upon the world after they’ve appeared and after you’ve defeated them, should you choose to remain.
As I mentioned walking around the loop and defeating enemies accrues resources which you ideally want to take back to your camp, such as sticks from groves or memory fragments from cemeteries.
How much you take back to your camp is based upon how confident you feel in your heroes skills and equipment. You see if you fall in battle your body will be brought back to the camp but you’ll only keep 30% of the resources you found. If you retreat at any point that isn’t at the camp you keep 60%, however the ideal is to choose to retreat when you pass through the camp because doing set nets 100%.
Every time you start back on the loop the world resets including your equipment. Of course it doesn’t take long to accrue new equipment. Like everything in this new uhh, lack of world, nearly everything is ephemeral which includes your weapons. The moment you swap out a piece of equipment for another the old one is destroyed. You also can’t stock pile equipment for too long as you only have 12 spaces in your inventory, if your inventory is full and you collect another item the item at the bottom of the pile will be destroyed. This isn’t entirely a bad thing though because the act of destroying the item gives your hero scrap metal to take back to camp.
hat I find interesting is that its very tempting to go around the loop as many times as you can to collect more and more resources, however there is a problem with doing that. Each loop increases the enemies you face’s level making them that little bit more challenging. To combat this your hero gains experience with each kill and gets to pick one of three perks with each level. Of course, since the monsters level up each time you go around the loop and the loop is usually not all that big the monsters will eventually out class you no matter how much you level up.
My thoughts… I really liked this game, I played it through to completion and then started all over again. It’s definitely an odd one though, its not an idle game even though at first glance it seems like one but its also not super intensive. After playing this for a few days I found myself playing it as I was listening to youtube videos and podcasts. Odd to think of that as a selling point.
If this appeals to you perhaps try;
Honestly I can’t think of another game even vaguely similar.
