Loop Hero – Review (PC)
Loop Hero shuffles in card-based strategy with retro 8-bit visuals, looting, and base building mechanics. Set in a spooky world where defining features and memories have all been lost, players will use ingenuity and planning to reinvigorate the world and wipe away an evil sorcerer. We dove in ahead of the game’s full release later this winter to see if Loop Hero can play its cards right.
At first glance, Loop Hero looks like it’s taken minimalism to the extreme. Your little white sprite jaunts around a lone gravel circle peppered with a small handful of poorly detailed enemies surrounded by nothing but black. But this emptiness and the way the levels populate with structures and life as you progress through the game cleverly plays into the narrative. The story of Loop Hero sets up as earth is slowly robbed of all of its worldly features by a mysterious skull headed sorcerer known as The Lich. It starts with the stars, then the light, soon followed by memories until the entire world is faded to darkness. It’s up to our hero to rekindle lost memories, restore light and save the land from the evil floaty skeleton cloak man.
And how is this done you ask? With a deck of cards of course! Loop Hero has the player utilize cards to lay down on the loop for varying effects. The entire card system plays out as an ingenious risk-reward system where cards can both make your character stronger or make the loop more dangerous. Cards like Rocks, Mountains, or Meadows have nothing but positive effects as they increase your maximum HP and also grant a small amount of loot. Lighthouses can be placed close to the path to increase your movement speed and Road Lanterns to decrease to maximum number of enemies in it’s area of effect. Not all cards are as obviously beneficial, however. Vampire Mansions and Spider Cocoons populate the tiles closest to where they were placed with pesky spiders and vampires that can heal other enemies.
But there are benefits to intentionally making the play area more dangerous with added enemies. The more cards you play and enemies you defeat along the path mean the more loot that is dropped. Loot can come in the forms of armor, weapons, and rings. These items can instantly be equipped to improve your defense, bolster your HP pool, or even buff passive effects like Vampirism, Countering, and Evasion. All of this comes together to help our hero progress further and further into a run.
However, the goal isn’t always to finish the loop run to completion every single time. From a difficulty perspective that just isn’t realistic, especially when first starting out. This is where the other side of looting comes into play and that is when materials are dropped. These materials are randomly generated from defeating aforementioned enemies and laying down different cards on the loop. At any time you are able to abandon the run at the cost of giving up some of your loot. The reward to pushing further and further is, of course, more loot. The risk if you die though is losing the vast majority of your loot.
Materials can be taken back to your camp and used to build new structures. In this pre-expedition and preparation area, the more structures you have the stronger you will go into each run. Building a Field Kitchen provides a 10% healing buff once each revolution of the loop is completed. A Refuge unlocks the ability to use the Rogue class, allowing for new equipment to be used and a Shelter adds a permanent increase to base HP as well as unlocking new cards. Buildings require larger quantities of more rare resources as you go along and provides a clear goal of drops you’ll be looking for in each successive run. The RNG of drops did however feel a bit stingy as it will take multiple long loops to get enough materials to build even the basic sets of camp structures.
Loop Hero makes it easy to switch between action and strategy. While in a loop, the player can at any time switch to the Planning phase. This stops time completely allowing you to switch equipment, examine your loot, and lay down cards. Ending the Planning phase moves you back into Adventure mode where your knight moves around the loop and encounters enemies. It’s important to note that while you ‘fight’ enemies, this along with movement is done automatically. Loop runs often take over twenty minutes and it can get a little stale just watching and feeling disconnected from everything as it all happens on it’s own. It feels ironic that there is more action in Planning than there is in Adventure.
From a visual standpoint, the game is entirely 8-bit and takes the player back to the early NES days with both the graphics and chip-tune sound track. The music, from menu themes to expedition and camping tunes, was all around fantastic. It never gets old and perfectly compliments the spooky undertones of the game (I’ll admit I’ve been listening to it in the background while writing this review). The graphics are minimalist by design both in the 8-bit inspiration and the narrative direction. What’s impressive about Loop Hero in the visuals department is the way the play area grows, evolves, and comes to live as you progress through each run. I found myself actually planning out the landscape as I laid down my cards and having a great time watching it all come together. What starts as a drab and lifeless path quickly turns into an interesting and bustling adventure that the player has free reign to lay out.
With Loop Hero, developer Four Quarters has created an addicting experience that cleverly balances risk and reward. Each run around the loop to either retreat, death, or glory can look very different from the last depending on how you play your cards. The premise is simple enough to understand for anyone to jump in, but has depth enough with its loot, camp, and deck building to keep committed players around for a long time. Loop Hero can feel somewhat grindy with the ever important material drops and the lack of engagement in gameplay may detract some. Overall though, Loop Hero is great for quick pick up and play sessions and some engaging card based strategy.
Loop Hero was provided to the reviewer by the publishing company, but this in no way affected the reviewers opinion.
