In a vacant world swallowed by darkness, a young hero awakens with no memories of his past. He finds himself in a small campsite among a barren landscape with only one way to go. He travels the wastelands fighting monsters that get in his way and collecting armor and weapons to help him on his journey. As the hero wanders the hostile lands, meadows, forests, and mountains appear as if seeping in through his distant memories. The more that appears, the more life is brought into the void; yet, the creatures have lost all hope of the world ever permanently changing for the better and attack in hopes of giving themselves a little more time to continue living.
Loop Hero, developed by Four Quarters and published by Devolver Digital, is a retro-style endless RPG in which a hero travels along an endless loop fighting monsters. Once defeated, the monsters drop cards and equipment the player can use to aid the hero and build the world around the wastelands. Toyru2001, with over 75 hours playing on Steam, states:
“Quite a simple concept, not exactly an idle game but also one that does not require high levels of engagement. It will reward thought-out strategy albeit not necessarily chess level style,” on the Steam reviews.
https://steamcommunity.com/id/Toryu2001/recommended/1282730/
All of the battles are automatic, allowing the player to focus solely on giving the hero the best equipment and finding the best places for all of the cards to better build the world.
Once the player returns back to the campsite, the starting point of every expedition through the wastelands, they can enter to go back to their base camp. The base camp holds a mysterious party of other survivors of the apocalypse who hold almost as little memory as the hero. While on the expeditions, the hero collects resources that can be used to build up the base camp for buffs like extra healing, various traits, healing potions, and even starting gear; all of which make the expeditions a little easier and allow the player to last just a little longer.
Each time the hero enters the base camp, the previous world he had built and explored disappears. Once the hero goes around the loop enough times, he finds himself at a boss fight ending that particular stage of the game; however, if the hero loses, they only go home with half of the resources they collected and have to start the adventure all over again. As AtlasDiesirea, with over 61 hours in-game, says on Steam:
“The constant urge to ‘go another round’ while balancing the risk of not surviving the ‘Loop’ is finely balanced.”
https://steamcommunity.com/id/atlasdiesirae/recommended/1282730/
While it seems it is better to play it safe than be dragged back to basecamp by the villagers, the player never knows what cards they will get next. Meadows help to heal the player at the end of each “day” and some cards could even remove monsters from the path ahead. Each loop around is a constant gamble that leaves the player on the edge of their seat.
Upon playing the game myself, I found it to be a compelling story about a young hero trying to fix the void in which he found himself. Each new character adds to the impending loneliness of being forgotten and alone for many years along with the sheer desperation of survival. Truly a fantastic narrative for a seemingly simple game with infinite hours of gameplay.
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