So as mentioned over in the Little Indie Games thread, Loop Hero isn’t so little anymore. I pre-ordered the game after being impressed by the demo during the last Steam festival and honestly didn’t expect the game to gain as much traction as it has. The demo may still be available so if you’re wondering what the fuss is about, definitely give it a try.
The world (and all memory of it) has been wiped out by the Lich. The tutorial does a good job of laying down the basics before letting you loose to discover the rest for yourself. Your character wanders a looping path which changes on each expedition. As you auto-battle enemies, you’ll amass gear, resources and… cards? Each card conjures up new structures or terrain which all have unique effects and attributes. The cemetary, for example, spawns skeletons, while the battlefield reveals a treasure chest every loop. Each loop starts and ends at the campsite, and the resources you gather can be used there to build and upgrade structures at the end of an expedition. There is a story that develops as you hit different milestones and as a scenario/concept I think it works really well with the mechanics of the game.
As you do more expeditions/loops, the more you start to realise what things work together, how best to manage your gear/stats and essentially when to bail out (and keep more resources) or keep going (and risk losing most of them). It’s a refreshingly odd game but the core loop is great when you start to get a feel for it. It’s also polished with lots of little QoL of life features like pausing when you mouse over things or being able to rewind dialogue in case you missed something.
The full release gives you a couple of higher resolution font alternatives too which has made a world of difference to me. I adore the pixel art (so much so, I was following the artist before even knowing his work was for a game) but I found the pixel fonts tricky to read. I’m not too keen on the sans serif ‘high-res’ font but the dyslexia-friendly option is nice. That said, I also realised you can replace ‘Roboto-Bold.ttf’ with any TrueType font, provided you rename the file to ‘Roboto-Bold.ttf’ and it will replace the ‘high-res font’. Pretty cool. You can find it here:
There was quite a bit of discussion of this on the most recent Crate and Crowbar, and it sounds pretty intriguing. However, I got the sense that it has elements of both incremental/idle games and souls games, as well as a bit of roguelite. Can you say in which direction it leans heaviest?
I wouldn’t compare it to a souls game. It’s definitely significantly idle-game, but there’s also kind of a card-based city-building feel with tile interactions like the Grow games, and you get randomized loot you can equip mid run, levels with perks, etc, and then building buildings and upgrading them between runs.
So I somehow got a mountain peak when playing- something to do with a 3x3 section of combined rock and mountain, but I couldn’t make it happen again. Are there more of these terrain combinations to find?
I also struggle with “should I place a third vampire castle?” decisions.
On the scale of idle I’d say it’s more “I have a podcast on in the background” than “I’m working on screen 1 and have this running on screen 2”. The core appeal is in decision-making and weighing risks in a functionally turn-based fashion where you have a pretty good idea of what’s coming next, with a wrapper city-building strategy layer. Superficially the moment to moment gameplay isn’t really similar to either Darkest Dungeon or Slay the Spire, but those both jump to my mind in that doing well at them is asking you to be good at the same things.
Yeah, I wouldn’t liken it to a Souls game. I’ve little experience with idle games but there is incremental progression and building up a run… to then fail and start again. I don’t know how much involvement idle games usually require but this feels involving in the way you use your cards, balance your gear, which traits you pick and when to retreat. Some of the card synergies and effects are surprising and fun, and add a lot of flavour. I suppose it’s most Souls-like quality is the risk/reward element but there’s always steady progress, even when you fail.
I’d recommend checking the demo out to get a feel for it yourself if you can.
Yeah, I’m surprised we don’t have more Loop Hero stuff here, other than a few EA/demo posts earlier in this thread: it full-released this week, basically everyone that I follow on Twitch was streaming it last night, Schreier was glowing about it on Twitter yesterday, and it’s only $13. I grabbed it and while I’m not the biggest fan of the 8-bit graphics style, the gameplay, ah, loop seems really well done and addicting in that “one 30-minute-run turns into 3 hours” fashion that the best rogue-somethings tend to have. Very curious to see how things develop as the meta progression moves further along.
I played the demo for a bit, but I couldn’t figure out what I was trying to do. You go around and around the loop. You add monsters to the loop? Are you supposed to be trying to hit some goal before you go to the next loop? Are you supposed to keep going until you die? I just couldn’t understand what the goal was.
Yeah it was by far my favourite demo from the last Steam festival. So much so I pre-ordered it and was counting down the hours on launch day. I adore the graphics. Some of the best pixel art I’ve seen since Atomicrops.
There’s a story that develops but it’s meant to be confusing initially as the world (and all memory of it) has been wiped out by the Lich. The tutorial does a good job of laying down the basics before letting you loose to discover the rest yourself. Your character is wandering a path which changes on each expedition, remembering and fighting through stuff and amassing resources to build-up the campsite/base. You’re trying to restore the world, somehow. As you play more you start to realise what things work together, how best to manage your gear/stats and essentially when to bail out (and keep more supplies) or keep going (and risk losing most of it). It’s an odd game but the core loop is really great when you start to get a feel for it. I may do a dedicated thread at some point, if I’m not beaten to it!
There’s also a ton of hidden synergies in the game, like arranging things in a certain configuration levels then up into different things. It’s not really my cup of tea, but there’s more going on than first appears.
I bought Loop Hero maybe two days ago and I’ve sunk five or six hours into it. I am really enjoying the experience. And I was trying to find a place where I could post about it. So since I got mentioned here again I’m going to post about it here!
I have unlocked the third class; it really does have that “one more turn” effect. It’s grabbing me a lot more than Astronarch does, even though that’s also a good game. The persistent “universe” makes makes you want to go back and run loops in order to get more resources in order to build up your village in order to unlock more features. The different classes all play differently so that adds a lot of variety to the game. I have had a lot of fun trying them out and trying to figure out their strengths and weaknesses.
Of the classes I have unlocked, I find the necromancer possibly the most interesting because he doesn’t fight directly but instead summons skeletons to fight for him. And after playing him a while you notice that the skeletons can be different classes like fighters, rogues, tanks (based on the model used for the skeleton),… Maybe other classes I haven’t seen yet. Anyway, if the Necro survives summoning his crew they will be very potent.
There’s also a great tension between making the loop harder (to get more experience and resources) but at the same time keeping it survivable since you have to fight a big boss at some point.
One tip that I saw online was to put Groves right before your campfire and then add some blood Grove cards to the Groves. Blood grove has a chance to insta kill monsters when they are at 15% hp or less. I think my Warrior killed the big boss that way, because it came down to the point where I thought the next shot from either of us would kill the other and it seemed he dies before I attacked. I’ll take it!
Treasury Cards are helpful too and I think u can get different effect depending what type and how many you put next to them (4 meadows etc). I have to experiment with it more.
This also applies to you as well (at least, the roots hurt you until the enemies are gone) so I can see this backfiring if you’re in a bad place before the campfire!
I must be really bad at this game because I’m double that in hours and still only have the warrior. Probably because I press my luck way too far and end up losing most of my resources.
Believe me when I say I am no whiz at this game! To be fair you can progress by just collecting enough resources and expanding your base… you don’t have to actually defeat any specific monster so you could play it safe and just take a little longer to collect what you need.
Maybe I just play a lot more conservatively than you!
There are quite a few that I’ve found! That one can only happen once per expedition as far as I know. I intend to spoiler tag them because I think they’re fun to stumble on them yourself.
The latest one I came across is vampire mansions next to villages… which creates quite a nasty fight each loop but later gives a big reward.
What’s the exact trigger for the Lich to appear? My impression so far is that it’s some threshold on the number of cards you’ve placed, but can’t see anything in the UI showing how many cards you’ve still got to go.
