![]() Unfortunately, when you meet the lich he tells you that God was responsible for erasing the world and the hero refuses to believe this. It’s not immediately clear what motivation this character would have for doing this, so unraveling that creates a mystery to keep players invested from the word go. To explain the mechanic of filling the world in the story starts with the hero seeing a lich removing everything in existence replacing it with void space. What’s really unfortunate is that the story doesn’t help to alleviate the grind either. That’s not to say the whole game isn’t a grind, but the loss of meaningful improvement diminishes the engagement of the whole system down to where I feel it is a lot more transparent. As such the final hours of Loop Hero reveal themselves to be a grind. These provide far less impactful boosts to your overall power which makes the high cost of acquiring the upgrades feel disproportionate. By this point, players will be out of new unlocks and will only have expensive upgrades remaining. ![]() Loop Hero’s progression entirely runs out of steam before the fourth and final act. Unfortunately, while progression is Loop Hero’s biggest win it’s also its biggest failing. And just like Stardew, Loop Hero uses this progression to keep players engaged for the bulk of its runtime. In a lot of ways it reminds me of the macro level progression found in games like Stardew Valley where each new upgrade pushes you along an exponential growth curve. This leads to an intensely satisfying progression loop where you set goals, achieve them, and then have an easier time working toward future goals. Each new structure you unlock at camp will provide a bonus that is big enough to be felt within a run. That gameplay loop is backed by one hell of a progression system and that is probably the reason why Loop Hero works so well. The different ideas in play don’t seem like they would have any synergy, but they end up forming a fairly simple and compelling gameplay loop. That more or less covers what Loop Hero is. Your Base Some Combat Action Card Selection A Run Where it All Comes Together In this way, Loop Hero is a constant balancing act seeing how much you can add to the world map while still allowing the hero to comfortably move through it. When played these cards flesh out the world map while also providing stat bonuses, stronger encounters, and additional resources. As enemies are defeated they’ll have a chance to drop cards from the player’s deck. Loop Hero plays like an idle game and your hero will run around the world map fighting enemies independently. There is also an element of synergy here as certain cards unlock entirely different effects when played in combination, so learning these combos and utilizing them is imperative to success.įinally you have what you actually do on a run. You can only take a set number of these into a run so, as in all great deck-builders, you’ll need to select only a handful of cards that contribute to some kind of overarching strategy. As you unlock new structures in your base you’ll unlock new cards. ![]() The next aspect of Loop Hero to talk about is the deck-building. This gives Loop Hero a great sense of progression where each run, regardless of the outcomes, sees you moving a little closer to your next goal. Most of these upgrades provide large bonuses that dramatically improve your capabilities such as increasing your healing, or providing the ability to level up and learn powerful new skills. The loot can be equipped to provide passive bonuses to your character, while resources are used to upgrade your base. You’ll send your character out on runs to collect loot and resources. I suppose I can start by stating that it has a bit of rogue-like in there.
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