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Loop Hero, probably the only titles I've pre-ordered in the last few years is officially out now and I really will need some help to pull myself away from running just one more loop.

It's such a strange and beautifully intoxicating mix of genres. For each loop through you're placed into a world full of nothing but a path and it's up to you to build up the world each time. You do this through your deck of cards, while the hero automatically loops around the path and fights enemies along the way without your input. Even though you don't have direct control, there's quite a lot of strategy involved in it.

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Loop Hero is like a an idle clicker, mixed with deck-building, random generation and a little RPG flavour all in one. So very hard to properly describe and I think you truly need to play it for a few hours to fully start to appreciate it. Such an easy game to get into though, thanks to a lot of it being quite hands-off so you can sit back and just watch what's going on. Good for a tired mind, wonderful as a distraction. Style wise it's an odd blend of things too, it's got the look and and sound of a retro game but with a modern feel overall.

"The Lich has thrown the world into a timeless loop and plunged its inhabitants into never ending chaos. Wield an expanding deck of mystical cards to place enemies, buildings, and terrain along each unique expedition loop for the brave hero. Recover and equip powerful loot for each class of hero for their battles and expand the survivors' camp to reinforce each adventure through the loop. Unlock new classes, new cards, and devious guardians on your quest to shatter the endless cycle of despair."

You do have an actual story to progress through in the game too, it's not all about endlessly looping to better your character. Over time you're also building up and upgrading a little village which pulls in more people over time. It's here that you also get a sprinkle of more story content as the loops go on and you manage to encounter more enemies through the game.

Each loop through it starts off the same. It's a blank canvas, a dark void that gets a random path placed into it. The rest is then up to you. Your chosen hero automatically moves and doesn't stop until they hit an enemy (or a group of enemies) on a tile, then they engage in automatic combat until they win or die and move on. The strategy to it is how you place down map features from your deck of cards, along with carefully choosing your hero's equipment which you gain as you battle and take down enemies. Each time around the path, the current loop gets harder and so you do need to keep on top of things and make sure you're properly equipped or send your hero back to the village if things look a bit too dicey.

Choosing equipment is a constant toss up between different effects. There's lot of different items including weapons, rings, shields, armour and more and all of them with different buffs from vampirism to attack speed.

Putting down tiles is something you need to think about too. Plenty of them spawn enemies to fight, some of them have special effects when placed near a certain other tile and there's plenty of hidden features to find like placing down a certain amount of mountains together to turn them into one huge mountain that will then spawn a special creature. There's lots of these little things to discover. It's also sweet that you get to pause the game to build and think for a moment, a nice touch to not make it frantic. You can easily sit back and relax with it, which makes it all the more dangerous to your free time.

Feature Highlight:

  • Infinite Adventure: Select from unlockable character classes and deck cards before setting out on each expedition along a randomly generated loop path. No expedition is ever the same as the ones before it.
  • Plan Your Struggle: Strategically place building, terrain, and enemy cards along each loop to create your own dangerous path. Find balance between the cards to increase your chances of survival while recovering valuable loot and resources for your camp.
  • Loot and Upgrade: Strike down menacing creatures, recover stronger loot to equip on the fly and unlock new perks along the way.
  • Expand Your Camp: Turn hard-earned resources into campsite upgrades and gain valuable reinforcements with each completed loop along the expedition path.
  • Save the Lost World: Overcome a series of unholy guardian bosses over a grand saga to save the world and break the time loop of the Lich!

As another point of appreciation - if you dislike the CRT screen shader effect or the pixel fonts, both can be turned off as there's a proper clear font option and also a font that's supposed to help people with dyslexia. Might possibly have more to say about it after I've played more, there's a lot to get through and it takes quite some time to properly progress on.

This might be my own personal game of the year though, it's going to be really tough to beat it. The Linux version appears to work perfectly too. Fantastic overall.

You can buy Loop Hero on GOG.com and Steam.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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13 comments

DaiKaiser93 Mar 4, 2021
The Linux build isn't available on GOG at the moment, the store page marks "Linux version available soon".

EDIT: Just got back from work, the Linux build is up.


Last edited by DaiKaiser93 on 5 March 2021 at 8:59 am UTC
WJMazepas Mar 5, 2021
This looks like a game where i would lose my life on it.

I dont know if i should buy because of this or avoid like the plague
RFSharpe Mar 5, 2021
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This is the first time I have purchased a game within an hour of publication on Steam. I played the demo for an hour and I knew it was something I would enjoy. I should mention that the demo version became unavailable at the time of the full release.

It reminds me of a game called Gateway to Apshai that I played for untold hours on my Commodore 64. The game was developed/published by Epyx Computer Software, which had a number of very popular games in the 80s.

Although Gateway to Apshai was a dungeon crawler; the MIDI generated sound track, gameplay progression and even the pixelized hero are so reminiscent of the Apshai series. I can see now that I am going to be spending a considerable amount of time "scooping the loop" in Loop Hero.
FifteenthPen Mar 5, 2021
Hadn't tried the demo, but saw the rave reviews and picked it up.

I intended to try it out and then go back to feeding my Valheim addiction.

Now I have two competing addictions. I'm not sure how I feel about this.
scaine Mar 6, 2021
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Hadn't tried the demo, but saw the rave reviews and picked it up.

I intended to try it out and then go back to feeding my Valheim addiction.

Now I have two competing addictions. I'm not sure how I feel about this.

Yep, I have four right now - Hadean Tactics, Elite, Noita and now Loop Hero. I guess I still have Gloomhaven rumbling away with my mates on Tabletop Simulator too, but that's a different kind of addiction.

It's genuinely weird to have this much choice for must-play games. I mean, Humble Choice landed a few days ago, and includes a game I was genuinely looking forward to playing (albeit via Proton, the awesome Valkyria Chronicles)... and I haven't even bothered firing it up even once yet!

I also have Valheim waiting in the wings. As I say, it's kind of weird having so much quality to choose from. I love it!
soulsource Mar 6, 2021
Had some fun with the GOG version...
Not only does it try to load librtmp.so (which I haven't installed - can easily be worked around by not using the bundled libraries -> commenting out the LD_LIBRARY_PATH line in run.sh ), also the character doesn't move in the tutorial.

I'm quite certain that's related to a script error after a sound sample cannot be found. Took me a while to figure this out, but it can be worked around by downloading the Windows version, installing it via WINE, and replacing the Linux install's game.unx file with the data.win file from the Windows install...

Now it seems to work, but I must confess, that I'm more and more inclined to buy at Steam, where games tend to "just work™".
DaiKaiser93 Mar 6, 2021
Had some fun with the GOG version...
Not only does it try to load librtmp.so (which I haven't installed - can easily be worked around by not using the bundled libraries -> commenting out the LD_LIBRARY_PATH line in run.sh ), also the character doesn't move in the tutorial.

I'm quite certain that's related to a script error after a sound sample cannot be found. Took me a while to figure this out, but it can be worked around by downloading the Windows version, installing it via WINE, and replacing the Linux install's game.unx file with the data.win file from the Windows install...

Now it seems to work, but I must confess, that I'm more and more inclined to buy at Steam, where games tend to "just work™".

That's weird, it installed and played just fine on Manjaro.
torham Mar 6, 2021
Had some fun with the GOG version...
Not only does it try to load librtmp.so (which I haven't installed - can easily be worked around by not using the bundled libraries -> commenting out the LD_LIBRARY_PATH line in run.sh ), also the character doesn't move in the tutorial.

For me, the character moves fine in the tutorial, but the audio is completely distorted. I guess I could play without sound but I hope they will address the problems soon.
soulsource Mar 7, 2021
Had some fun with the GOG version...
Not only does it try to load librtmp.so (which I haven't installed - can easily be worked around by not using the bundled libraries -> commenting out the LD_LIBRARY_PATH line in run.sh ), also the character doesn't move in the tutorial.

I'm quite certain that's related to a script error after a sound sample cannot be found. Took me a while to figure this out, but it can be worked around by downloading the Windows version, installing it via WINE, and replacing the Linux install's game.unx file with the data.win file from the Windows install...

Now it seems to work, but I must confess, that I'm more and more inclined to buy at Steam, where games tend to "just work™".

That's weird, it installed and played just fine on Manjaro.

Weird indeed. That the character moves, I mean, not the startup issue, which can easily be explained by librtmp being installed.
There are also other people having that bug: https://www.gog.com/forum/loop_hero/linux_player_doesnt_move
DaiKaiser93 Mar 7, 2021
Had some fun with the GOG version...
Not only does it try to load librtmp.so (which I haven't installed - can easily be worked around by not using the bundled libraries -> commenting out the LD_LIBRARY_PATH line in run.sh ), also the character doesn't move in the tutorial.

I'm quite certain that's related to a script error after a sound sample cannot be found. Took me a while to figure this out, but it can be worked around by downloading the Windows version, installing it via WINE, and replacing the Linux install's game.unx file with the data.win file from the Windows install...

Now it seems to work, but I must confess, that I'm more and more inclined to buy at Steam, where games tend to "just work™".

That's weird, it installed and played just fine on Manjaro.

Weird indeed. That the character moves, I mean, not the startup issue, which can easily be explained by librtmp being installed.
There are also other people having that bug: https://www.gog.com/forum/loop_hero/linux_player_doesnt_move
Can confirm it runs on Mint too.


Last edited by DaiKaiser93 on 7 March 2021 at 2:25 pm UTC
soulsource Mar 7, 2021
With that input I found out something: It seems to be a language issue.
I can also get the game to work without replacing any files if I set LC_ALL=C. My default system language is set to German, where decimal-separator and thousands-separator are swapped compared to English.

So, my current best guess is that somewhere a number gets read as localized.
soulsource Mar 8, 2021
I'm several days late to reading this article because I've been playing loop hero. If you figure out how to stop playing could you share it with me?
I wish I could, but I'm too busy playing Loop Hero.
foobrew Mar 8, 2021
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It reminds me of a game called Gateway to Apshai that I played for untold hours on my Commodore 64.

I also spent many hours of my youth playing Gateway to Apshai and Temple of Apshai on my C64!. Had totally forgot about those games. Guess I need to give Loop Hero a shot.
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