During steam’s game festival, I thought it would be fun to try and cruise through a demo a day to check out a few games I’ve been looking forward to, and some I hadn’t heard of. For day one, I started with a game that recently popped up on my radar: Loop Hero. I had read a few articles about it but was still largely unsure what the game actually was or if I’d enjoy how it plays. Demo to the rescue! For those that prefer video, here’s a look at the first 30 minutes (if you prefer text, keep scrolling!):
Loop Hero follows a hero whose world is plunging into darkness, both literally and figuratively. No one seems to be able to remember anything, anyone, or even themselves. All you know is the path in front of you, which loops endlessly around and around. You’ll need to fight the monsters on your path in order to gather more resources to help the few remaining survivors and try to figure out how to break the time loop. The story is pretty interesting, and well-supported by excellent pixel art graphics, good writing, and a cool soundtrack.
The gameplay is extremely engaging in a way I was not expecting. The premise is exceedingly simple: you walk in a loop, over and over, fighting anything in your path. As you defeat monsters, they’ll drop cards, which represent the memory of places, and gear, which represents the people they ate before you. You can place the cards on the grid to give yourself better stats, add new monsters to your path, or gather more resources on each pass through. These resources can be spent at your small camp of survivors to add new buildings, like a chef’s hut or a herbalist’s tent. These new buildings, in turn, unlock new cards for you to use on your next run around the (randomly generated) loop. This system gives a lot of variety in each run, balanced with enough strategy to make each decision feel meaningful, and the next run even more exciting than the last.
I had a ton of fun with this demo, and absolutely cannot wait for the release! I would absolutely recommend checking out the demo while it’s up this week, it’s super quick to get a feel for so you can gauge it for yourself. Loop Hero is slated to release March 4th on PC.