Quick Look: Loop Hero

GotY contender, right here.

Just from looking at the video thumbnail - put meadows next to different tiles to get extra resources! Don't clump them together.

I've sunk 10 hours into this game so far. There's a lot more depth than it seems at first, and I love the bizarre story and tongue in cheek dialogue. It has a lovely power curve that reminds me of Risk of Rain more than anything else.

Would really suit being on tablets/phones too.

For anyone looking for some tips I've picked up:

- don't bother laying the weaker version of rock/desert/forest. Every card you lay just brings you closer to summoning the boss so don't waste uses on the weaker ones

- Vampire next to village over 3 loops will give you Count's lands, you can reduce the number of zombie farmers on the tile in between with roadside lanterns.

- Spider cocoons are really powerful since they drop lots of cards for you and the spiders are quite weak

- Skeletons are pretty weak and the cemetary gives decent loot

- In Act 1, if you place tiles around your campsite it'll stop the lich palaces spawning, making the final boss easier.

- Put Meadows next to Chrono Crystals on the corners for extra daily HP

Stop apologizing BRAD

On the flip side, the earlier in your run you spawn a boss, the weaker they will be.

The tip about placing things adjacent to your camp is REALLY useful for when you do decide you are going to do a boss run. I also tried to save 2-3 oblivion cards for when the boss spawned.

I feel like this game is deliberately obtuse, similar to a Dark Souls. It expects you to figure these things out on your own, but I feel Brad just isn't far enough in to have gotten to that point. It rewards exploration and experimentation and since you can bail on runs with all your stuff there's no reason not to play things a little differently, as each run doesn't have to be a boss run.

Some of my own tips/corrections:

-Always try to put meadows adjacent to other objects, not clumped together. It was wrong to say you shouldn't put meadows around rocks. Meadows shouldn't be clumped with other meadows.

-Chrono Crystals are great for doubling the effect of adjacent meadows. You will also reach a point where you want to increase certain monster spawns.

-Enemy spawning cards are not "bad." All cards are used to help you get resources and gear. For instance one resource only drops when you fight four enemies at a time, making the spider spawns super useful for bunching a lot of easy 4 enemy encounters.

-Only things placed adjacent to the treasury get resources, not in lines.

-Swamps are great for placing adjacent to vampire houses because it causes Vampire's life steal to deal damage instead of heal them.

-Only upgrade equipment if it really offers a big benefit. Equipping something slows down your dusting of equipment into mats.

-Gray gears does not necessarily equal bad gear. I would rather have a 3 hp regen ring versus a yellow with .8 regen and two other stats my build doesn't utilize.

Place battlefields at the beginning of a loop since chest gear somewhat scales with the level of the loop you are on.

-Think of magic damage as armor piercing damage. It is a flat increase to your damage that bypasses enemy defense.

-In the early going, save an oblivion card for when you play 10 mountain/rock cards, so you can instantly take out goblin camps.

-Max HP and regen are by far the best stats for a warrior. I don't take vampirism because of the swamp/vampire combo I use.

Edit:

One last thing I saw later on in the video, You are better off using oblivion cards to take out what is spawning enemies, than the enemies themselves. I usually use them on the bandit and goblin camps if I don't want to fight those.

There appears to be a demo version you can download for Android

https://fourquarters.itch.io/loopathero-demo

I'm getting a distinct Badman / What Did I Do To Deserve This My Lord vibes....

Also, you do unlock an encyclopedia, that helps with letting you know what enemies/tiles/cards/actions drop certain materials. I wish they had made that an earlier upgrade. I got it around 10-15 hours in. You can even spend resources to unlock entries for things you haven't unlocked yet.

This is true if you get a really nice set of OP gear, but I've found I'm better off waiting until I have a good build by holding those cards, and then just spending them all at once to force the last section of the boss bar to fill.

@heelbill:

I really like counter and attack speed for Warrior, and get regen out of villages and potions. High counter is really good when you have a full board of enemies because it procs a lot

Having most fun with necromancer though

@gerrid: When I beat the first boss with warrior, I had 10 hp/sec regen, the trait that creates an HP buffer (I think each time you pass through camp which procced on the boss fight), and 100+ hp a day from meadows buffed with chrono crystals and beat the boss with almost full HP. I like that the game has other viable tactics though.

@heelbill: Did you keep going? That sounds like you would unkillable ha

fantastic game, perfect for podcasts, but can also be 'solved' (especially by a class you unlock later)

pro tip: turn on the option to pause when you reach the campfire. it pauses you ONE FRAME before triggering the boss, so you can decide to fight them or bail safely with all loot.

Seeing Brad not figure out how the overlapping battle fields work is a little painful, but then I remembered it took me several runs of seeing blood clots before I figured it out too.

This is such an intensely beautiful looking game! I wish every game looked like this! 💚💚💚💚💚💚💚

Am I off in also thinking of Half Minute Hero in terms of the "passive strategic grinding" you're doing? Like you're not controlling the fighting itself but you are doing things that are affecting the pace at which the hero is facing foes and the power creep of hero & foes?

If you're looking for resources to upgrade the camp, make sure to place the tiles that grant them like groves and cemeteries as soon as possible. Place rocks and mountains on the diagonals of the treasury and meadows on the x, y axis. Having high hit points pool is useless if you can't regenerate the health required to fill it.

I love Brad discovering stuff in the game during the QL, its like the perfect QL. So great

It also doesn't really alter the look of the road tile enough when the effect is activated, imo. Unless you're really paying attention, it can be easy to miss that its type has changed.

I am afraid to buy this game because I am afraid it will consume my life. God, this looks good.

@brad You've mentioned it on podcasts a couple of times and it comes up again here so thought I'd let you know that touch screen controls were patched into the Switch version of Into the Breach. Still never made it to ipad as far as I'm aware though if that's specifically what you're curious about.

27 hours played so far and highest loop I've got is 86...

Something very frustrating though is that no matter how geared you are you WILL die. My 86 loop was just vs slimes and guess what killed me?

75 percent evade, 500 percent attack speed, damage of like 250-350 weapons and it didnt matter a slime still killed me

Seriously! I played this demo back during the Steam demo week thing and wishlisted it because it seemed like it had legs, but good lord it's totally consumed my playtime over the last week. I had this same reaction to CrossCode, where a game just comes out of nowhere and every aspect of it feels well-considered and expertly crafted and super deep. It's so good!

Game looks neat!!

This reminds me of a fusion of Hand of Fate and, does anyone else remember Half-Minute Hero?

Little underrated gem of an RPG that also had incredibly simple graphics, but a really compelling puzzle/RPG gameplay with a time loop gimmick. And REALLY good writing?

Nascar + Dota Auto Chess

The movie is called Loop. Die. Repeat actually.

To any wondering, it's also on GoG and Epic

I'm 13 hours into this game and I think everyone should really hold back on the tips unless they're being asked for them. Loop Hero builds on mixing and matching the cards your given, which can lead to really fun combinations that hurt/hinder you or both. A lot of the fun is the mystery of the multifaceted effects of the cards on the world/player.

Definitely going on my 2021 GOTY

This game came out of nowhere and it is incredible.

I think I like the idea of this game more than the way it's executed. I often felt like the only thing I was doing for long stretches of each run was just comparing equipment, and number crunching is not my thing. An estimated DPS stat to tell me if trading my 13 damage weapon for a weaker one with attack speed bonus is a good trade would be nice, or even just an indicator of how many attacks per second I do.

The resource grind starts as manageable but ramped up to way too much for me. Even putting down solely the tiles I need to spawn the resources I need, I'd often come back with less than I needed for a given building even after a dozen loops. It'd be okay if it was more of an idler that I could leave on for 20+ loops safely but you need to be present to micromanage gear to keep up, so it sits in an odd place between traditional game and idler where, in my opinion, you get the worst part of idle games (real time investment) with none of the benefits (you can walk away and let it do its thing). I'd appreciate more game speed options, including battle speed.

It also takes a bit too long to unlock the encyclopedia which is crucial to have unless you're consulting a guide or noting things down. The encyclopedia could also do with showing synergies you've discovered (e.g. peaks, blood paths). I do wish there were more tile combinations and adjacency bonuses, having more to think about while the loop is running would help keep things interesting.

Lastly, the boss rewards are a really odd thing. I thought they were passive bonuses you keep but they actually get added to the pool of traits you can select when you level up. In some cases this is actually bad since they can be super situational and can't be removed from the pool.

Overall I liked it but I'm not sure if I'll put the time in to complete chapter III or beyond.

I could watch brad play this game for hours!

i had to stop at Brad saying "These are all bad" to most of the deck...

I love everything about this game except playing it.

@gerrid: Counter seems really good at first, and does work well for big groups of small mobs, but I think every time it procs it resets your attack timer so attack speed probably is a bad pairing unless you can more than double the enemy speed.

It seems like the percentage bonuses scale worse as the loops increase. Counter struggles a lot without high defence and/or vampirism as it only triggers when you're already taking damage.

I did have a very good evasion build though, with a perk that gave me additional chance to counter on evade and that was super fun.

Wait, 12 < 12 is okay? It hurts me.

@wulfbane: I can't believe someone else remembers that beautiful, underappreciated game.

As one of the people here who understands way more than these two do during this quick look, it's awesome to see them suddenly hit villages and see the game start to open up a bit and know that there is way more of those moments to come. This game keeps surprising me with how it unfolds and changes little by little.

Been sitting on my steam wishlist since release. Summer sale happened and bought it.

Need to watch this now so I can see what this game is about.

damnnn. 4.5 hours later. On my 7th expedition beat the first boss and had did an 11 loop run and left with a ton of shit.

Game is awesome.