Loop Hero Review: The game is the hero, you are just the Master

Loop Hero it is a strategy game that is also a fascinating meditation on the education of children. The game takes the focus off controlling the hero directly; instead, it is your job to create their environment, weapons and skills to prepare them for the road ahead. You cannot do this for them, but it can increase your chances of success.

The game takes you to a confusing setting. The world is over and no one knows or remembers what happened, or why. A lone hero gets stuck traveling in a loop, but you don’t play like him; they operate completely on autopilot, fighting every monster they encounter, until they die or you instruct them to retreat to the camp to preserve the collected resources. Each loop they complete will heal a percentage of the damage they take, and the power of your enemies and the loots they release will also increase with each loop.

Loop Hero reverses what you’re used to paying attention to in a game. Your hero and the battles in which he participates? You have no control over this, at least not directly; all you can do is organize your shipment. Meanwhile, the world itself? You create it. It is someone else’s job to survive in it.

I never felt a direct affinity with my hero; I thought of them as someone else completely, and it was my job to prepare them for future battles, supporting them with better items and healing, while not making it much easier for them in terms of locating enemies and the environment. This is the challenge I often struggle with as a parent: I want my children to feel safe and supported, but I don’t want to eliminate so many challenges that they wither in the first big test of their skills or aptitudes.

The hero will win or lose based on the environment you created for him and whether it was designed well enough to help the hero grow and prosper.

Your world, your weapons, not your fight

Things just start at the beginning, with your hero starting the loop and facing some low-level monsters. Destroying the evil creatures that live on the circuit gives you equipment for the hero, as well as terrain or buildings that can be placed on the board to create a kind of map. The cards of the world are displayed at the bottom of the screen, with your equipment on the right, under your active loadout.

You create your world using the cards, and each one means something different to your hero. Putting mountains increases your maximum hit points, for example. Each meadow tile you place gains two life points at the end of each game day, which pass quickly. These are the Good cards. You also have to place cards that will generate more enemies in the loop, but crucially, you can decide where to place these cards and how close they are to other cards. After placing enough squares on the board, the boss appears.

Create enough of a kind of environment in an area by linking many of the same cards, and you may be surprised to see how the world comes to life on its own. Placing two cards next to each other can make enemies even more difficult to kill, or you can find cards to place in a specific order so that the enemies being spawned have to fight you and the environment.

Nothing exists in a vacuum; everything interacts with everything else. If you don’t position the squares with some kind of strategy, balancing the need to keep your hero healthy with the need to reinforce them to be powerful enough to destroy the boss, you will lose. Meanwhile, the hero is also collecting different materials throughout the process so that you can level up your base camp, opening up more options for future races.

You’ll also get equipment while your hero struggles to survive, and juggling your loadout is a constant and never-ending job. Learning about each magical effect requires experimentation, since Loop Hero explains very little. What will this ring with these stats do when paired with this shield? What is “vampirism” really, and could it be good in this context? You have to try different things and find out what works, as well as being a parent. Using trial and error to learn and discover things is a great way to explore the world with your kids, and is almost a must-have skill for perfecting your run. Loop Hero.

If you are doing well, your automated hero will continue on his way and win his battles, while you exchange your weapons and equipment for better loot.

If you do badly? Well, you die, you are sent back to camp and you lose a lot of resources. But you always have a chance to take a deep breath, see if you can improve your camp and get back into battle.

Respecting your time and attention

Loop Hero has two states of play: adventure and planning. Your hero continues to move and fight during the state of adventure. During the planning state, the hero takes a break so that you can consider his construction and where to place his pieces. To switch between the two states, just press a single button. There are also selectors that can pause the game at the end of each loop, at the end of each battle, by hovering over the units to learn more about them or by hovering over items during the battle.

It’s a game changer, giving you total control to take as much or as little time as you would like in each decision, thus removing the sense of urgency and time pressure that could make the game an overwhelming mess. Unfortunately, this part of the game is not like being a parent, although I often wish I could ask for a time limit in real life to figure out what to do next.

This is not an idle or clicker game where you can look away and let it play for long periods of time; you will be crushed if you’re not constantly juggling the tiles of the world and your inventory. But with the right settings, the game will pause when your attention is needed, making it an easy multitasking experience and playing at a glacial pace while watching Netflix or juggling another activity. It was designed to captivate you when you can dedicate your time and obediently wait for your return if you are pulled into something else.

Although he was sometimes frustrated by the number of systems that Loop Hero doesn’t explain, I don’t want to research the game’s secrets yet. Trying something new or trying to escape potentially bad habits by laying tiles at random, often brought unexpected results. I’m used to feeling like an adventurer who boldly sets out to save the world, but I never felt like the very act of creating the world was going to cast a spell, with each piece and overall strategy making it more or less effective in maintaining my living hero.

By focusing directly on the need to create a world and a set of equipment that will give your standalone hero the best chance for success, Loop Hero I created one of my favorite metaphors to be a good father. I want my hero to save the world and I can’t do it for them, so it’s best to find the best way to get them ready to deal with it alone when the time comes.

Loop Hero is now available for Linux, Mac and Windows PC. The game was analyzed on Windows using a download code provided by Devolver Digital. Vox Media has partnerships with affiliates. This does not influence editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased through affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.