Loop Hero review: The game is the hero, you are just the DM

Loop Hero is a strategy game that is also a fascinating reflection on parenting. The game takes the focus away from controlling the hero directly; instead, it’s your job to create their environment, weapons, and abilities to prepare them for the road ahead. You can not do this for them, but you can improve their chances of success.

The game drops you into a confusing setup. The world has ended, and no one knows or remembers exactly what happened, or why. A lone hero is stuck in a loop, but you do not play like them; they work fully on a motorboat, and fight against every monster they encounter, until they die, or you order them to retreat to the camp to preserve their collected resources. Each loop they complete will heal a percentage of the damage they inflicted, and the power of their enemies and the loot they drop will also increase with each loop.

Loop Hero change what you are used to paying attention to in a game. Your hero and the battles in which they participate? You have no control over it, at least not directly; all you can do is organize their taxes. Meanwhile, the world itself? You create it. It is someone else’s job to survive in it.

I never felt a direct relationship with my hero; I completely regarded them as someone else, and it was my job to prepare them for the battles ahead by supporting them with better objects and healing, while not dealing with them too easily in terms of hostile placement and environment. This is the challenge I often struggle with as a parent: I want my children to feel safe and supportive, but I do not want to remove so many challenges that they wither during the first big test of their skills or abilities.

The hero is going to win or lose based on the environment you have created for them, and whether it is good enough to make the hero grow and flourish.

Your world, your weapons, not your struggle

Things start simple at first, with your hero starting the run and tackling some low-level beasts. If you destroy the evil creatures that live on the loop, you earn equipment for the hero, as well as sites or buildings that can be placed on the board to create a kind of map. The world maps are laid out at the bottom of the screen, with your equipment on the right, under your active drawer.

You create your world using the cards, and each one means something different to your hero. By placing mountains, for example, you increase the maximum hit points. Each meadow you place earns two hits at the end of each day in the game, driving past fairly quickly. This is the well cards. You should also place cards that will create more enemies in the loop, but you should definitely decide where you will place the cards and how close they are to other cards. Once you have put enough squares on the board, the boss appears.

Create enough of one kind of environment in an area by connecting many of the same maps, and you will be amazed at how the world gets on its own life. Placing two cards next to each other can be even harder to kill enemies, or you can find cards to place in a specific order so that the enemies that are born must fight you as well as the environment.

Nothing exists in a vacuum; everything interacts with everything else. If you do not put the squares in place with a strategy, and the need to keep your hero healthy, balances with the need to erase it to be powerful enough to destroy the boss, you will lose. Meanwhile, the hero also collects different materials during this process so that you can build up your base camp and open up more options for future runs.

You also earn equipment as your hero fights to survive, and juggling your download is a constant, relentless job. Learning about each magical effect is experimentation, since Loop Hero explains very little. What will this ring do with the stats if paired with this shield? What is even “vampirism”, and can it be good in this context? You need to try different things and find out what works, like parenting. Using trial and error to learn and figure things out is a great way to explore the world with your kids, and it’s almost an obligatory skill to perfect your run. Loop Hero.

If you do well, your automatic hero will stay on their path and win their battles, while continuing to trade their weapons and equipment for better loot.

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

You must respect your time and attention

Loop Hero has two game states: adventure and planning. Your hero keeps moving and fighting during the adventure state. During the planning mode, the hero pauses for a moment so you can look at the build and where to place the tiles. To switch between the two modes, press a single button. There are also switches that can interrupt the game at the end of each loop, at the end of each battle, when you hover over units to learn more about it, or when you hover over items during a fight.

It is a game changer that gives you full control to take up as much as just as much time as you want, thus removing the feeling of urgency and time pressure that can make the game an overwhelming mess. Unfortunately, this part of the game is not like parenting, though I have wished many times that I could name a real time-out to figure out what I needed to do next.

This is not an idle or click game where you can look away and let it play for long periods of time; you’ll be crushed if you do not constantly juggle the world tiles and your stock. But with the right settings, the game will interrupt itself at times when your attention is likely to be needed, making it an easy experience to multitask and play at an icy pace while watching Netflix or juggling with another activity. It is designed to enchant you when you can give it your all, and to dutifully await your return if you run into something else.

While I was sometimes frustrated by the number of systems that Loop Hero do not explain, I never want to look up the secrets of the game. Trying something new, or trying to break out potentially bad habits by randomly placing tiles, has often yielded unexpected results. I’m used to feeling like an adventurer bravely trying to save the world, but I’ve never felt that the act of world creation itself was an enchantment, with every tile and overall strategy causing little or more was effective in keeping my hero alive.

By focusing on the need to create a world and set of equipment that will give your autonomous hero the best chance of success, Loop Hero created one of my favorite metaphors to be a good parent. I want my hero to save the world, and I can not do it for them, so I need to better figure out what best way to get them ready to handle it themselves when the time comes.

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