The earliest days of computer games are dark at best, but the first role-playing video game somewhere in the kingdom of Richard Garriott’s Akalabeth, Rogue and Tower Of Apshai is widely agreed upon. All three were based on the simple but compelling premise of descending into a pit to fight skeletons, vampires and all sorts of other monsters while searching for a treasure. The limited technology of the day meant that none of them could replicate the narrative magic of Dungeons & Dragons – their closest inspiration – but their unique blend of stats, loot and class-based gameplay helped capture the hearts of the first generation of PCs. to catch games.
RPGs today are more focused on the impact of narrative choice, with games like Mass Effect being praised for their spider-like branching points. This is a trend that is being tested to its extreme by Disco Elysium, which trades traditional battles for sharp exchanges and insults. Still, the classic dungeon crawler survives through Dark Souls, Diablo, and now a curious little motor fighter named Loop Hero.
Loop Hero was developed by a small Russian indie studio called Four Quarters, and quickly became a hit, falling just short of the breakout tradition Valheim on Steam’s bestseller lists. It derives its name from the loop its hero travels as the world around them grows, monsters appearing on the road as it seems. If it was a D&D campaign, a partner of mine would have ever called it a beer and pretzel game – minimal storytelling, lots of role-playing.
As your character moves around in a circle and automatically defeats slime and spiders, you earn maps that contain resources and buildings. These items can be placed anywhere along the way, creating an ever-evolving series of obstacles for the tireless hero to go through. Defeating monsters generates loot, which can be converted into simple but effective constructions, which then enable the hero to defeat monsters more efficiently. This is the traditional role-playing loop that is formed as a literal circle.
“What’s interesting is that Loop Hero plays all of its modern pretensions in very modern trends.”
After a few revolutions, the loop becomes a vibrant fantasy world filled with haunted forests, mansions and mountains that look so much like a classic rag card. This feeling is enhanced by its aesthetics, which deliberately seem suggestive of the PC-RPGs of the late 80s and early 90s, especially Treasures Of The Savage Frontier. It’s like an entire D&D campaign unfolding within minutes of you, filled with tense encounters with vampires and other fantasy creatures.
This can be surprisingly difficult. It’s initially tempting to equip the items that make your attack and defense go up – the loot comes in so fast that it can be difficult to keep up, even with the pause feature. But it is better to lean in the secondary effects, especially evasion and vampiric attacks, because it dramatically increases the survivability as the number of enemies increases. Similarly, the placement of mobs is an important consideration. Do you spread them out to slow things down, or do you group them together to create more difficult encounters that yield greater rewards? These tense moment-to-moment decisions form a big part of why Loop Hero is so compulsive.
What is interesting is that Loop Hero with all its modern pretensions plays in very modern trends. The city building element – in which resources you gather along the route are invested in buildings that improve your runs – is reminiscent of recent rogues like Hades. Its deck-building component is reminiscent of Slay The Spire, which manages to find a passionate audience by mixing concept play with tense tactical boss fights. And of course, there’s the way it plays into the popularity of real-time dancers like Diablo, the constant distribution of cards and loot associated with the loot pinatas that define the games.
It’s more of a mess than anything, containing elements of tower defense, CCG and rogue genres, all dressed up as a tribute to the dungeon crawlers of the past. But it is a very clever mash-up, which manages to evoke all the memories of classic RPGs with a simple and very strict setup. In particular, it pretty much captures why dungeon crawlers still resonate after all these years – the sense of discovery as you build the map, the sense of danger as you weigh the pros and cons of another run, the satisfaction of entering your hero build a juggernaut in real time.
I will admit that I have never been so focused on the play aspect of role play. I partially gave up my first D&D character memory loss so I don’t have to think too hard about her characterization early on. I was more interested in balancing my character’s skin so she could keep her in the field. I was not the only one either. Call me a min-maxer or whatever, but for me the narrative tends to jump organically out of the systems rather than the other way around.
Loop Hero is very much in the tradition, one that has been a genre base for as long as video games have existed. And as a charming throw back to past dungeons, it’s a pleasure.