Loop Hero - Sells Half a Million Copies

Been playing RPGs since the late 80s and everything since. I uninstalled the demo less than 10 mins after trying it. I don't see the hype. I liked Slay the Spire and a couple others too.

Originally Posted by vidder
Playing the demo at the moment. Starting the game instantly felt like good old amiga times, where you didnt know what to expect from a game, there were lots of new ideas, like this game which has gameplay which hasnt been done (at least not combined into something unique) before.
Of course i love retro games and the graphic style as well as the music.
Also the game is really easy to pick up (but hard to master?), so there is that.

Yeah, the music reminds me of Amiga and the colour palette looks like it could have been copied from Chaos Engine or something.

Originally Posted by Cacheperl
Sure, ideally you'd be able to speed up by about 16x or 32x, but get an auto-stop when you get cards that are not duplicates of cards already on hand. (Gear probably doesn't even need that)

You can actually edit variables.ini and change game_speed. 120 is good.

Originally Posted by Nereida
The power of media in a world of brainless masses. This game isn't beautiful, innovative or even great at anything. It's a little autobattle game that belongs more to something you code in a couple weeks to upload on a flash game site or a mobile phone app, but it got advertised and a couple somewhat known streamers picked it up and people without power to make decisions for themselves will buy it.

In any case, good for them, and grats on their success.

Haha, I know a few gals that would say playing games at all makes one part of the brainless masses. All perception I suppose.

I watched some gameplay and can confidently say this game isn’t for me.

Also I’m not too sure I’d call this “old school” other than dated graphics I don’t see anything in the gameplay that would remind me of “old school” games I played.

Originally Posted by Nereida
…and people without power to make decisions for themselves will buy it.

Uh, who do you think decided they would buy it? Because that sounds like a great marketing strategy.

I really don't understand the attraction of the game, even in the abstract. The core loop is watching something happen with terrible graphics I'm not even going to call 'retro'.

I don't get the appeal and I'm into more casual games as a whole lately.

IMO if you're interested, play the demo for an hour or two - and you've seen the core game and enough of the "content."

I bought it, refunded it, bought it again thinking I must be missing something, and after 4 hours played have zero desire to fire it up again and wish I'd have trusted myself.

Originally Posted by jpnole
Been playing RPGs since the late 80s and everything since. I uninstalled the demo less than 10 mins after trying it. I don't see the hype. I liked Slay the Spire and a couple others too.

The only thing Loop Hero has in common with STS is that both are sold on Steam.

Originally Posted by Voqar
IMO if you're interested, play the demo for an hour or two - and you've seen the core game and enough of the "content."

Thanks for the heads up. I gave the demo a go and thought maybe I was missing something. If that's really all there is to it, I don't get the reviews being that positive.

"Auto-battler" where all you do is battle. Hmm.

To be honest, it's just got some neat little things with placement of cards, mixes different tropes, has some loot/gear management and ccg elements.

It's all mixed together in an enjoyable casual romp. This is not an RPG or anything similar.
But if you have 30 mins to play something then playing one loop is fun.

Originally Posted by screeg
Uh, who do you think decided they would buy it? Because that sounds like a great marketing strategy.

I really don't understand the attraction of the game, even in the abstract. The core loop is watching something happen with terrible graphics I'm not even going to call 'retro'.

Well, marketing in general is about selling you things you don't need and make you think you need them. Especially if your favourite streamer is also playing that game.

We are all subject to marketing in ways we don't perceive (some people fall for more obvious things than other) although I never understood what's interesting on watching some dude play games with a cam on. I clearly arrived late to the streamer/influencer era.

To be honest I enjoyed it for a little while. The card game part is definitely the heart of the game, and it's fun to kind of create the world that your hero explores, and to create challenges for him to help him level up and gain loot while also putting down things to help him with those challenges.

But….

I also thought the game wasn't fleshed out enough. I felt like your deck needs to evolve more through multiple playthroughs, and I wanted to see more combos or world interactions with the cards. In the beginning there are a medium number of card interactions, and I hoped they would expand with time, but it felt more like they decreased. A lot of the cards just felt like they weren't as interesting as they could be too.

So in the end it felt a little incomplete. It sounds like the designer is working on fleshing out the game though, so maybe I will check it out again later.

I'm really enjoying Loop Hero. It doesn't require a lot of brainpower which is sometimes exactly what I am looking for in a game - it's casual, fun, and I enjoy the retro music and graphics. I like the mechanic of "building a world" that has different effects depending on what you build, where you place objects, etc combined with a "card game" type game. I didn't really understand why Slay the Spire was quite as popular as it was, other than being easily accessable… but this game has a lot of promise.

Played it for hours last night while tired, just droning out and going through my loops and learning new things about combinations and equipment and everything else. Perfect price-point for a game like this, too.

Not sure why this game gets a lot of hate but like "Valheim" I think it's just popular right now to bash anything that's popular.

Nah it's just that anything that's popular is usually shit. Just look at music nowadays.

Originally Posted by FurtiveNyctophile
Not sure why this game gets a lot of hate but like "Valheim" I think it's just popular right now to bash anything that's popular.

I think you just explained some of the hate. A game that almost plays itself, that you can "drone out" to, that serves its purpose, I guess, but it can be grating to see something that's essentially a dopamine drip be a lot more successful than games that you have to be awake to play.

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
Nah it's just that anything that's popular is usually shit. Just look at music nowadays.

The algorithm found the best song ever for ya, Couch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bNITQR4Uso

For me, the older the better. I only listen to the 1st century AD Seikilos Epitaph, everything else is just too modern.

Originally Posted by JFarrell71
I think you just explained some of the hate. A game that almost plays itself, that you can "drone out" to, that serves its purpose, I guess, but it can be grating to see something that's essentially a dopamine drip be a lot more successful than games that you have to be awake to play.

Why? Life requires you to be awake, sometimes you just want to calm down and a game that finds the perfect, meditative formula to help you do this is just as valid as the latest Dark Souls super-hardcore elite skillz e-game. You can get pretty deep into Loop Hero too, which is part of the charm. You should check out the Reddit community for it, people get insanely good at the game and it becomes quite complex in the end stages.

All games are essentially a "dopamine drip" otherwise, we wouldn't play them. It's literally our reward chemical. Or one of the best understood of them.

My reward chemical is Coke Zero. I'm not supposed to touch it, but I do every so often.