Time loops and video games are a perfect match, as a string of recent titles from Minit to Deathloop to Cobalt Core can confirm. After all, a lot of time in games is spent trying again and again to overcome the same challenge until you get it right, so basing a game’s story on that seems only natural. Loop Hero takes this idea to heart, building its time-looping premise into the core of the game and creating an endlessly satisfying cycle in the process. This month, it’s also free on Amazon Prime, making it easier than ever to get caught in its eternal loop.
When Loop Hero starts, the world has already ended. And not just ended but shattered, as those left surviving in the ruins have lost even their memories of the world as it was. Over the course of its looping story, you’ll learn more about the old world and the necromancer who destroyed it, but Loop Hero is more concerned with how you remake the world than the way it looked before.
You play as one of the amnesiac wanderers of the broken world fighting their way to the necromancer and hopefully fixing everything on the way. In another sense, though, you’re barely playing as this warrior at all, instead controlling the environment around them as they act on their own. Loop Hero begins with little more than a circular path rendered in a delightfully crunchy pixelated style on screen, which your hero automatically follows. Enemies are scattered along the path, and running into one sends the hero into battle.
This is a great time to get yourself a glass of water, because combat in Loop Hero is strictly hands-off. The warrior and their enemies take turns attacking, with their strength and speed dictated solely by their stats. In typical auto-battler fashion, it’s planning that wins the day, not in-the-moment combat skill. Gear you pick up throughout the game can offer simple stat boosts or add skills like life-stealing to dramatically change how battles play out.
With the warrior walking and fighting on their own, your job is to change the ground beneath their feet. As the warrior walks on, you gain cards representing different types of terrain or buildings, from forests and swamps to vampire dens. Place one on the board and they become real, with some tiles spawning different types of enemies and others giving bonuses while your hero is within its range. Building the world this way becomes a balancing act between risk and reward, since fighting more enemies means earning rewards to better prepare you for your showdown with the necromancer, but throwing too much challenge in the warrior’s way could end your run before you even get close.
That sense of risk and reward is key to what makes Loop Hero so compelling. Any time your warrior makes a full loop around the screen to their starting point at a campfire, you can choose to check out, taking all the loot you gained with you. But choose to press on and complete the loop again and enemies will get stronger while the loot they drop gets stronger. The tension between playing it safe and pushing for the best run of your life permeates every part of Loop Hero’s design, making even its chill gameplay feel exciting loop after loop.
When you do decide it’s time to rest, your hard-earned loot lets you build a town in the ruins for fellow survivors to live in. Upgrading your base provides bonuses for future runs, and it’s also where you’ll learn more about the game’s world by speaking to its various residents. It’s not the most engaging part of the game, but it’s one more way to keep repeated runs fresh hour after hour and encourage you to push your luck to keep your newly formed community growing.
Loop Hero is a great reminder not to judge a book by its cover. Most of your time in the game is spent staring at the same screen, as your character and the game’s enemies move automatically down its pixelated roads. It doesn’t seem like the kind of game that could keep you blearily playing into the early hours of morning hoping for a perfect run, but that’s exactly what you’re signing up for with Loop Hero. If you’ve yet to check it out and you’re subscribed to Amazon Prime, now is the time to dive in and start rebuilding its chaotic world — just make sure you’ve got room in your schedule first.
