Retro Game Review: Loom’s unique take on the point-and-click formula
I’ve been a fan of LucasArts’ classic point-and-click adventure games for a long time, but 1990's Loom was one never got around to until recently. It’s a shame too because Loom really is a gem.
You play as Bobbin Threadbare, a young man from a guild of Weavers that guard the destiny-weaving Great Loom. Throughout the game you travel to villages based around different guilds, including the Forge, a castle built by blacksmiths shaped like a giant anvil, and Crystalgard, a city of Glassmakers made entirely of transparent green glass. These locations are all beautifully illustrated, and for a game that’s a quarter-century old, the graphics hold up remarkably well.
The standout feature of Loom is its control scheme. Unlike most point-and-click adventures, you don’t have any sort of inventory. Instead, you interact with the environment by casting spells with four-note melodies. As you progress, you’ll learn new spells and unlock additional notes to use. (Don’t worry, you don’t actually need to know anything about music.)
There are over a dozen unique spells in the game, and many can be played forwards and backwards for opposite effects (e.g., playing E-C-E-D casts “open” and D-E-C-E casts “close”). You might want to have a pen and paper ready to keep track of them all. It is possible to miss a spell you need and get stuck later, but as long as you’re playing attention, you shouldn’t have a problem.
My biggest problem with Loom is that it’s just too short. It can be completed in about three hours, and the game doesn’t feel like it has the chance to fully explore its world or mechanics. Most spells are only used once or twice, and a longer game may have had room for more challenging puzzles.
The game also ends on a cliffhanger. Loom was originally planned to be a first part of a trilogy, but the two sequels never came to fruition. Still, if the worst thing you can stay about a game is that there isn’t more of it, it must be doing something right.
Like most LucasArts games of the era, there are several different versions of Loom out there: a low-res floppy disk version and two different CD versions for DOS and the obscure FM-Towns. I recommend playing the FM-Towns version (which can be found easily online and played with the ScummVM emulator). While the DOS version is the only one with voice acting, dialogue had to be abridged and most music and sound effects were completely removed in order to fit everything on the disc. The DOS version also censors some violence found on the FM-Towns release.
The DOS version of Loom can be purchased on Steam for $5.99. As far as I know, the other versions aren’t currently available legally. Regardless of how you play it, Loom is an engaging and unique journey with plenty to offer both longtime point-and-click fans and people checking out the genre for the first time.
Highly recommended
