Game Design Breakdown: Loop Hero
Loop Hero’s addicting automation, construction, and resource-management features help it become more than just a card-based roguelike.
Loop Hero got released on March 4. Sold over 500,000 copies within seven days after the release and stayed in the Steam Top 10 Sales for three weeks. Without a doubt, a fantastic launch with a crowd of positive reviews! What is Loop Hero, and why is it exceptionally good?
Gameplay First, Story Later
Loop Hero’s story takes place within a world erased by a big bad lich. Everything is gone, even the memories of what the world once looked like. However, an anonymous hero, a campsite, and a looping road have miraculously survived.
Players can’t directly control the hero, but they get to use various tile cards such as mountains, villages, or forests to design the looping road which the hero must travel.
These cards act like “memories.” Each mountain, forest, and village tile is a place that the hero suddenly recalls existing when their cards are used.
Most of the tiles spawn monsters that the hero must defeat to gain equipment or resources. This means players have ultimate control over the rewards AND the challenges.
After a certain number of cards have been used the big bad boss appears and the hero fights it. The outcome of the fight entirely depends on how hard or easy the player has been on the hero. Slowly, players find themselves constructing a hero, his journey and the world.
Too much challenge or hardship may tire your hero. However, no challenge at all may lead to low-level equipment and experience, leading the hero to be weak in the final boss fight.
The story has been carefully crafted with the core game in mind. They almost seem inseparable. As a result, each game mechanic is memorable and has a meaningful background to it, helping the game become accessible and easier to pick up.
Core Game
The premise of the core is simple:
- Use cards to design the world, battles, and obstacles.
- Watch as your hero overcomes obstacles and acquires loot.
- Strengthen your hero with good gear and stats.
- Repeat until you think the time is right to face the boss.
The hero starts traversing the looping path from a campsite only to end up back at it. Every time it is passed, a new loop starts and increases the Loop Counter by 1, like laps and race tracks.
More loops mean higher-level equipment but more brutal monsters. Staying more than necessary in a run often results in the hero’s death.
Loop Counter creates pressure on players, forcing them to take exciting risks while they race against time. They also act as session-stoppers, players have no control over it. Staying too much in the loop usually results in death since there is no limit to the loop levels.
Every used card and tile also slowly fills up the Map Completion Gauge (Bar with the Skull on top-left). After enough tiles are available on the map and the gauge is full, the campsite is replaced with that chapter’s boss.
As a result, players can customize their world however they want until the big battle. The gauge also makes it possible to amass tiles early for an earlier boss fight or hold onto tiles for a much later one, giving players the choice of when to fight the boss.
One More Loop
Ideally, players are expected to exit a run by defeating the boss. However, should the hero become overwhelmed, players can also retreat to the campsite before a new loop to take non-equipment resources with them while ending their run.
Ability to retreat constantly leaves players between:
- Take on the next loop with the risk of dying and losing most resources. But get a chance to defeat the boss and gain more resources.
- Or escape from the current run to take all of the resources to become stronger through meta-game. Get a better chance at beating the boss later.
This “commit or retreat” method deceptively increases the necessary grind for meaningful progress while making every decision important. After all, facing trade-offs is an essential component of any successful roguelike. It is also hard to deny the thrills of gambling that these types of high risk = high reward situations induce.
The best part of the “retreat” option is that players will blame the game less if they lose after not taking it, which is a somewhat helpful experience in roguelikes, where character-deaths are often encountered.
It is also possible to stay in the loop even after defeating the boss. However, the Loop Counter will still increase regardless of the victory. If players choose to stay, they can take more risks to grind more resources and retreat later whenever they want. It also helps players enjoy their all-powerful hero a little longer because a boss-defeating build is quite a thrilling power-fantasy.
Fit for Battle
Traversed paths and successful monster fights can provide tile cards or equipment. Each piece of equipment has different effects or passives.
Any equipped armor or weapon can’t be taken off, and they can only be replaced and destroyed by another piece of gear, leading to some critical decision-making on the players’ part.
Rare equipment’s stats are split between different effects. For example;
- A common helmet can provide 20% attack speed but a rare helmet can provide 10% attack speed and 10% vampirism.
In short, rare equipment does not always mean better, encouraging players to think twice before ignoring common items. This feature helps equipment of any rarity scale fairly well within a session. It also keeps the equipment variety and depth high throughout it.
Idle Fighting
Some tiles spawn monsters, while most others serve as stat boosts or utility for the run duration.
Monsters block the hero’s path and must be defeated. All battles automatically resolve without direct inputs. The only way to impact an ongoing battle is to replace or equip gear. This mostly optional interaction provides some player agency during a fight while creating depth with equipment swaps according to how the action unfolds.
Monster Progression
Each monster type starts with no abilities, but they can gain up to three depending on how much the player has progressed in the story.
For example, ghouls gain the “Slow” passive-ability in the final chapter. “Slow” passive-ability makes ghouls’ attack interruptible, dealing damage to ghouls can interrupt their attack, making attack speed and area-damage equipment more valuable for the hero in the final chapter.
In short, as the story progresses, all enemies also become more interesting to deal with, they just receive unique passives that encourages players to get more creative. Perfect fit for a deck and world building game.
The Campsite
The campsite serves as an out-of-session progression and a central hub between runs. After a run, the resources that have been collected from the tiles, monsters, and excess equipment are brought back to be used for building and upgrading structures.
The camp upgrades and structures are based upon a “tech-tree” without long specialized branching paths or risky trade-offs so that players can explore all of them in any order they like. Each building requires specific resources. If a building’s resource requirements are met, players can select an empty tile to construct it.
Some buildings provide better bonuses according to their placement and surroundings, similar to how the tiles function during runs, thus making campsite construction stay consistent with the world building in a run.
Building Variety & Crafting
The campsite also introduces a simple crafting mechanic, in which players can use resources to create random items with different effects. The power of these items is pretty limited, but their effects can stack. Players are encouraged to improve their camp to hold more of these items to make some meaningful difference in their playthrough.
There are four types of items: Furniture, Tools, Food & Jewelry. There is a limit to how many items you can take with you for each type. Specific structures increase a particular item type’s limit, making structure variety within camp important. For example, constructing and upgrading Houses increase Furniture slots a lot more than upgrading Field Kitchens.
Deck-building
Cards are categorized into five types; Road, Roadside, Landspace, Special and Golden.
Road and roadside cards usually spawn monsters and resources, while the rest provide stat bonuses such as hp or attack speed for the hero. This subtle balance ensures enemy encounters and hero-building progress in parallel.
Each card type has a minimum and max space in a deck. These limitations push players to explore card synergies to compensate for cards they are not able to include, resulting in players trying to find different solutions to specific challenges. After all, providing alternative ways to overcome obstacles is a crucial ingredient in many roguelikes.
Card & Tile Synergy
Card synergies and their exploration are further enhanced by using specific tiles next to each other, resulting in transforming one or both of them.
For example, placing a vampire mansion next to a village tile transforms that tile into a ransacked village filled with strong monsters. However, after a few loops, the ransacked village transforms into a prosperous village (Count’s Lands), which can better support the hero than an ordinary village.
Card Usage & Limit
There is no limit to how much a card can be used in the same run. Instead, they bring unique challenges in accordance to how much they have been used.
For example, a Forest Card creates a Forest Tile that increases Attack Speed. For every 10 Forest Tiles, monsters with “100% Counterstrike Chance” (striking back after taking a hit) start to spawn. This particular rule results in players’ attack speed being used against them.
Another good example is the Village Card. Villages provide quests with items as their rewards. Every few placed Village tile also serves as a spawn point for bandits with a slight chance to destroy any items. This unique challenge makes capitalizing too much on Villages risky for equipment.
Challenges or obstacles created through excessive card usages help keep tabs on card power while gently pushing players keep a balance between the world and the hero.
There are no weak or powerful cards since each card has a challenge tied to it. Thus, no energy or mana system is needed to keep card power in check. A great example of keeping difficulty fun and balanced without having to limit players’ power fantasy.
Classes
In addition to deck and card limitations, three playable classes further increase the deck-building options for players to overcome their foes.
Warrior gains damage boost for each second of the fight; thus, cards that increase durability are most effective.
Rogue can’t acquire equipment but gains a trophy for every kill. Then trophies are traded for weapons & armor after a loop is completed; thus, lethality is the key here. If Rogue has more trophies than the inventory space, which occurs often, this results in excess equipment acquired from the trade to be converted into resources. “Trophy” ability makes Rogue an excellent pick for “resource” runs to become stronger through meta-game progression.
Necromancer summons skeletons with each attack, making attack speed boosting cards a good choice. The amount & power of skeletons relies on equipment.
Visible strengths within classes and unique equipment slots in each further propel players to find creative card and deck combinations to maximize that hero’s potential.
Character Traits and Levels
Each class can also level up and acquire passive abilities called “traits” that stay active until the end of a run.
Traits help players customize their characters according to the state of a run, unlike the card deck, which can only be constructed before a run. Because of that, most traits do not combine so well with what is in a deck. Instead, they correlate better with the state of the loop and equipment.
Traits help players change their strategies during a run, keeping each run unique and players on their toes.
In conclusion, customizable decks, transforming tiles, cards with specific challenges, traits, and classes create the bread & butter of the roguelike experience within Loop Hero. That is mastery over the game achieved with learning and self-improvement.
The Adventure Machine
I have personally found Loop Hero to feel like a construction and management simulation rather than an endless deck-building RPG.
There is something highly satisfactory about watching all your long-term predictions and trade-offs become a success in Loop Hero. Suppose players can strike a good balance between world difficulty and hero-power within a session. In that case, they will end up with a hero overcoming any obstacle without much player interference, like a well-optimized adventure machine. The feeling of “automation” that can be achieved with the hero and world optimization makes Loop Hero truly addictive and stand out from other roguelikes.
Overall, everything in Loop Hero clicks in exceptionally well with each other. The story, world-building, tile-laying, automation, resource management, town-building, deck-building, and auto-battling RPG components are all in tune. It is not easy to define Loop Hero’s exact genre.
Last Words & Origin Story
The vision behind the game was mostly established during a Ludum Dare game jam in 2019 with the theme “Start with nothing.” However, the developers of Loop Hero say that the idea was born before the game jam and mainly resulted from the team member Deceiver’s mental training on how to make idle games more engaging. I believe he has succeeded!
I highly recommend anyone to try this unique roguelike! If you are also interested in Loop Hero’s origins and how it came to be, I recommend listening to the interview here with its developer team, FourQuarters.
