![]() ![]() In Loop Hero, you don’t unlock things per se, but rather discover interactions between terrains that will create new mechanics when combined through experimentation. One of the hallmarks of legacy games is how they give you different metagoals that will unlock new game mechanics for future playthroughs. Speaking of your choices, Loop Hero also borrows from legacy-style games to slowly increase your toolbox of interactions, though with a very video gamey touch. What was once a blank canvas is now a big world marked by your choices. ![]() This system also makes for an impressive visual that shows the very large impact that you had on the world. This forces you to have a plan for your terrain placement in Loop Hero to maximize the good effects – and sometimes the bad ones if you need to get a specific outcome. These mechanics are directly ripped from placement games like Carcassonne, Kingdom Builder, and Deus, where you get points or other resources based on terrain or settlement placement. What does invite comparisons is the act of laying down a terrain tile, many of which have effects that check to see what other tiles are adjacent to it. Loop Hero already breaks the mold for this one reason, as there’s no clear analog to tabletop games for this mechanic. The way you get the cards mean you’re not really building a deck, but rather a pool of drops that you can get from defeating enemies. These cards facilitate the rebuilding of the world as they change a tile into something new, with different effects on you, the enemies, and the world itself. During your trek, enemies will spawn on tiles at variable rates, which will drop either better gear for your hero or terrain cards that you can play. This continues until you either die or retreat back to camp. Every run starts with the titular hero as he walks on a barren road that loops back to the beginning. Loop Hero is a game about building the world around you. Just look at Loop Hero as an example of what’s possible when you look outside of deckbuilding for how you can build a game off of tabletop mechanics, because while Loop Hero has the slightest whiff of deckbuilding in it, that’s the least interesting tabletop-related thing about the game. But tabletop games have so much more to offer in terms of inspiration than deckbuilders, an untapped source of reference for amazing games that don’t exist yet. The idea that you build a deck on the fly as you progress through a gauntlet of foes and traps gets a lot of traction and representation in successful games like Slay the Spire, Nowhere Prophet, and Monster Train. We’ve seen a renaissance of video games inspired by tabletop games, though with a caveat: Most of them are based on the deckbuilder genre. If you like what you read, consider supporting me here.
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