Loop Hero -- All the stars go out

 Welcome to Loop Hero . . . 

Goodbye Stars!

I'm reminded of some lyrics from the 70's band, Bread. 

If the world should stop revolving spinning slowly down to die,
I'd spend the end with you.
And when the world was through,
Then one by one the stars would all go out,
Then you and I would simply fly away

Except we don't fly away . . . what we do instead is travel an infinite loop where monsters spawn endlessly and we attempt to rebuild the world and equip ourselves with super cool gear so we can kill a lich.  

So that's what made the stars all go out . . .

Loop Hero is a pretty fun game with that good, old school aesthetic. I'm no stranger to the idle combat genre, but I have to say that this is the most ACTIVE idle game I've ever played. It could be I just haven't got to the part where I can walk away from the computer yet, but as you travel the loop over and over and defeat more and more monsters, the game naturally spits out cards, which you use to rebuild the map, and gear, which you use to upgrade your hero.

As this happens, you're earning resources.  Once you pull your hero out of the combat loop or are forced out of the loop by death, you take a portion of those resources back to town. The size of that portion depends on where and how you retreat.  

Can we build it? No we can't!

As you build new buildings for your town and place them down, you start to get new personalities in your town like this crazy, old herbalist lady. These new buildings start benefiting your play by providing you advantages when you're running the loop.

She's more like a sweet old lady . . . but something about those eyes says "sinister" to me.

After running the loop a bunch, you will eventually (and I'm not exactly sure on the particulars of how this happens) "level up" in a sense and unlock a temporary buff. This is presented to you in kind of what I call "an archero" style, where you are given a choice of three buffs and you choose one of them. Some buffs affect combat in interesting ways, or some affect resource collection.

Then after some time of circling and building up your character and map, BAM! You summon the first boss of the first map. To be honest, I'm not sure what it is that caused me to summon the boss. I simply had tipped over some threshold and put down enough cards that he came back to fight.

Au contraire squelette!

The lich is no pushover the first time you encounter him. One of my three deaths in game came from this guy.  Anyway, after defeating the lich you're then presented with the option to keep looping and restoring the map or heading home with no resource loss. You also unlock a new class (because this whole time you've been traveling the loop with a warrior) and unlock a new chapter in the story where things get much more difficult.

The most I've ever filled my map

I'm 5+ hours in on Loop Hero and really enjoying it.  If I was to make a guess of where I am in game progression, I'd say I was maybe a third to a fourth of the way through? I say that based on the steam achievements I've earned thus far and the space for adding more chapters on the home screen.  It'd be nice if I was wrong because this is a game I could put a lot of hours on.  It's super easy to play and well worth the $15 I paid for it.

Thanks to Tipa from Chasing Dings and Team Spode for the great game suggestion! It's like she knows me and the games I like to play very well! I guess playing together for multiple years does that to ya. ;)

Happy Dueling!