Loop Hero

In Loop Hero, you play the role of some mysterious hero who is trying to piece back together a planet from his own memory fragments after a floating lich destroyed the planet.

The game has two modes: an expedition mode where you wander along an endless loop accumulating resources, and a base-building mode where you build up your base to improve your ability to succeed in the expeditions.

I played for about 14 hours before I got bored. Then I tried again and beat the game this time, taking a total of about 36 hours.

THE GOOD:

• The story and gameplay is actually pretty compelling all the way to the conclusion. I initially got bored because I was trying to safely farm more resources instead of pushing forward to the next chapter.
• As you walk the loop during an expedition, you receive cards that you can play to add scenery, monsters, and modifications to the loop you are walking in. Doing so might enhance your character, or the monsters might drop more powerful loot. There's some strategy involved regarding which cards you place where and when.
• There are 3 playable character classes and each has many viable winning strategies.
• Perhaps the most interesting part of the game is finding surprising combinations in how you place the cards (for example, I managed to create a mountain by placing stones in a 3x3 grid or fill a village with ghouls by putting a vampire mansion next to it).
• The music is awesome!

THE BAD:

• Due to the unique strategy elements of the game and the small differences between them it can be tough to understand why you're losing and what you can do to fix your strategy.
• While the game does have strategy, the consequences of your choices usually only make a tiny incremental difference. Like, do I pick the item with +6% vampirism (life steal) and +6% counter (chance of a counter-attack on hit), or do I pick the one with +7% vampirism and +1.2 regeneration per second? Or you might spend a lot of effort figuring out good card and item synergies that might grant you a 5% boost. Few of your choices feel very impactful.
• Many creatures never have a conversation with you (such as the watchers).
• The grind is real—very real. The game loop is a literal loop, where you travel the same path over and over fighting monsters over and over. You can have some impact on what you encounter, and there is some variety in the cards, items, monsters, and character classes, but it feels pretty repetitive pretty quickly. You basically just run that loop over and over to get the resources to make a tiny change to your camp, and then you go back out and do it again—starting from zero.
• At first, I didn't like that combat in the game is automated. I quickly realized that it's absolutely necessary, because your character is constantly fighting and it would be even more tedious to actually fight the battles manually.
• The game's mechanics are not really explained. I had to look up most things online (like what do "counter" or "skeleton level" do?), which always leads to the risk of spoilers.

THE UGLY:

• While the pixel graphics are generally pretty good, the textures for the home base are awful. It just looks like a random smattering of pixels everywhere. It's virtually impossible to recognize anything in that mess.
• Once the loop has a lot of stuff on it, it can be really tough to spot your character. You can enable a feature to make your hero easier to spot, but all this feature does is add an animated arrow above the icon. I feel like this is some sort of insult or joke.