Loop Hero review: An unexpected addiction on Nintendo Switch

Title: Loop Hero
Developer: Four Quarters
Publisher: Devolver Digital
Platforms: Nintendo Switch (reviewed on)
Release Date: December 9, 2021

Loop Hero is a game I never expected to get into. Simple graphics flitting in quality between the Atari 2600 and the Nintendo Entertainment System, procedurally generated maps, card-based events, non-interactive battles — it was a combination of trends in gaming I’m not normally there for. But still, I was curious how these things interconnected, and I’m here right now to tell you I’m happy I did.

Loop Hero is an endless RPG with old-school aesthetics developed by Russian studio Four Quarters and published by Devolver Digital. In this game, you play as a nameless brave hero who’s found that everything is just gone. I don’t mean just belongings and home. I’m talking the world, sky included. It’s a dark void where they can barely see more than a few feet away.

The hero encounters a slime and upon defeating it gets a bit of memory back from the world before the literal blackout. This memory comes in the form of a card, allowing the hero to place that memory somewhere, turning the blank road ahead into a grassy glade. Thus starts your journey.

It’s a pretty simple story that lends itself to literally letting your mind (and controller) fill in the plot holes with full-on plots of land. You eventually meet characters, unlock new abilities, and occasionally juggle with the fact that as you restore the world you’re also bringing the bad along with the good.

It’s the gameplay loop that truly got me, though. It’s a ridiculously satisfying grind that left me 100% addicted.

You start the game as a basic warrior but unlock additional classes over time, each with their own perks and attack style. You then head out on an expedition wherein a looped path is randomly drawn out on your screen with a simple path and the occasional slime. As you make your way around the loop, fighting slimes will bring back memories of things like glades and cemeteries and mountains. These come as cards that you place on the map.

Everything has a purpose. A background field of grass in the distance may seem boring but for every square of grass, you get 2HP back when you complete a loop, or 3HP if you place it near rocks or mountains. The rocks and mountains, increase your max HP. And when placed in a 3×3 grid of just those, they become a large mountain which not only gives you a huge health boost but also spawns harpies every so often that drop better loot. Every time you go around the loop you unlock more things from fighting different enemies and the enemy level rises. Luckily your stats also rise as you equip better loot. So while your loop might start off like this:

After the end of my fifth loop it looked like this:

My path of nothingness and slimes was now filled with ruins inhabited by fireworms, villages that grant small quests, cornfields that hide murderous scarecrows, and a wooded area that features deadly rats, sentient vines, and the occasional undead giant.

That leads to the next bit of the game. You decide when you want to leave. The main part of the expeditions is to gather supplies that you can use to rebuild your survivor’s camp and build on new resources like kitchens and smithies. You can leave at any point and take 30 percent of your gathered resources with you. Or if you leave from your initial campfire — if you’re thinking of it as a board game, it’s the start square — you get to bring back 100 percent of your gathered materials. So it becomes a gamble of whether or not you think you can survive long enough to get back to the campfire and whether or not you think you can go another round, knowing that the next loop will be harder.

Also, bear in mind you don’t keep weapons, armors, and other items you equip, so next time you start out you have practically nothing. The new loop is back to being a bare path with slimes and the cycle starts anew.

And yet, with all this going on, there’s a sense of progression as you build up your camp and unlock new cards for your deck. Maybe you want to take out the ability for enemies to occasionally drop a card that allows you to place a vampire’s mansion on your board and replace it with the ability to add a blood grove, which sends out vines that kill anything who’s health dips below 15 percent . It’s up to you.

Loop Hero is this strange anomaly in which a studio has taken some of the most basic ingredients and prepared them in a way that creates a masterful recipe. This game went from something I was honestly ready to not get into to something that has caused me to neglect my Animal Crossing town for a few days on end.

My only complaint is that with the game having such a bare-bones graphic style, I would have loved to see more visual changes in the battle screens and such. Give me the option to graphically pick what color I want the groves and towns to be. Or let me customize my hero a little bit. This game is endless and I’d like to add a bit more personality. But, honestly, that’s such a minor gripe compared to how satisfying the game is.

Loop Hero (Nintendo Switch) Score: 9/10

While your first glance at Loop Hero will reveal what appears to be a barebones game, you’ll soon discover it is a very complex structure that’s simple to learn and an absolute blast to try and master. If you’re looking for a good time killer on your Switch, I can’t think of a better pick up and play than Loop Hero.

A copy of this game was provided to App Trigger for the purpose of this review. All scores are ranked out of 10, with .5 increments. Click here to learn more about our Review Policy.