I'm Done Playing: Loop Hero

Breaking the Cycle

You’re stuck in a rut. You do the same thing, day after day, and nothing changes. You’d like to change, make your life more interesting, but it seems difficult. After all, there’s monsters to slay and treasure to gather. So you sigh, and with the breaking of a new day, you lace up your gloves, grab your sword, and trudge along.

I’m done playing Loop Hero.

What is this?

When I was in high school, there was a game called ProgressQuest. It was a satire on RPGs–an RPG that played itself. You’d progress through dungeons, acquire better healing potions and items, fight tougher monsters, etc. The joke was that the game played itself. Everything progressed automatically–there was no possible input from the player. The “statement” was relatively clear: Isn’t all of this just pointless? Video games are set up to gently swaddle the player down the progression river, making sure they continually progress at the perfect pace, with little to no decision making on the player’s part, just mechanical input.

Loop Hero is ProgressQuest with a tiny bit more interaction, and no self-awareness. Your character runs around a circular map, automatically fighting monsters and acquiring gear. You place tiles on the map that spawn different enemies, or provide different buffs or debuffs, with the objective of leveling your hero up enough to fight the final boss, at which point you unlock a new final boss, and the cycle continues.

Is it good?
No, not really. I can’t really figure out why anyone would like this game. It’s by and large completely automated, and the choices you do have don't affect much. The tactics are limited to “place this tile near this other tile and it gets a buff” which isn’t strategic so much as it is similar to the game for toddlers where you put the circular block in the circular hole. It’s ProgressQuest, but you have to do some chores in between.

Yeah, but isn’t that the point of ProgressQuest? That it describes every video game, when you get right down to it?

Yes, but ProgressQuest and Loop Hero aren’t fun, and other video games are. There’s the famous Sid Meier quote that describes a video game as “a series of interesting decisions,” and that holds true here. Yes, maybe you’re simply going down a progression river, but if the river branches enough, you get to feel like you have control over what you see, and how the journey unfolds. In Loop Hero, you just paddle straight, and eventually you’ll see the end.

Sure, but that’s also true of linear shooters like Call of Duty or Half Life.

Yes, but those games are carried by interesting gameplay. It’s fun to shoot terrorists or space aliens. Think of the winding highways in California vs. the straight interstates of Iowa. The scenery and type of the line do make a difference.

I dunno. Loop Hero seems perfectly fine to me. I think you might just be getting tired of video games.

You’re right about that. With the copious amounts of free time I now have, I’ve spent more time than ever in virtual worlds, and they’ve increasingly felt hollow. “Why am I doing this?” I ask myself, as I place yet another tile down on my hero’s loop. “What’s the point of it all?”

To be sure, you can ask that question of most things in life, and, if it’s not your job, the point ultimately boils down to “It makes life more enjoyable to live.” And that’s where video games have been falling short for me. When I was young, these games provided windows into alternate worlds that felt full of possibility. What would it be like to be able to fly?, asked Just Cause 2. What’s the best way to destroy a building with C4?, asked Red Faction: Guerilla. What would the nuclear wasteland be like?, asked Fallout: New Vegas? And there’s still some games that scratch that itch. Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader asked “what would it be like to live in the 40k universe?,” which turned out to be fun to answer.

But I’m asking different questions now that I’m 30 instead of 16, and I’ve seen a lot of the answers already. Games about mindless progression are much less interesting. Once you’ve figured out how a fish swims, you realize that most fish swim the same way. There’s just not that much left on offer.

Sounds like you should stop playing so many video games.

Believe me, I agree. One alternate solution, though, is to seek out video games that ask better questions than Loop Hero. Dance of Cards is a game that asks “what if poker had power ups and special moves?” which is still interesting to me. And things like the IFComp are full of games asking the same questions about the human condition that good literary fiction does. There’s good art out there in the video game space, I just haven't been playing much of it recently.

Would Loop Hero be fun to play drunk?
Probably, honestly. There’s still a sense of progression, and if I was blitzed enough putting a mountain next to eight other mountains to get a combo would probably feel like an interesting development. Sober, though, it’s just sort of sad.

Does Loop Hero pass the Bechdel test?
Yes, if you assume the androgynous hero is a woman (as always).