what an addicting game tbh
really cool art style and concept
but i have some critics
1- the grind is really tough
some of the essential building that you have to build will cost you 4-5 hours of grind
2-the gap of difficulty between the first and the 2nd boss is insane
like i killed the first boss on my 1st attempt
the 2nd took me 9-14 try to kill him
other then that this game is really really really cool

Loop Hero does things that I like but overall doesn't do enough to keep me interested for the playtime it seems to expect. Loop Hero is strange in that it's an idle game that wants to be an base-building, deck-building, tower defense roguelite RPG. (Yes, those are all in the game.) You do missions for the purpose of grinding base-building materials. Building things in your base provides new tiles to put in your deck, new character class options, things like that. The "deckbuilding" works in the sense that across a standard run you draw tiles that you can place to affect that given loop's terrain, such as villages that provide healing (but spawn bandits), mountains that increase your max HP as you place them down in the distance, things that increase your walk speed while you're near them, etc. There's some strategy here in terms of whether you want to prioritize tiles that put you in danger for better equipment or whether you'd prefer things that give more materials, but I personally found myself using one setup on every run without much issue, only changing it when I get new things to play with. With all this tile placement and equipment upgrading while in a run, Loop Hero expects you to provide player input reasonably often, and not only that, but it often requires at least some semblance of thought in terms of positioning of tiles and even more thought in terms of choosing between two pieces of equipment of the same rough value when they provide different passive bonuses. In this regard I'd say it does a poor job at actually being an idle game, because you really can't go for more than a few seconds without the game needing your input for something. The game does have settings for automatic pauses, so it's not merciless in this regard. However, this stream of choices is the only real gameplay that occurs during the loop, making it still rather dull to play if you don't have anything else going on. Full disclosure, idle games aren't usually my cup of tea anyways, so I could be off base. I got this for free of Epic and just decided to check it out, and since I had a boring class this semester, this game ended up being played for about 2 hours a week for a couple months, which is more time than I would've given it outside of this circumstances. The only reason I'm considering this game finished (dropped) is that the class is out and I don't see myself returning to this now that I'm likely able to use my time on engaging things.
And honestly, despite all my words about how this game is a messy conglomeration of genres that doesn't know what it wants to be, it's still playable and fun. The sole issue I have with the game is that it's way too grindy. For a game with gameplay as simple-yet-demanding as this, it goes on for an extremely long time. Grinding materials takes forever even when you're not dying in runs, and if you are dying in runs, it just takes even longer because the game severely punishes you for dying or even for retreating while not at your campfire (the loop point). The simplicity of the gameplay means that you end up doing the exact same activity for a very long period of time, which would be fine if this was just something that runs in your background for you to check in on now and then, but since it requires continuous engagement to play this game, it just feels like you're doing busywork for about 30-40 hours. Great if, for example, you have an extremely boring remote job where you need to look awake but do barely any actual work, but otherwise I would consider something that's either more idle or more engaging.

I don't get it.
It's 'what if we took everything interesting about rogue-likes away and left just the repetition' the game.
What was supposed to make it fun after the first three runs or so? The mechanics and story where intriguing but it just loses all my interest by the very fact it feels like it's built for you to repeat the same stuff with little to show for it. I don't really feel like I get better at the game, and if I fail it doesn't feel like I even know what I could've done better, plus I have no desire to jump back into the same map again with nothing that really keeps it engaging.

It could've been a nice podcast-game or such but it actually does require you to pay attention to it if you want to do well, so it doesn't work that way either.

I'm sure this is just a case of me already disliking the rogue-like format thus the game just isn't for me, but it's like they took the worst parts of that formula and made a game around it. I'm out of the loop on this one.

I did not have many expectations for this game, and the ones I did have were not very high. Specifically, I thought it would be a slog of a grind-fest. While there are some elements that are a little bit of a slog, they were minor relatively to what ended up being some interesting gameplay. As you get into the game, each round you have to choose which buildings and features will appear that you can use to populate a destroyed world. These buildings will determine the enemies you fight, how many you fight at once, and which rewards you get. You never have to place a given card, but you need to place at least some cards to 1) fight more enemies to get better loot and increase player level and 2) place enough tiles to summon the boss of the round. The game becomes a balancing act of placing enough tiles to increase your power in preparation for the boss, but not too many tiles that you become overwhelmed by enemies. There is also some meta-progression where you reclaim a town from the void that has swallowed up the world at the beginning of the game.

There is more to get out of this game, and I will likely pick it up and put it down with some regularity. It is a game that is good for filling in the gaps of the day should you so desire. Such a use is fitting since it is about filling the gaps of a desolated world.