Once in a while, I will come across a game that exists beyond the standard gameplay genres already defined. They have the potential to be incredible experiences that hold me for hours, the only thing that could pull me away being some important task (like eating).
Loop Hero met that potential, in the beginning. Its genre is impossible to define. It’s a card/deck builder, but also an idle game, but actually not an idle game since constant attention is required. Gameplay wise, it's truly unique. The story aspect was also given attention. I was genuinely intrigued by the storyline and where it was going.
I never did satiate that curiosity, as I quit midway. Loop Hero suffers from being too long in the worst way possible – grinding. As such, it's hard for me to think of who would enjoy the entire game. Not to say that it's bad, but who would want to sit through all that grinding? Maybe that’s you, only you can say.

𝐒𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲
You play as the Hero (probably) trying to restore and save the world after the Lich decided to pretty much annihilate all of it, including all memories. This can be achieved by simply walking in circles. As I said, it is a fairly interesting story, with a unique setting. Saving the world is nothing new, but restoring it from almost nothing, that I haven’t seen before. There is a variety of characters, some of which you recruit, others you fight.
Overall, it gives meaning to your actions and it ties into the gameplay quite well. The game would be worse without it.

𝐌𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐠𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲
Now that I think about it, I can throw rouge-lite and RTS into the list of genres this game almost is.
You have your character, the Hero, however you don’t control him. They simply walk endlessly in circles on a road, stopping every cycle at a camp to heal. Why? Because on this road monsters spawn. That’s a good thing since that’s when the actual gameplay begins. When the Hero slays a monster, you get a card or equipment.
The equipment is pretty straightforward. If it's better than what your character already has, then you switch it. There is some strategy when it comes to special abilities some weapons and armour have. The cards are where the real strategy is. They can be a wide range of things – meadows, mountains, vampire mansions, spider nests, and so on. These buildings and terrain can be placed either next to the road, or somewhere in the oblivion. Each one serves a different function, like the mountain gives more HP or the vampire mansion that spawns vampires on the road.
All of this creates a fascinating game of balance. You have to put more monsters on the road so that you can get more loot. Loot, which will prepare you for when the enemies become more powerful. However, too many monsters will mean your character loses more health than they can gain back.
The grind comes from the other aspect of Loop Hero, the camp. There, everything you’ve put down is converted into materials, used to upgrade the camp. These upgrades give you more cards and progress the story. Unfortunately, the amount needed at one point becomes too much. It ends up requiring multiple runs, that turn out practically identical, to make any meaningful progress.
In conclusion, I wish this game was shorter.

𝐆𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐬/𝐀𝐫𝐭𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐞
Loop Hero employs a simplistic 2D pixel artstyle. I think it works well enough to convey what has to be conveyed. The character portraits especially have given quite a lot of detail.
The sound effects have to be given praise – they fit very well into the pixel artstyle of the rest of the game.

𝐀𝐭𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐩𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞/𝐈𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧
Even as simplistic as the presentation is, there is still some atmosphere.
The feel it gives off reminds me of those old consoles, like GBA. Something you would find on there.

𝐒𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐤
I heard the ost being described as what you would hear in Castlevania. While I haven’t played any of them, I can definitely imagine it, given the retro and almost 8-bit nature of the music. That is to say, it fits with the theme of the game and I think even on its own it's damn good.
My favourite part is “Entropic Rhapsody”.

𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐓𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬
Did you know, most of the titles of the various songs in the ost are references to JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.

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.

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

It's an all good mix bag game experience. I really enjoy playing it.

A little bit of deck building, a hint of rogue like, a good amount of strategy and a drop of mystery. The story and the lore of the game hooked me as the gameplay and challenge as. I'm fond of the concept to be out of direct action and instigate it instead.

Although the general game design is plain like, the charming pixel art, the astonishing chiptune soundtrack and the humoristic dialogue highly raise the gameplay experience by providing a peculiar atmosphere. The game is rather well balanced but need you to be perseverant like all rogue like. There is also a good replayability if you consider different possibility of decks and the three playable characters.

Definetely the kind of indie game that I like : excellent concept, a lot of charm and well done executed.

NOTE: only played the demo

fun little idle game! i love the setting, it has an okay story, i like the gameplay concept, and it's engaging enough to keep me occupied while i listen to audiobooks/lectures - but it's never distracting that i can't pay attention

i couldn't see an option to have the game play with the window out of focus, though, which kinda brings it down a lot.

will be buying it for sure!

(Reseña sacada de mi cuenta de Steam: APolChrome)

Loop Hero es increíble. No entiendo como ha llegado a engancharme tanto, aun frustrándome a veces. Es un rogue-lite muy distinto a lo habitual, por lo que da para hablar mucho y muy bien del juego. Tras 23 horas de juego, creo que ya puedo formar una opinión del juego extensa. Empecemos.

Loop Hero nos propone runs en las que el personaje se mueve y combate solo mientras va por un mapa dando vueltas, ¿qué haces tú? te estarás preguntando. Nosotros nos encargaremos de ir llenando el mapa con cartas que nos dan los enemigos. Estas van desde lugares donde salen enemigos (que se ponen en el propio mapa) hasta cartas que se ponen en las afueras que generan efectos en el propio mapa. La variedad del juego es descomunal. Cada run es completamente distinta a la anterior y las posibilidades son infinitas. Pero con lo que te he dicho, sería tan fácil como no poner cartas. Pues NO. Porque el juego te obliga a ponerlas. En cada run (hay 4 tipos de expedición) hay un boss, y para llegar a él, tienes que poner cartas. Los bosses se pueden hacer un poco difíciles, pero vencerlos da una satisfacción que pocos bosses me han dado.

El campamento me parece muy interesante. Básicamente, es el hub principal que lo camuflan con lore y en el que consigues todo lo que necesitas para las runs. Los edificios que hay son muchísimos y algunos requieren de un grindeo muy loco, pero alcanzable sin sacrificar tu vida. Además, los NPCs que hay por ahí son bastante carismáticos y los diálogos se sienten muy únicos. Con algunos edificios se desbloquean las distintas clases que son 3: guerrero (la primera de todas), pícaro y nigromante. Esto añade un componente de estrategia, porque (sumado a las cartas doradas, que dan distintos efectos a la run), puedes crear tus propias tácticas para cada tipo de expedición en concreto, porque hay veces en las que te viene mejor una clase que otra o una carta dorada que otra.

Audiovisualmente, está bastante bien. El juego, aun siendo pixel art, es bastante bonito sobre todo en el diseño de personajes y enemigos y cuenta con una paleta de colores oscura en la mayoría. Sí que la OST no me ha terminado de llegar, pero está lejos de ser mala.

Narrativamente, es bueno, sobre todo en cómo consigues información. Puedes conseguir información construyendo edificios o (la mejor) derrotando jefes, que te darán información sobre el bucle al que está sometido el mundo.

Resumiendo, Loop Hero ha sido una gran sorpresa y me ha encantado. A poco que te guste el género de los rogue-lites, deberías jugarlo y ver la premisa tan curiosa y buena que ofrece. Recomendadísimo

It was an interesting game that was fun and challenging initially, but once I had "figured it out," it turned into somewhat of a chore. Don't get me wrong, the gameplay was very addicting, but I didn't really get a sense of fulfillment from playing, more so just a means to pass time. My biggest gripe was that the game failed to explain quite a few mechanics and I just had to find out about them in passing or by looking them up. Which for some games is the fun part, but for this game it didn't really feel that way. The characters were cute and quirky, but the story was rather lackluster and not very compelling. I probably put a lot more time into the game than was warranted, just because I wanted to be a completionist and fully upgrade my village as well as fill out the encyclopedia. Beating the final boss took about ~14 hours, the remainder of my 30 hours in the game were spent either afk or farming materials to achieve my aforementioned goals.