Parents' Guide to Loop Hero

If there was ever a case for the adage of "Don't judge a book by its cover," this is it. Loop Hero looks like a lost game discovered on an old 5 1/4" floppy disk stuck in the drive of a PC that was hermetically sealed in a time capsule somewhere around the mid-1980s. That's not meant to invoke any warm feelings of nostalgia either. It's a specific design choice that's difficult to look past that can make the game almost painful to play at first. Then again, you're not actually doing much in terms of playing at first anyway. The bulk of Loop Hero's gameplay is what's termed an "idle game." Instead of issuing commands and controlling characters' actions in combat, exploration, etc., you just sort of sit back and let the game play itself.

On the surface, it doesn't seem like Loop Hero has much of anything to offer. But if you can manage to look past its initial impressions, what you'll find underneath is a surprisingly deep, charming, and addictive experience. It's true that the early parts of the game feel like a grinding testament to your patience. Once you start placing terrain and buildings, learning how these various puzzle pieces interact with one another and the loop as a whole, that's when the game picks up momentum. Before long, you find yourself fully invested in a continuous cycle of strategic inventory management, environmental tweaks, and general experimentation that's hard to put down.