The loop brings you back

There's a new batch of games hitting Xbox Game Pass this month, and they range from recursive loops to a world of blocks. Microsoft has confirmed games like Loop Hero, Minecraft Legends, and more are on their way to the Game Pass t?his month.

Some of these new entries aren't particularly surprises. Minecraft Legends is a collaboration between Mojang and Blackbird Interactive, so that Day One launch on the Game Pass makes sense. And while Ghostwire: Tokyo was a timed exclusive even after the purchase of Bethesda by Xbox, it's now coming  to those consoles and hitt??ing Game Pass.

Still, there are plenty of surprises and little gems in Game Pass this month too. Loop Hero is a great pick-up, and one I'd strongly recommend you check out ??if you haven't yet; it mixes concepts of auto-battling, idle games, city building, and more to make a very strange and interesting kind of RPG adventure.

There's also NHL 23 hitting on April 13 via EA Play, for all the Chel fans out there. Lastly, Iron Brigade arrives, a bit of an oddity in the development history of Double Fine. Still, if you've been watching the Double Fine Psychodyssey and wanted to dive deeper into the studio's catalog, Iron Brigade is an interesting part of it.

Here's the full lineup ??for this month??'s initial batch of games, as well as the games that are leaving soon on April 15.

Xbox Game Pass April 2023 arrivals

• Loop Hero (Console, PC) - Out today
• Iron Brigade (Cloud, console) - April 6
• Ghostwire: Tokyo (Cloud, console, PC) - April 12
• NHL 23 (Console via EA Play) - April 13
• Minecraft Legends (Cloud, console, PC) - April 18

Leaving Xbox Game Pass on April 15

• Life is Strange: True Colors (Cloud, console, PC)
• Moonglow Bay (Cloud, console, PC)
• Panzer Corps II (PC)
• Rainbow Six Extraction (Cloud, console, PC)
• The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk (Cloud, console, PC)
• The Long Dark (Cloud, console, PC)
• The Riftbreaker (Cloud, console, PC)

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First loop's free

If you are reading this today, December 20 of 2021, then you've got less than 24 hours to nab a free copy of one of the year's breakout indies. Loop Hero is today's free game on the Epic Games Store.

Epic's gaming platform and storefront is once again holding a free game giveaway, with deals rolling in and out pretty dang fast. Previous offerings have included the likes of Remnant: From The Ashes and Neon Abyss, and today's is a no-brainer.

Loop Hero, if you missed it the first time around, is a mixture of auto-battler, management sim, deckbuilding, and idle game concepts. Your hero journeys around a circular track, and you place objects in their path, with different terrain spawning new boons or challenging monsters to fight. Level them up, a?nd eventually fight the boss of the chapter, either emerging? victorious or falling back to camp, to build more long-term upgrades and ready up for another trek.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P58L0AVIEM

It's a pretty compelling roguelite with a lot to do. And as one of the year's surprise hits, Loop Hero is a steal at normal price and even better for the low, low price of free. Developer Four Quarters has been updated plenty throughout the year too, so you get to pick it up with the added speeds and mid-run saves.

Of course, if you want to spend some cash on Loop Hero, you can always pick it up for Nintendo Switch. Or just wait and buy it on Epic, it's your call. Either way, if you don't have a way of playing Loop Hero right now, ??it would be? silly to miss out on this Epic Games Store freebie.

If you want to hear more about the making of Loop Hero, ?check out our interview with the developers from earlie?r this year.

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Break the loop again

The looping roguelite Loop Hero is finally making its way to Nintendo Switch. Four Quarters and Devolver Digital announced this morning that Loop Hero will land on the handheld on Dec. 9, 2021.

Loop Hero is currently up on the Switch eShop, where it will run $14.99, though it looks like there's a pre-purchase discount of 10% dropping it to $13.49 at the moment. The rogue-management game got a new trai?ler today too, highli??ghting its

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAqS4kb3pBc

If you didn't check it out earlier this year, Loop Hero is about a world plunged into a timeless void. Rising up as a brave hero, you're able to loop through time on a literal looped path, building monster encampm?ents and villages to lay out your own quest.

It's got elements of management games, deck-builders, auto-battlers, and role-playing games. And it really all clicks together, as evidenced by its sales. And as end-of-the-year conversations in games start up, Loop Hero is definitely one I'm looking forward to revisit?ing on the Swi??tch, as one of the earlier breakout hits of 2021.

If you want to read more about the making of Loop Hero and how the idea for it even came about, you can check out our feature from earlier this year with the developers.

Loop Hero goes live for Nintendo Switch on Dec. 9, 2021.

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Whistlin' past the cemetery

Walking down the street to check the mail at my hometown’s post office is an eerily different journey today than it was a year ago. I still pass the local pizza joint on the town square—a literal cornerstone of a small town community—but time has changed more than just ourselves. Despite the marks near the building’s roof acting as a reminder of its survival from the fire years before, the restaurant is still there, but not really. It’s hollowed out. Empty. It’s closed, for good, thro??wn to the void of to-be-forgotten establishments from before the pandemic.

As I walk by, memories of being a kid in that restaurant come flooding back: playing Dig Dug and Streets of Rage and some random bowling game with a physical ball to spin that controlled the virtual ball on-screen. Head down, wandering forward and lost in thought, I watched the sidewalk pass me by—square by square—and found myself thinking about Loop Hero.

On its face, Loop Hero is a curious amalgamation. Tower defense mechanics fuse naturally into a roguelite framework with a deck-building aspect, and if that sounds like a lot of bullshit, it’s because it is. At some point, diluting a game down to the cogs that construct it removes its identity as much as it informs it. Loop Hero is so much more than the sum of its parts, and its story ties toget?her a patchwork only possible? in the video game medium.

Plunging the depths of Loop Hero’s lore wasn’t only worth my time—it gave me my se???nse of time back.

Loop Hero throws the titular Hero into the thick of the void with nothing but wasteland to wander. Each loop of road provides a new circular framework for him to travel as he recalls forgotten pieces of the world along the way. Enemies that spawn on the path provide The Hero opportunities to peer into the darkness to see what once was, and its depth goes deeper than a cursory glance implies. From the game’s environments to the very equipment taking up inventory space, every aspect of Loop Hero builds upon itself. Despite the encroaching heat death of the universe pulling all existence apart and some cosmic entities meddling with the process, turning of?f the game is the only way to truly prevent The Hero from rebuilding anything?? at all.

Along the road less traveled, whatever? merges into memory grants The Hero resources to bring back to camp. Walking through a grove offers St??able Branches from its trees, Preserved Pebbles roll from the mountains—all the necessary goods to reconstruct buildings and the society that comes with them.

But the most coveted of all? Memory Fragments. When combined, these create a Book of Memories that unlock lore entries in the game’s encyclopedia. Out of all of Loop Hero’s resources, it’s these tomes I found to be most?? valuable. More than unlocking a new playable class or menu option, they helped me better understand what exactly it is I’m rememberi??ng.

The encyclopedia is written as if it??’s a compilation of recollections. Pieces of dreams; and, as such, completely random sources of information. A children’s rhyme. Sergeant Dobbie Jasper’s thoughts. A collection of stories by Gregor the Suspicious. Conv?ersations with Madam Agatha, a flyer from the Guild of Enchanters, folk songs about Ivor the Fool, blips of overheard gossip, notes written on pieces of human skin, first-person journal entries written with the blood of a cosmic Leviathan as ink—as I unlocked each entry, my worldview continued to shapeshift.

Even the game’s inventory management establishes a void-like haze. Weapons and armor are discarded into scrap metal immediately after being replaced, preventing players the chance to organize their inventory while simultaneously?? gifting them a resource.

“After using a weapon or armor for some time, you start getting used to it. It becomes an ordinary part of the world around you,” reads Loop Hero’s encyclopedia. “And after replacing it with something new y?ou often won’t be able to remember anything about your old gear. All that you remember is that it was something metal and useless.”

When you start playing Loop Hero, it’s impossible to know what you’re getting into. It's not that trailers and screenshots don't capture the weight of its gestalt narrative—they can't. What starts as a simple objective t?o wander the road, avoid death, ?and return to camp safely becomes a grand, existential quest full of interlocking mechanics and lore. Tile by tile and loop by loop, every second spent in the game’s world compiles itself into a cohesive, ever-changing scenario.

As accompaniment to Loop Hero's vivid ambiguity, the soundtrack and font both mimic the game’s distorted world. The text itself has texture to it. Too much, maybe, as it can be hard to rea?d for prolonged periods, but developer F?our Quarters recognizes this with accessible font options straight out of the main menu. Still, despite its legibility, it feels intentionally designed to be obscure.

Beyond the soundtrack’s fuzzy brass instruments backlit by crunchy kick drums and piercing, crackly snares, each camp building comes with unique sound effects whenever clicked. The forests and rivers vocalize themselves when observed, and the denizens the??y attract are stark reminders of h??umanity’s relentless will to survive.

People you encounter at camp are remembered alongside whatever you build with whatever resources you’ve found, as is the furniture they’re sitting on and the food they’re eating. It all already exists, somewhere, but it’s not until you uncover this world’s past that you see the reality of its present. Respites at camp are the only thing that separates each loop, but even then, they bleed together into one. Choosing to retreat from the void shows the camp in a new light. The game zooms in to a microscopic view, providing a glimpse into the density of?? a single tile and every subsequent tile before and after it.

The next loop The Hero ventures out into will not be the loop from which he re??treated. The world’s seemingly the same as it’s always been, but what The Hero remembers? about it on each journey will differ.

Every action in a loop feels like a fleeting moment of lucidity. It's no different than watching glimps??es of your dream flash you by as you re-enter consciousness every morning. What starts as mostly void ends in an overwhelming sense of scenery, but only sometimes. Other times, you may be back at the campfire before you’re able to reco??llect much of anything.

There’s an existential flavor that permeates the air in Loop Hero. You don’t choose what you remember from your dreams, nor do you control what memories sleep within you. Loop Hero rejects the void's domina??nce, however, and affords players control over what they recall about the world around them.

Loop Hero resonates with something lying dormant in my subconscious. For every piece of the past I remember, I’m further awed by the depths of that well. And the older I get, the more that depot contains. Loop Hero’s obscurity helped me come ??to understa?nd and accept my own. Well, at least a sliver of it, but that's a sliver more than I had before.

Vaccine o?r ??not, these are heavy days. It’s not always easy to heave-ho my head, and when I do, I don’t see what I remember seeing. Not all the time. Time changes things. That pizza place ain't coming back, but unforeseen memories can be mined from the veritable rubble—so long as you keep your head up to observe them.

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A cycle of life, death, and game jams

The first iteration of Loop Hero didn't come together on time. The latest game from the Four Quarters team started out as a ??game jam entry in Ludum Dare; the o??nly problem was, by jam's end, it didn't really work.

On the page for what was called "LooPatHero" at the time, the team says they ran out of time for the 45th Ludum Dare, whose theme was "Start with nothing." And you really did start with nothing, starting a loop as an ambi?tious hero questing to take down the evil Lich.

Two weeks later, Four Quarters updated the page with a working build, including new sprites and a modified combat system. And on March 4, 2021, the team would launch a full version of Loop Hero that would become fairly successful on Steam, selling?? 500,000 copies in its first week on the platform.

Loop Hero is a continuously looping game, best described as the mash-up of idle games ?and management sims with the constant ??progression of a roguelite. The hero wakes up at camp and starts walking in a circle around the loop, and you can play various cards onto the field as tiles that will morph the world and place new challenges in the hero's path.

While the player controls what equipment the hero wears and traits they earn as they level up, combat is a?ll done automatically and the hero always presses forward until they're either told to retreat or fall in battle. The idea is to basically play DM to your questing adventurer—placing just enough challenge ahead to not kill them, but make them stronger.

It's pretty similar to a roguelite, but according to one of its developers, Four Quarters didn't?????????????????????????? think about doing a roguelike in the first place. Ale??ksandr "blinch" Goreslavets, who worked on several aspects of the game but primarily served as composer, says the idea came from the concept of the Loop.

"We discussed the genre of 'Zero Player Games,' and our artist [Dmitry “Deceiver” Karimov] created the idea of a?? Hero who walks in the Loop," Goreslavets told Destructoid in an email.

The elegant simplicity of Loop Hero stems from this concept of a hero, wandering forward forever, and the player tasked with laying track out in front of them already makes it interesting. But what's kept me coming back has been the combinations—tiles don't exist in a vacuum, and part of the Loop Hero m?agic is discovering how different tiles interact.

Place a lot of Mountains, and the world will spawn an encampment of Goblins. If the Mountains are in the right placement, they'll also form a peak that's suited to harboring Harpies, which will start to fly down to hunt on the loop. Treasurie??s provide huge potential for resources, but an empty one—with e?very tile around it occupied—becomes a haven for Gargoyles, which can be tough for a low-level hero to deal with.

Balancing the placement of tiles, to gain resources and up the difficulty without sending your hero? into a certain doom, is the balancing act at the heart of the loop. These combinations came about as a way to add more interest, as Goreslavets tells it.

"For example, Meadows were initially placed anywhere on the map and there was no special strategy in their placement," Goreslavets says. "Then we added a combination where if the player placed them next to other tiles, they began to? give 50% more healing, which radically changed the principle of placing this card."

Getting to the end of a loop, and fighting the many bosses laid out in front of the hero starting with the Lich, might seem like the first goal. And yes, at first, the player will die a lot in pursuit of their first Lich kill. Over time, though, a build emerges; yo?u learn to manipulate the tiles to your own benefit. Maybe a Blood Grove could counteract the healing of a Vampire-infested tile, or perhaps placing enemy generators under a Lantern's radius can limit how big the stacks get.

Killing bosses like the Lich is where the lore plays in, and though Loop Hero's story is sparse, it works to its benefit. There's something hauntingly intriguing about its world reduced to almost nothing, a void in which you're reconstructing new versions of itself. Karimov was responsible ??for the main lore of the game, as Goreslavets tells me, and the plot was written to answer why everything looks the way it does.

Because of this, bosses act as "anch?ors," as Goreslavets calls them, around which the plot advances. And beyond just killing an escalating list of giant adversaries, the Camp adds a sens??e of meta-progression. It was a way to change up the long-term of the game, as the core loop of the Loop is always the same—its shape may change, but there will always be a loop with vacuous space for tiles to be placed.

The Camp is also where resources come into play, and it ends up acting as a boon for players who are struggling with advancing on their own. While Loop Hero's additional classes and other abilities are unlocked through the camp, it's also where you get bonuses to help make future runs easier. Heal?ing flasks, a smattering of free items at the beginning of each run, and new tiles to bolster existing combinations are all gained through the Camp.

When I ask Goreslavets about how other roguelikes have been implementing assist modes—for example, Hades' God Mode—he refers me to the Camp. "Loop Hero doesn’t have any option for it, but we don't 'punish' players for losing," Goreslavets says??. "Even if the hero dies—they will take some resources to their camp to upgrade some buildings. We didn't want players to feel afraid to experiment or punished for 'ineffective play.'"

The result has been a surprise hit for the team, previously known for their work on Please, Don't Touch Anything. Goreslavets says the team is shocked and still surprised by Loop Hero's reception; "??We really liked the game, but did not expect that suc?h a large number of people would like it too," he says.

As for what's next, it's a lot more Loop Hero. They had a lot of ide?as left for post-release during the ??making of the game, and now they're starting to implement them. Though Goreslavets says it's too early to say what exactly will make it in, they drop a hint towards a recent tweet of some art as a new enemy.

Four Quarters is made up of four people, all in different cities and working from home, so the pandemic didn't affect any sort of in-person workflow. It still, of course, had oth?er effects; there was a lot of "overall stress" due to the pandemic, Goreslavets says.

Still, the team finds time to play games together alongside developing them. They play Monster Hunter and Dota 2, and in one surprising turn of events, found a much-needed boost in a?nother roguelike.

"At the end of 2020, at a late stage of development, the work was very intense and we started to burn out," Goreslavets says. "Then we accidentally discovered 'Slay the Spire.' This is a gorgeous and genius card roguelike wh?ich helped us relax in the evenings, when we gathered in Discord and t?ook turns trying to beat it."

For the even further future, Four Quarters still has plenty of ideas. The team?? has made 15 games for Ludum Dare, spanning several different genres: from a Russian roulette RPG to a rhythm game about kaiju attacks, they've got ideas. 

Even Four Quarters does not know what will be next, Goreslavets tells me. But if Loop Hero has shown anything, it's that any one of those 15 ideas is certainly worth k??eeping an eye on.

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The hurts-so-good roguelike strategy game cleared 500,000 sales in just a week, and it's getting content updates

Devolver Digital and Four Quarters have quite the roguelike strategy hit on their hands with Loop Hero, a game that's hard to fully "get" until you've looked at the clock and realized you just lost several hours in an instant. Plenty – and I mean plenty – of curiou??s players have come to that real??ization this week.

Loop Hero has passed 500,000 sales in its first week on Steam, and players are averaging 12 hours.

What is this game? It's a distillation of mood??y old RPGs, card-drawing deck builders, idle games, and gambling. Okay, that last one isn't technically true – but I sure feel like I'm pushing my luck whenever I play. I never know when to retreat with my pile of resources before it's too late and I'm screwed?.

Litter the map with structures from randomly-drawn cards to help and hinder your hero, passively watch them battle it out with fantasy foes, actively equip incrementally better gear drops that fit your class, and keep them alive until they can face the big boss – that's the idea, anyway. Loop Hero is tough.

It's one of those games with an old-school mystique about it where you've got to test things out for yourself to discove??r synergies or even whole game ??mechanics, or you've gotta consult the wiki.

I've yet to clear the second stage – I was so close with an absurdly fast-hitting Rogue once – but maybe I'll have my breakthrough soon. I also want to get better with the Necromancer because skeletons rule.

Apart from the sales update, Four Quarters also confirmed a few upcoming features: "a system for saving during expeditions, new speed settings, and a deck of traits gained from bosses." The developers also intend to give Loop Hero? more card types,?? character classes, and tile transformations this year.

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With a demo playable now on Steam

Maybe you've heard of Devolver Digital and Four Quarters' Loop Hero but you didn't want to get too attached until there was a rel?ease date. Well, now we've got one: the PC game is coming out March 4.

I appreciate that this trailer looks and sounds like it was lifted from a cursed VHS and polished up a bit for 2021. The narration reminds me of moody old video game, toy, and board ga??me commercials.

Loop Hero is probably better played than explained – conveniently, there's a Steam demo right now. A too-brief summary: your adventurer strolls along a path, battling creatures along the way, and you'll need to deck them out with better gear and make clever use of cards that can be strategically placed on the field. If you're really pressed for time, the game's interactive website overviews the core loop.

The concept speaks to me as a fan of the more "active" idle games, and I love the whole vibe. The s?heer number of genre influences and deeper elements in play here has me feeling pretty optimistic.

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