I’ve played a few incremental RPG’s, and they largely fall into two buckets. Bucket one contains games that play themselves, with little to no player agency or decision-making required. Bucket two keeps the player engaged with gameplay mechanics and strategic choices to make. Loot Loop fits firmly into bucket one, and that will determine exactly how you feel about the game.
Loot Loop unlocks a party of four heroes, running through six 2D pixel art dungeons, slaying enemies to get to bosses and then slaying them, too. Your party moves forward automatically, and after the first few minutes, your party autoattacks, too. Each party member has a special ability tied to a number key, and these need to be triggered by the player. The knight bites enemies to restore health. The archer sends a barrage of arrows, great for hurting a larger enemy. The mage rains meteors from the sky, perfect for a long line of enemies (which, to be fair, is 80% of the game). The final character randomly buffs the party’s speed, damage, or health. They all operate with a cooldown, but as they are so quick to recharge and so powerful to trigger, there is no strategy or reason not to trigger them as soon as they are available.
That press button, trigger upgrade, approach is symptomatic of the entire gaming experience. At no point did I feel like my interactions in battle made a tangible difference beyond perhaps speeding up the just under 3-hour experience a bit. Bosses are either so overpowered against you that you’ll be flattened in seconds, or you’ll mince them into pieces in seconds in response. The incremental skill tree initially felt impactful, but because you can grind your way to maximum nodes and unlock everything in the process, my decisions were negated. There’s a bizarre ascension point with 20 minutes to go at the end, which felt jarring and misplaced, too. If everything can be unlocked without thought, I could argue that the player is negated there. The only mildly fun thing about the ascension bit at the end was that I steamed through the entire game again within 10 minutes, feeling incredibly powerful. It is a dopamine hit, but it felt empty and unearned.
Rather than Loot Loop being a poor game, I think it’s more the fact that it embraces all the choices in incremental game design that I don’t personally enjoy. It is so hands-off and mindless, I didn’t feel connected to any of it. I feel like the systems could have been more involved, but by playing closer to an idler than an RPG, Loot Loop failed to get me invested. If it is “number-go-up” that you want, this game will give it, but it won’t give you much else.
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