Indie game 'Loop Hero' has become one of the biggest unexpected hits of 2021: here's how its heroic infinite journey works

We are experiencing a boom of independent games so far in 2021 as we have rarely experienced before. And most importantly: they are taking space away from AAA, taking advantage of the fact that these are in a moment of impasse and have not yet begun to arrive big titles from the new consoles. Playstation 5 exclusives have not landed, Xbox is focusing on strengthening its Game Pass catalog and Switch games, exclusive and for their audience, sell and sustain the platform, but their impact does not leave the terrain circumscribed to Nintendo hardware.

Added to this, perhaps, is that last year’s last big release, ‘Cyberpunk 2077’, turned out to be a fiasco in terms of communication and prestige for that kind of games, regardless of their authentic values. Titles whose development is prolonged for years, that promise to be revolutionary and that for whatever reasons, in the eyes of the public in the end come to nothing (or are the subject of memes). And on top of all that, of course, there is the pandemic: after a year (at least) without events or fairs, the videogame machinery (which even so has not slowed down as much as other entertainment sectors) finds it hard to regain its rhythm.

That is what has made the last months of 2020 and the first months of 2021 we have talked about ‘Valheim’, ‘Rust’, ‘Hades’, as last year we talked about ‘Among Us’ and ‘Fall Guys’. Games with very modest intentions (and often aesthetics), which word of mouth or, why not say it, their own numerous virtues, make them successes.

This does not mean that Triple A games have been wiped off the map. There they remain, agglutinating millions of players titles such as the latest installments of eternal franchises: ‘Battlefield’, ‘Call of Duty’, ‘Star Wars’ or the eternal and unbeatable ‘Fortnite’. But there is a clear trend: the public is more than willing to pay attention to small games, with much more restrained ambitions, but which end up rubbing shoulders with the biggest. And now it’s the turn of ‘Loop Hero’.

Spectacular metrics

Loop Hero’ has broken a few records in terms of number of players. For example, it has been at the top of the Steam Database’s Trending Games for a couple of days now. At the time of writing, around 40,000 simultaneous players. Number 2 on the list, ‘Forza Horizon 4’, with a whole Microsoft behind it, does not reach 20,000. This metric does not measure number of concurrent players (there at the top would be the million players of ‘Counter-Strike: Global Offensive’), but rather the growth of the last seven days, based on data such as concurrent players, yes, but also positive reviews and sales.

And yet, the number of concurrent players of ‘Loop Hero’ is not negligible: more than 50,000 is its record to date, and at the moment it is at number 17 on the list, surrounded by giants that multiply by twenty its number of players. And much more spectacular are its weekly sales on Steam: already in its week of release, ‘Loop Hero’ was placed in second place, below only (significantly) another indie hit, ‘Valheim’, which has not moved from that spot for the last month. And Devolver, the game’s producer, has announced that they have already sold more than 500,000 games.

In other words, quite a success for a modest and not particularly commercial project. After all, ‘Valheim’, being a rough game that does not forgive its mistakes to the player, follows the codes of Triple A adventure games, although its indie nature makes it take more risks. But the achievements of ‘Loop Hero’ are especially remarkable considering that the very process of learning to play the game is not at all simple.

How ‘Loop Hero’ works

The first surprise with the mechanics of ‘Loop Hero’ comes with its development: the moves and combats develop automatically. The Loop Hero of the title wanders through a randomly generated infinite environment, and facing monsters. These monsters provide him with cards and equipment with which to build a deck, and it is these supplies that allow the player to progress in the adventure.

Each card is an element of the map that can be added to the loop. You can create mountains, forests… and also enemy creation points, which makes everything more complicated, in exchange for greater rewards. Objective? To gain more and more elements that allow you to face the next loop with guarantees of survival. In other words, a mix of deck of cards, roguelite and roguelike.

And that’s it? Essentially yes, but there are dozens of nuances and strategies to follow: you can build buildings that help you progress, such as kitchens that allow you to heal better before the next loop. Or create new classes, in a decidedly role-playing touch that allows us to advance a little more in the next round, as befits a good roguelike: each time, a little more and a little more. And a key to sting the player: the randomness of the rewards.

And to justify it all, a simple plot that plays with the memories of the protagonist. In reality, our hero is not building, but remembering, and with each new loop he will have to remember from scratch, but starting from what the player already knows, in a convoluted meta-course that will make your ears ring in the first games. And that the cryptic and enigmatic characters and dialogues will not help to alleviate… but therein lies the charm of the game.

This is a new somersault in the indie scene, which is injecting mechanics of considerable complexity and arguments that play thoroughly with interactivity and the possibilities of the medium… and achieving successes like never seen before. The arrival of ‘Loop Hero’ at the top of the charts is more than just a coup for the Russian studio Four Quarters. It is proof that the industry still has room to grow and evolve outside of the big blockbusters.