The Loopler review
1

...No thanks, I play incremental games for...well, incremental growth, sometimes slow but always, in theory, steady. Roguelikes don't mix very well with that at all. In this instance, it's one of those pick-one-of-three-options types that has been, so very common recently, seems to be a bit of a fad, and you're supposed to get a build going that lets you go infinite, with each round having a higher score goal you have to meet, or...well, I don't actually know what happens when you fail, but the game calls itself a "roguelite", so presumably there's a prestige mechanic where you buy permanent upgrades and try again. I stopped playing before seeing what happens when you fail when I realized what the gameplay loop is.

Because the fact is, this pick-one-of-three-choices each round and try to go infinite style of gameplay...isn't what I come to this website to look for at all. That's no slow and steady growth, it's the opposite, with growth that's quite swingy and random. I've never enjoyed that in a game like this, but whereas I recognize other games of that ilk as still incremental games that I just don't like very much due to their swingy pacing, this game just feels like a roguelike. Yes, I never saw the prestige mechanic, but it's not the prestige mechanics that make an incremental game for me, it's...the incremental growth, what it says on the tin. And playing this game, that doesn't feel like a focus, it just feels like the dev set out to make a roguelike game. ...Because I'm pretty sure that's what they did, the only reason I can think for this game to be posted here is because the itch page decribes the game as "idle-like".

Frankly, I just think this is a category error. Would I give it more than 1 star if I was looking for a roguelite of this sort, probably! But I'm not looking for that, because I'm not a fan of that gameplay loop. That's why I'm on this website, which hosts incremental games, to find an incremental game to play, and judging it as an incremental game, this is a 1/5 according to my own tastes. So, for the purposes of this website as a whole, 1/5, but if you like those choose-three round-based kinds of roguelikes, it'll probably be at least a 3/5 for you based on what I played. (Which wasn't much, that could slide down into a 2/5 if the later game is bad, or go up to a 4/5 if the game gets better later.) But I don't happen to be in that overlap of people who like incremental games AND those sorts of roguelikes, so 1/5 for me.

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