Loot Rascals Reviews

So, I broke my foot this week and decided to pick this up while recuperating and so glad I did. The Spelunky Showlike (now Eggplant: The Secret Lives of Games) podcast were always raving about this game. Figuring out the nuances of what makes this game tick has been the highlight of my week. I've struggled just to get to World 3 a handful of times only to die quickly. Yeah, it's a hard game. Yeah, there's some luck involved. But, having the mystery in front of me of what weird things the developers put in the future worlds keeps me plugging away. On a side note, there isn't a way to save during a run which people complain about in the reviews/comments. I understand where they're coming from, but at the same time, I like the idea that when I sit down with the game, you're committed to it. Your run might last 10 minutes or 45+ minutes, but you're in for the haul. Highly recommended. Thanks!

A game that could kill your character instantly in so many dumb ways but you still want to building your character inch by inch and keep fighting through the end. It's not fun anymore once finished the game, cause there isn't any reward or upgrade for another run. (like there is in other roguelike games e.g. binding of isaac)

An excellent pick-up-and-play addictive one-more-go turn-based strategy exploring card collecting inventory management procedurally generated rogue-lke with super-nice Greenblat-esque stylings.

This is a little older now, so the comparison to newer games may not be entirely fair, but I found the gameplay loop to be unexciting, and not being able to save midrun is a deal breaker.

While the inability to save a session mid-game is pretty annoying, this game's keep or return recovered hot loot is totally original!

This is a really enjoyable game. The style and sound is top notch. The interface is great with a controller, a bit iffy with mouse. The mechanics teach themselves fairly quickly. You decide your own stats with card placement. You choose what cards to put your power sleeves on. You get a lot of choice and when the game kills you for it you die with a smile. Interesting asymmetrical online mechanics where you're rewarded for kindness to other players, unless you want to straight up steal the cards you find from them and have them hunt you down later. Cons: No save feature, high randomization, high learning curve. Could use audio sliders.

Initial Impression: Art style and music are fantastic! Card system is pretty neat as well, fights are not random and you can plan ahead with the day/night cycle system they use, which works very well. Has some kind of online function as other people can find loot you dropped and sent it back which is cool as well. It pretty hard though only made it to level 2 in my first hour of gameplay. Easy recommendation for fans of rouge-likes and people who are not annoyed by difficult gameplay. Edit: After 3h of gameplay: So after 3 h I made it to world 3 once. Maybe I'm just bad but it feels really hard to survive. Which I like. The game is basicly about planning your turns (day/night cycle) right so that you take the least amount of damage from fights (as already said fights are pretty non-rng if you plan correctly and you can even calculate the cance of getting hit if you want) and managing the cards in your inventory right. The cards are pretty neat, some are just plan attack and defence modifier (add +1 or +2 etc.) others have special requirements like all pans get +1 or +1 if in an even row/column) which makes you think how to use them. Some of these cards are flippable meaning you can either use them for attack or defense. Other cards are sticky, so once equiped you can't just remove them. Plus there are special cards which give you abilities like teleportation heals or zaps and more (which have to be added to already equipped cards and then add the abbility for you to use). Those abbilities either recharge over turns or by spending tokens (which you get from recycling cards you don't use). Other special cards allow the fusing of for example all attack cards you have equipped. Tokes are also used to heal yourself at the base. Because teleporting back to base and then back to where you were takes 50 turns you can't abbuse the heals. They also increase in price every run. On each level you are basicly on a turn limit shown in the upper right corner and if you exceed it bad things happen (think spelunky). You can stay longer but after a set amount of turn even worse things happen (again with a timer) so you might want to leave to the next level rather soon-ish. For that you have to find the exit. After playing 3 h the first level seems rather beatable, however the 2nd one is still very, very challanging for me :P. Other cool features of the game: -At the base you get a quest every level to kill a baddy and return the loot he dropped. You are rewarded with extra space to hold (not equip) cards or a reveal map card for example. -The semi-mp feature of the game is neat, returning cards to other players or getting card returns to you can help you set up a new run, as you can equip the cards returend when you start a new run. You also can find holograms of the players YOU returned the cards to, and they will fight for you! -The cards and their effects are pretty neat, especially the special cards which can have effects like reincarnation or spend tokens to get extra turns withouth the baddies moving. You don't even need to equip those cards to use them in some cases, they work from your backpack. -The baddies are pretty interesting as well. Some of them just charge you but others have unique mechanics to them: There are "horse brothers" which change their power value on each step so you must be careful not only to attack them at the preffered time of the day where you attack first, but also when their power value is low, there is a night witch and when you are close to her it won't change to day anymore, there are baddies which drop special cards like a spectral guy dropping the decoy or a rotting thing dropping the teleport modifier....just to name some. -As already mentioned the art-style and music/sound are a 10/10 for me ;). So I don't know much about the later content of the game, as the one time I reached lvl 3 i died early but still what i have seen is pretty neat and worth a recommendation as stated in my first impression after 1 h of gameplay. One more thing: Some might not like that you can't save a run and continue it later.

There's a lot to love about this, but ultimately there is zero progression. If you die, you die (maybe not off-putting to everyone) but [b]there is no save functionality[/b]. You cannot play one game over multiple sessions, and this breaks the game for me. Even the one tiny hint of progression [spoiler] (mailing yourself a card, if you are lucky enough to find a mailbox) [/spoiler], doesn't persist if you log off. This should be upfront info, because it's a killer.

It's a crime that more people are not playing this. Learning enemies, the ins-and-outs of the card system, and using all the tools made available to try and survive has been a blast so far. Very difficult, but playing well feels rewarding. It's more of a puzzle game than anything else. Take your time, use the day/night cycle to your advantage and get all the loots! You rascal you! Also you can use giant bird..boulder...thingies to blow up enemies! What isn't to like?

After a friend's recommendation, I decided to give [i]Loot Rascals[/i] a try, and I am really glad I did. [b][i]Loot Rascals[/i] is in the genre of puzzle-roguelikes.[/b] And yes, you read that right - this is a [i]like[/i] in the sense that it is true turn-based gameplay. Brilliantly done, I may add. You actually move in real-time, but whenever you cross into another hex, a turn passes. There are very short day/night cycles that determine if you get first hit on an enemy. You will instantly kill the enemy if your power is greater than his 'strength' or HP. All the math is transparent, and there are only like three numbers to keep track of which makes it quite elegant. This is where the puzzle portion comes in, and fits it nicely in the puzzle-roguelike genre along other titles such as [i]HyperRogue[/i], [i]The Depths of Tolagol[/i], and even [i]Crypt of the Necrodancer[/i], among others. [b]Yes, it is brutally hard - but more importantly - it is hella addicting.[/b] I have a hard time putting it down. The other notable part is that there is a built in card game of sorts. The loot you collect from fallen foes is cards. The cards give you buffs depending on how you lay them out. It's all simple to learn, yet slowly reveals its depth as you figure it all out. The only other part that you may want to know is that there are no meta-game upgrades. There is a pseudo-multiplayer component, but so far I haven't found it potent enough to really matter one way or the other. [b]Pros:[/b] +Awesome artwork and music and just such a zany universe +Surprisingly addictive, and it is so easy to just fall into another run +Keyboard and mouse support is great, and so is controller support +Daily runs and leaderboards certainly keep things fresh +Both the turn-based combat system and collectable card game are *really* well done [b]Cons:[/b] -Yeah, it's brutal, but hey thats what we came for -I do wish you could play with keyboard only, but no biggie [b]A must-own for anyone who enjoys turn-based roguelikes.[/b]