Gory Groundhog Day
Even at this early stage, the upcoming Loopmancer looks fantastic, and is fun to play. The cyberpunk action game has a lot of potential—if it's able to find its own identity in an ocean of similar indie games.
Since the release of 2020’s biggest game (and depending on who you ask, biggest flop) Cyberpunk 2077, cyberpunk dystopias have been all the rage—and for good reason. From The Ascent to Ghostrunner, the neon-soaked aesthetic and noir undertones are almost instantly recognizable, and make for cool and edgy scene dressing. The latest foray into the sci-fi subgenre comes from Beijing-based indie developer eBrain Studio: Loopmancer, a roguelite-platformer that’s powered by Unreal Engine 4.
At its core, Loopmancer is familiar in many ways. Its sci-fi world, hard-boiled noir narrative, and hack-and-slash gameplay don’t deviate from the established genre trops, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Loopmancer’s gameplay loop is satisfying, even in its early state. A release date hasn’t been announced, so eBrain Studio still has time to bake Loopmancer into something truly great.
The year is 2046, and the world has advanced to the point where cybernetic implants and bionic prosthetics have become commonplace. However, as is typical for the genre, the wealth gap has created a good ol’ fashioned dystopia. You play as Xiang Zixu, a private eye tasked with investigating the disappearance of a high-profile journalist. You’re killed in pursuit of a crime lord who may be linked to her disappearance, and then wake up in your bed, Groundhog Day-style. The day has restarted, but your memories remain intact.
That sets the scene for Loopmancer, as you begin piecing together the investigation that involves the death of your own daughter and the aforementioned kidnapping. We were limited to just the first level in a preview build we tested, so we couldn’t explore more of the story. Still, the game’s eastern-inspired cityscape, one featuring desolate alleyways and lavish festivals, was a pleasure to fight through. eBrain Studio stated that Loopmancer will contain branching paths and multiple endings.
Armed with a melee and ranged weapon, a special accessory, and special moves, expect plenty of bloody shock and awe as you use everything from golf clubs to automatic rifles to destroy the goon hordes on the attack. Loopmance is a gory game; I chopped off limbs, set fires, and sent bodies flying after a well-placed grenade. The enemies are pretty vocal, too, adding another layer of chaos to the carnage at hand. If blood is what you want then Loopmancer has it in spades.
Roguelite veterans should be familiar with the gameplay loop. When Xiang dies, the game essentially restarts, and you lose all of your temporary items and buffs. Permanent upgrades and currencies remain, which let you upgrade Xiang’s skillset before taking on the next loop.
Between combat sequences, you can explore Xiang’s apartment, as well as the police station, to collect intel and make permanent character and weapon upgrades. While out on the field, you can buy weapons from a robot vendor named Funk, or invest in weapons using e-Coins dropped by defeated enemies. And if you’re tired of the gratuitous violence, you can unwind with a few rounds on Flappy Seoan, a Flappy Bird clone that’s just as frustrating as the original mobile game.
Roguelites are notorious for their easy to pick up, difficult to master gameplay loop, and Loopmaster is no different, though I did notice that the game was much easier than other games in the genre. Enemies weren’t particularly difficult to defeat, even on harder difficulties, and there wasn’t much enemy variety. The boss fight at the end of the demo, however, proved quite difficult; I hope to see more challenge like that in later levels.
And speaking of the levels, the first one was pretty straightforward. Loopmaster offers challenges for players to complete for e-coins, but there’s not much incentive to explore the level, Metroidvania-style. Roguelites like Hades and Dead Cells reward risk with big rewards, so I hope Loopmaster gives players an incentive to explore the run-down Dragon City.
The game’s visuals are impressive, even in this early state, but the audio needs some work. Subtitles didn’t match the dialogue coming out of the character’s mouths, and aside from the main character, everybody’s line delivery was a little wooden, or mixed so low that they were barely audible.
Minor blemishes aside, the game’s world shows great promise. If eBrain Studio can expand Loopmancer’s lighting fast gameplay with more weapons and enemy types, all while weaving a compelling cop drama, then the game has a chance of standing out in the crowd of indie roguelites. A big ask? Perhaps, but one that seems to be within eBrain Studio’s reach.
Thankfully, Loopmancer’s impressive visuals don’t require cutting-edge hardware. Loopmancer’s minimum requirements include an AMD Phenom II X4 965 or Intel Core i5-8250U CPU, a Nvidia GeForce MX150 or Radeon R7 260X GPU, 15GB of storage, the Windows 7 operating, and just 8GB of RAM; A paltry sum to pay in today’s PC market. The recommended settings paint a similar picture, with requirements that include an AMD FX-9590 or Intel Core i7-477OS CPU, a Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 or Radeon R9 390X GPU, 16GB of RAM, 15GB of storage, and the Windows 10 OS.
Loopmancer is an Unreal Engine 4 showcase, so eBrain Studio plans to utilize every tool in the toolbox, including DLSS and Nvidia Image Scaling (both of which were disabled in our demo). The game demonstrated solid performance, holding at a steady 60 frames per second (FPS) throughout my few hours with the game.
I walked away from Loopmancer feeling hopeful for its freshman developers. Right now, Loopmancer might seem like another drop in the ocean of indie-developed rougelites, but it also has tons of potential. It’s hard to fault the game’s issues while it’s still so far from launch—and when it does launch, it can very well set the genre on fire with its gorgeous visuals and bloody gameplay. Right now, Loopmancer has no official release date, but it will land on PC, as well as Nintendo, PlayStation, and Xbox consoles, sometime in 2022.
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Even at this early stage, the upcoming Loopmancer looks fantastic, and is fun to play. The cyberpunk action game has a lot of potential—if it's able to find its own identity in an ocean of similar indie games.
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Zackery Cuevas is a Junior Analyst at PCMag, focused on reviewing laptops and computer accessories. A gaming and tech enthusiast whose work has appeared on iMore, Windows Central, Android Central, and TWICE, Zackery also has a diverse portfolio of editing work under his belt, from his time spent at Scholastic and Oxford University Press. As an author, he’s contributed to the sci-fi anthology Under New Suns and has even written a Peppa Pig book. In his spare time, Zackery likes to write about games, talk about games, and complain about games. (When time allows, he occasionally plays them, too.)
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