Long after the passing of the Second Shadow, when dragons ruled the twilight sky and the stars were bright and numerous, came the Age of the Great Guilds. Blacksmiths. Shepherds. Clerics. Each dedicated to the absolute control of secret knowledge. Another such Guild was the Weavers. Over the centuries, their craft transcended the limits of physical cloth, until they wove the very fabric of reality itself. Now, a strange power has swept the Weavers into oblivion, leaving behind one Weaver boy to unravel the mystery. Help young Bobbin rescue his Guild...and you just might save the universe from an unspeakable catastrophe.
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ASK ME ABOUT LOOM
Often people who have no idea what point and click adventure games are will very confidently tell you that the genre died because it was too reliant on "moon logic" and nobody had any patience for it. Disregarding that these people probably consider filing their tax returns to also be "moon logic", it shows just how little people understand about what made the genre such a widely popular staple of PC gaming for so long.
Monkey Island, Myst, Kings Quest, 7th Guest, all of these games were so much more than a simple string of progress blockers that everyone just had to deal with, they were truly adventures that the game took you on with the puzzles and object trading only being a fragment of the whole. The idea of games being merely sets of challenges to overcome has led people to think of point and click adventure games as some sort of "solved" riddle, the only reason to play being to win and the singular solutions being laid out in walkthroughs an indication of their humiliating defeat. After all, the game is beaten and will always be beaten in the same way, the road is completely paved.
It's games like Loom that really bring out the heart and soul of a point and click, taking away some of the usual tools of its peers and replacing them with a simple Casio keyboard and inviting you to push the buttons and see what happens. There's nothing complicated about playing Loom, and yet its simple loop of "repeat after me" discovery and experimentation is one that is immediately immersive and finds you soon embroiled in its simple world of cities where everybody has one job.
Loom is incredibly charming and is perhaps the chief example of why we once called this genre "adventure" games. Others have walked the same road, but the walking is not the road.
Often people who have no idea what point and click adventure games are will very confidently tell you that the genre died because it was too reliant on "moon logic" and nobody had any patience for it. Disregarding that these people probably consider filing their tax returns to also be "moon logic", it shows just how little people understand about what made the genre such a widely popular staple of PC gaming for so long.
Monkey Island, Myst, Kings Quest, 7th Guest, all of these games were so much more than a simple string of progress blockers that everyone just had to deal with, they were truly adventures that the game took you on with the puzzles and object trading only being a fragment of the whole. The idea of games being merely sets of challenges to overcome has led people to think of point and click adventure games as some sort of "solved" riddle, the only reason to play being to win and the singular solutions being laid out in walkthroughs an indication of their humiliating defeat. After all, the game is beaten and will always be beaten in the same way, the road is completely paved.
It's games like Loom that really bring out the heart and soul of a point and click, taking away some of the usual tools of its peers and replacing them with a simple Casio keyboard and inviting you to push the buttons and see what happens. There's nothing complicated about playing Loom, and yet its simple loop of "repeat after me" discovery and experimentation is one that is immediately immersive and finds you soon embroiled in its simple world of cities where everybody has one job.
Loom is incredibly charming and is perhaps the chief example of why we once called this genre "adventure" games. Others have walked the same road, but the walking is not the road.
It's really cool to see the LucasArts formula, which I'm mostly familiar with through a Monkey Island context, being applied in a much more serious, storytelling-oriented context. LOOM still has plenty of jokes, but it's also trying to be a more straightforward fantasy story. It's way too short to really pull it off effectively, but it's still fun to see the attempt.
By far the coolest thing about this game is the mode of interaction. It eschews the classic point-and-click "inventory and verb" system for a set of spells that are cast by playing musical notes. Although in a sense this boils down to just a broad set of verbs, it opens the possibility of gaining more verbs throughout the run by being granted them or even deducing them, which feels brilliant. Definitely a game I wish had spawned a bit more of an evolutionary branch, or even just a direct sequel.
By far the coolest thing about this game is the mode of interaction. It eschews the classic point-and-click "inventory and verb" system for a set of spells that are cast by playing musical notes. Although in a sense this boils down to just a broad set of verbs, it opens the possibility of gaining more verbs throughout the run by being granted them or even deducing them, which feels brilliant. Definitely a game I wish had spawned a bit more of an evolutionary branch, or even just a direct sequel.
Great and bold experiment
The gameplay was more fun than 'Monkey Island' 1 and 2 :O
lacks the humour of other point and clicks, but makes up for it in the ethereal landscape it takes place upon
I loved Loom ... looking back to set up those harmonies give me inner peace today...and it put s always a smile on my face if I see some content pieces somewhere on the internet today.