Loop Hero’s apocalypse shows survival is a team sport

While I do enjoy apocalypse fiction, I’ve grown increasingly tired of cynical takes on what society would look like at the end of the world. Of course there would be those that would look to take advantage of the situation, but as we’ve seen time and time again, when shit hits the fan, there are always people who band together to weather the storm.

Four Quarters Team’s Loop Hero not only acknowledges this fact, it builds most of its mechanics around it. You play as the titular Hero, who, you guessed it, is walking in a loop. The loop is all that’s left of the world, with darkness encroaching in on all sides. At first anyways. The Hero can use his memories of the past to return pieces of the old world to the loop, and along with those pieces come other people.

The first time he sees another person, a blond woman named Yota who helps him organize their little society, the Hero is relieved and excited. Finally, he’s not all alone in this leftover world. While the woman organizes the survivors of the cataclysm and keeps the camp in order, the Hero ventures out to the loop in search of supplies. Mechanically, you need these resources to create new cards for your expedition deck, to upgrade the different buildings within the camp to provide more healing items, inventory slots, or unlock new classes. But these things cannot be separated from the game’s narrative. Yes, building the Healer’s Hut unlocks potions for the Hero, but it also provides medical care for the survivors. Same with the food area. Building and upgrading these structures, of course, helps you. But the game, usually through Yota or other NPCs, is always sure to remind you that your work benefits the folks in camp as well.

Though the Hero encounters plenty of hostile lifeforms on his expeditions around the loop, including other people like bandits, his partnership with the blond woman and the rest of the folks who make up their rinky dink little town is never in question. The two want to work together, want to hold onto what life is left, and to take care of those who remain. When the darkness closed in, the first thing they reached for was other people. The Hero carries this ethos with him in every encounter, always trying to approach the people and creatures he meets with an open mind, despite the frequency with which that’s met with violence along the loop. He is always ready to extend a hand, even if it’s bitten in the process.

In reality, I think that’s what the apocalypse is going to look like. I don’t want to be fatalistic, but it’s no secret that things feel like they’re spinning closer and closer to the edge of uncertainty in our own world. It’s hard to not feel an impending sense of doom about it all. But even as a literal plague, rising fascism, and capitalistic greed ravage the world and shitheads actively race to the bottom of the barrel for a buck, people are desperately reaching out for one another. Strike funds, charity streams, organized labor wins, mutual aid networks, passing the same $20 between friends. These things aren’t new, of course, but they’re on the rise again, made more accessible and prolific by our social media age. Even as some are trying to tear it all apart to sit as kings of ashes, so many others are standing like Tobey Macguire in front of the train, doing their best to hold what’s left together, even if it’s only for a few other people.

I won’t spoil Loop Hero’s take on what happens when the world really does end, but as we possibly face the beginning of our own demise, I hope we can face it the way the Hero does: looking to protect and aid those he can, and to fight for a chance at the life we were promised by existing.