It has been a hot minute since my last Turn Based Lovers review… in fact more like a hot year, but Marcello put out a call for writers and, in the words of every gamer, sat bleary-eyed, hovering the ‘End Turn’ button at 2am.
“I guess one more wouldn’t hurt”
Today’s offering is Lootbound, the new roguelite-meets-inventory-management game from developer ArtDock, releasing on 14th August. Due to their competitive PvP focus, I’ve never really gotten into the recent wave of inventory management titles, so a single-player roguelite game seemed a great entry point into this evolution of equipment systems.
Starting The Journey
For those with even a basic experience of roguelites, the game overview is going to sound immediately familiar. Pick one of the 4 characters with their own unique skills and equipment type, ascend through three different biomes of a node-filled map where there will often be the choice of branching paths that offer differing rewards before amassing enough equipment to take on the final boss.
It’s a tried and tested formula, and to its credit, Lootbound does try to mix things up a bit… although sadly not always for the better.
Before we get into the weeds of the mechanics, I do want to give praise where it’s due: the pixel art is gorgeous. Both player character and enemy sprites have clearly had a lot of work put into them, and the background art remains consistently high quality across each room type, further enhanced by the fact that all three biomes have distinct visual themes.
My appreciation of the art extends to the arsenal of equipment on each run, which feels well varied while maintaining clear visual distinctions that denote the weapon’s power.
Sadly, the animation is a bit more hit-and-miss, with room and dice-rolling animations being rather satisfying, but combat animations are notably lacking. Get used to watching the same swing over and over because there’s a lot of it.
Turn-based…Tactics?
On that note, let’s talk about the combat. The main party character will unlock a number of skills as the run progresses, and with each run the party will be fleshed out by two of the remaining three companions.
The additional party members will act autonomously, utilizing a basic attack and then a special ability they will use under certain conditions, which can be rather frustrating when a companion burns through their mana like it’s the final showdown because their condition is as basic as “be fighting exactly one enemy” and I’m mopping up the last lowly grunt in a fight.
This would be less of a problem if the combat wasn’t rather shallow to begin with. Enemies repeat the same attack every turn, so the only choice is which one to focus, a choice made rather obvious depending on which stat their attack scales, and almost every enemy has some level of infinite scaling, which pushes players into builds which can end a fight quickly.
The player abilities also feel rather similar and generally fall into three categories of “Do Damage”, “Increase all Future Damage”, “Heal/Restore Shields,” leaving them lacking in much real nuance of when to use them.
I understand an inventory management game is going to be mainly won or lost with the inventory itself, but I would have loved to see a more engaging combat system because there are a lot of trash mobs to fight through and a lack of a speed-up button to do it with!
The limited mana regeneration after each fight also encourages the player to stall out some fights while they regain their mana mid-combat, which can drag down the flow of the game to an even slower pace.
There is Loot…Abound!
Thankfully, the inventory management aspect is meatier. Each fight brings new loot, and every biome has more powerful items than the last, which constantly presents the player with a new puzzle on how to optimize each character, with a stacked inventory being needed for all 3!
The rarest items will often come with auras that provide benefits to other specified equipment around them, some of which will only activate in certain positions in the inventory grid, so a single rare find can lead to a rethink of the entire build.
It works well, and aside from my frustrations with a few item modifiers, like certain equipment which rotates its aura after every battle (causing an absolute optimization nightmare), I can’t deny it’s satisfying to work out the spatial puzzle that pushes each character’s numbers as high as possible.
The other battle to fight as the game progresses is with the game’s own UI, which seems to be on a mission to impede the player at every turn.
Enemy moves can only be viewed by hovering over them one at a time, and even then it will only advise that they will “target the character with the highest defense power,” which requires checking another two to three screens to compare different party members.
The Witch is a character who focuses on applying corruption to foes; hovering over the tooltip for corruption advised me it reduces the enemy fortitude. I then have to navigate to my own character menu and hover Fortitude to find it absorbs a portion of incoming damage.
What portion? How does negative fortitude work? I did learn the answer to these questions with enough time in the game, but please ArtDock, it really doesn’t need to be this difficult and makes evaluating build options harder, trying to work out how increasing my “chaos” is going to impact my build overall.
Oh, and while I’m begging, please also tweak the hidden enemy dodge stat!
Dungeons and Dicerolls
Lootbound also sells itself as having “D&D elements“; these mainly take the form of a series of rooms between combats that allow the player to gamble for rewards with a D20.
Each room has 3 rewards, ascending in strength, but each requires a higher roll of the dice. Entering a new biome will refresh a small number of bonus dice, but even these don’t always guarantee a success, so I found myself praying for good rolls… which I suppose does replicate a real D&D experience.
Chancing my luck for rare items to fit builds was always entertaining, and I do appreciate that they tried to mix this system up by having a shop back in town where new bonus dice with different outcomes can be purchased, although I would have liked to see more meta unlocks that add variance to the combat rather than the gambling to help avoid it becoming stale.
At the end of each biome, the player is given a choice between two “parts” of a boss to add to the final fight, with the final biome culminating in a fight against the Frankenstein boss monster created from these various pieces.
While at first I didn’t give the decision much thought, as the runs went on I began to think more about what boss abilities I could best counter using my party. The system is hampered a bit by the relatively simple combat system but I like what they were going for with this mechanic, it keeps the final boss feeling fresh and there is a something compelling in beating a last challenge that I had a hand in designing.
Up to this point, I haven’t touched upon the story or the music as I have rather little to say about either. Similar to many roguelites, the story is fairly minimal with little tidbits of lore sprinkled throughout the initial runs and camp interactions.
It’s a nice touch and gives a little bit of personality to the cast, but there is no doubt players should be trying Lootbound for the plentiful loot and strategic inventory management rather than because they are expecting to be spun an epic tale.
The music and sound design are serviceable but did nothing to really elevate the experience, a shame when the trailer features a rather bombastic grandiose theme.
Final Thoughts
There is the skeleton of something great here, but sadly, while Lootbound initially won me over with its dark fantasy aesthetic and inventory-management gameplay, I found that the more I played, the more systems that needed work began to grate on me.
In some cases they were not engaging enough to keep me invested in the long run, and in the worst cases, actively harmful to my enjoyment of the game.
At the time of writing this review, the developer has just announced they are delaying the release date of Lootbound by an additional two weeks to the 14th August to implement a number of improvements, so I am hopeful some of these concerns will be addressed, which would be a real boon for the game.
For big fans of inventory management-style strategy, there is likely some enjoyment to be found in Lootbound; however, for those who were looking forward to some tactical turn-based combat, I would wait for a few patches to see how the game turns out.
A review key was provided by the developer/publisher.
