Stuck In Time

No, this is not connected in anyway to LoopHero. Yes, the gameplay in both are are wildly different than one another (on the face). No, this does not excuse the absolutely shameful lifting of LoopHero's aesthetic, and dumping it into this game. I'm not sure when I've seen a more blatant case of intellectual theft than is going on here. Which is sad, because what I played of the game, there is something good here, the enjoyment of which is ruined as you're constantly drawn back to LoopHero and how unlikely it is for the developer of that game to actually respond to a clear case of being ripped off as I've ever seen.

So no, can't recommend a game that is technically good, but whose developer got lazy after finishing the gameplay designed and simply aped the artwork and world from another game instead of taking the time to develop their own style.

Let me begin by quoting parts of the developers "About This Game" description.

#1 "(IF) You like the careful planning and the thrill of exploration but hate the repetitive grind, this game is for you."
#2 "Plan your actions ahead of time, choose which path to take, who to fight, what loot to take and start the loop."
#3 "As you repeat the same action it's cost get cheaper, so be sure to check if a quicker route has become available."

Now that's out of the way, I'll begin by saying that whoever wrote that, is either totally deluded, or never played the game they are describing. Because it's impossible.

Every sentence written there, is IMPOSSIBLE.

For example:

#1: If you hate repetitive grind...
*Points to quote #3*

#2: Plan your actions ahead of time.
Lack of both adequate information and action insertion, are this games greatest issues. It is simply impossible to plan much of anything straight out of the box, due to a total lack of projected status... After about the first 50 or so actions, there is no way you know if taking a left, or right, or repeating that action one more time, is preferable because of any number of possible changes IN THE LAST LOOP. Such as level ups, stat increases, affinity improvements, or familiarity bonuses that might have occurred which throw things off. (Let alone the memory game that's expected.)

Thus, it would be more correct to say... "Repeat your actions, over and over, in the hopes your last path, fight, or loot makes any difference at all." Which leads me to quote #3.

#3: As you REPEAT THE SAME ACTION.
Apologies for *cough* repeating myself... But a game can't be both a relief from repetitive grands AND a game that requires quasi-blind repetitive grinds to get better, faster, and stronger...


Conclusion:
At first glance, this game looks promising, and if it were a free demo of an Early Access build, then yeah... I'd be excited for it. But it's not. This is a woefully flawed game with a potentially AMAZING mechanic that is nowhere near ready for sale.

Granted, the price I've paid ($6.39 USD) is a pittance, and is likely a reflection of it's state. But it's more than I've paid for far superior games. As such, I can only caution you away from doing so yourself, unless you just don't care. The only reason I'm not refunding this, is because I really think the developer is on to something that can potentially be amazing, and want them to believe me.

I would love to see this mechanic substantially refined.

First game I've ever refunded on steam out of 700+ games I own.

Gameplay is non existent, I'm a software engineer irl and I understand that the game is trying to teach kids programming at
a super basic level, however, this is not the way to do it.

Each loop costs less mana, so even if you have the optimal solution the the problem, you'd have to wait hours before your solution actually works.

The developers also ripped off loop hero's aesthetics and title, causing people to buy this game thinking it's by the same developers as loop hero.

Instead of buying this game, spend your money on Human Resource Machine.

edit: devs got sued and were forced to change their title lmao.