Gideon’s Perspective
Ever since I played Resident Evil 4, I’ve a had a thing for grid-based inventory systems. Lootbound takes the concept of such an inventory system and turns it into a full rogue-lite game where the skill of your luggage packing dictates your characters power. The loot you pick up, be it hammers, magic wands or plate armor grant statistical improvements to your characters. Rarer gear can have auras that empower other loot of a specific kind, for example a legendary sword may empower other swords directly around it.
You can find a video version of this review on YouTube!
The trick is, there is limited space in your backpack, and most of the gear you find has very inconvenient shapes, forcing you to rotate and wiggle in as much as you can while making hard decisions about what to stuff in the pack, and what to put aside. It’s an oddly addicting concept that makes for a relatively novel experience, even though it quite literally boils down victory or defeat into a simple “gear” check.
| Gideon’s Perspective | Lootbound Information |
|---|---|
| Review Copy Used: Yes | Publisher: Dreland Enterprises |
| Hours Played: 12+ | Type: Full Game |
| Reviewed On: PC | Platforms: PC, Xbox Series |
| Fan of Genre: Yes | Genre: Turn-Based Rogue-lite |
| Mode Played: Variety | Price: $14.99 |
Gearing Up
There are four unlockable characters in Lootbound. A heavy hitting warrior that generates thorns, a Witch that curses enemies into taking extra damage, a Bard that buffs and heals and a defensive Paladin. Combat In Lootbound is turn based and is pretty simple. Turn order is decided by initiative and you simply choose an ability to use and that ends your turn. The key is, your loot, and how you have it arranged in your backpack affects those abilities. For example, there are three damage types, slashing, crushing and acid. Slashing is good against HP, crushing is good against armor and acid ignores armor all together.
You might outfit your warrior with a bunch of swords that boost slashing damage, give him a bunch of armor, or boost his thorns so that enemies harm themselves when attacking him. After each battle, you choose from a selection of loot and harder battles grant higher quality loot.
The map itself follows a structure similar to Slay the Spire, giving you multiple routes to choose from. More than other rogue-lites however, I feel like your choice of route is very important in Lootbound.
For one, you want to aim for elite fights as they give the best loot. But other decisions can really impact your run as well. For example, a whole bunch of events rely on the roll of a d20, that you can modify with an extra dice a limited number of times per stage. One such event are blacksmith events where you can roll for gemstones that modify gear. I found that I should avoid those early on while I had crappy gear, on the flipside some rare gear actually doubles the effect of gemstones.
You may want to aim for chests if your gear is lacking. A character’s armor and a bit of mana regenerate after a battle, but health doesn’t, so you may need to aim for a campfire if you need to refill the health and mana of a character. If you have plenty of mana to spare, you could aim for a blessing where you sacrifice mana for rare gear. Sometimes you want to aim for consumables, or a direct buff to a character if you have a build in mind.
I quite like the d20 events, because while they are luck based, being quite literally dependent on a die roll. You have agency in them. In addition to your extra dice that can modify the result, the events always give you a choose of three items. One for a low roll, one for a middling roll and one for a high roll. You have control over how lucky you’re feeling and if you feel like your extra dice can tilt the odds in your favor.
Another unique aspect of Lootbound, is that while you choose a main character, you recruit two of the others during a run. You have to outfit all three of them with the same type of polyomino puzzle, trying your best to garner them toward specific builds. Interestingly, you don’t control your companions directly, and their abilities are slightly altered from the main version. Essentially, they function off of triggers.
For example, the companion Bard will always attack the creature with the lowest health while simultaneously healing a random ally. Then one of the abilities choices you can make for them will have them spend mana on a powerful healing spell if a character drops below 50% HP. Strategizing around your preprogrammed companions is part of the fun.
At the end of each stage, you choose between one of two choices that dictate what the end of the run boss will be like, quite literally building your villain as you play. This allows you to strategize around building a team that capitalizes on the boss you’re building. It’s a clever idea that works well.
Finally, win or lose you can spend crystals on powering up characters, new types of extra dice, and new types of items that can spawn.
The end result is a very unique rogue-lite with an addictive polyomino inventory building system. The core of it is really great, but it’s not without issues of its own. The combat is simplistic to a fault. I won’t say there is no strategy to using your abilities, but it’s minor compared to full picture, which is wholly dictated by the items you pack onto a character and how you place them.
The entire run from the bottom to the top is one big stat check. Did you pack in enough synergies to raise your stats high enough to win? Each fight is more or less ticking a box with a yes or no answer to that question. One example is a mini boss that every two turns attacks your main character a second time. You either have the damage output to win in time, or you lose, period. There is no strategizing your way out of these fights. That stat check may come in the form of pure damage, defensive bloat or debuffing, but the result is the same.
Heck I found one particular powder consumable to be extremely overpowered for this reason. You can carry two consumables at a time, and this powder lowers a creature’s damage output, while making them take more damage, permanently. Taking two of these into an ending boss fight defanged them every time I did it, making the boss almost incapable of hurting my team at all.
Another example I can give is how it makes the meta progression slightly boring. Once you pump enough starting buffs on a character, they begin one shotting the monsters in the first few fights of a run. You just load in, click once and it’s over. Early fights in most rogue-lite games are rarely noteworthy, but it feels strange in Lootbound due to the reliance on pure number padding.
Each character has a specialty that they lean toward but are surprisingly flexible in how you stat them out. However, you always end up with a party of three characters out of the four available, which can make runs feel the same due to the lack of variety. You do unlock higher difficulties to take on with each character however, but I largely felt like I had exhausted most of what the game offers after around 8 hours, though I did play for several more. That’s sadly, not much time for a rogue-lite game. A genre built around replay value.
Verdict
Lootbound is certainly a clever concept for a rogue-lite, the art style is great, the polyomino inventory building to empower characters is addictive and you have plenty of agency when it comes to the games luck reliant elements. I think the main issue is, at its core you really just feel like you’re building a spreadsheet to fight another spreadsheet, and you win if the numbers on your spreadsheet are the higher than the other spreadsheet. That somewhat limits the strategic nature of the game and can make it somewhat exploitable.
It’s certainly entertaining, at least for a while, but the variety isn’t there to sustain it long term. I enjoyed my time with Lootbound, but the rogue-lite genre is a market of stiff competition, and even though Lootbound is a relatively inexpensive game, so is much of its competition. However, if you like to make big numbers go up, and want to make big numbers go up in a really cool and novel way. Lootbound is geared up to tickle that part of your brain.
