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Loom
Loom
Date added: 2019-11-13
Tags: None
Rated the best by our players
5 out of 5 based on 3615 ratings.
Game Information:
Loom is a graphic adventure game originally published in 1990. It was developed and published by Lucasfilm Games (later LucasArts) and was the fourth game to use the SCUMM adventure engine. The project was led by Brian Moriarty, former Infocom employee and author of the classic text adventures Wishbringer (1985), Trinity (1986) and Beyond Zork (1987).
In 2009, the game was released for digital download on the Steam content distribution system.
Unlike other LucasArts point and click adventure games in many ways, Loom is based on a serious and complex fantasy story. With its experimental interface, it eschewed the traditional paradigm of point and click adventure games, in which puzzles typically involve interactions between the game character, the environment, and multiple objects that the character can take possession of.
Loom's gameplay centers on magical four-note melodies (erasers) that the protagonist, Bobbin Threadbare, can play on his spinning wheel. Each eraser is a spell that has an effect of a certain type, such as "Opening" or "Night Vision". Spells can be learned by observing an object that possesses the qualities of the spell in question; for example, examining a blade while it is being sharpened grants the player the "Sharpen" spell.
Some erasers can be reversed by playing their notes backwards, such that the "Tint" eraser played backwards becomes "Bleach", while others, such as the "Terror" eraser, are palindromes and cannot be reversed this way. The player's abilities increase throughout the game, with erasers becoming more powerful. At the beginning, only the notes C, D and E can be played, but at the end of the game F, G, A, B and C' sharp are also available.
Loom was also the first game to follow LucasArts' game design philosophy, which states that the player will never die or be forced to restart the game, and will not have to "spend hours typing synonyms until [they] stumble upon the word of the computer for a certain object" (see guess the verb).
The game can be played at three difficulty levels, each with slightly different clues. For example, the "Expert" level does not mark the wheel and is played only by ear. In the original version, the expert player is rewarded with a graphic sequence that does not appear in the other two levels. However, the DOS CD-ROM version shows a much shorter version of this sequence to all players.
