[Retro Tuesday] Loom revisited. Also, headaches

My head is killing me today, and I am feeling seriously dizzy. It shouldn't be anything serious, but it's annoying me enough to not be able to right anything properly today. Theeeeerefooooooore, this is going to be another one of those short posts accompanied by a YouTube clip.

Loom, a 1990 game by LucasFilm (currently LucasArts) is a very unique experience, even when compared to the other great adventure games released by the company in the early to mid 90's. One of the first graphical adventures to completely abandon the use of an inventory and related puzzles, the gameplay instead revolves around the use of a distaff and the musical tones the protagonist, Bobbin Threadbare, can play with it.

From a technical point of view, the game was fantastic for its age, especially the CD version, with VGA graphics and full speech. I played the game as a kid, when CD-ROM drives and sound cards were something I'd only read in magazines about, but the 16-color EGA graphics and PC speaker grunts had their own charm back then. Though I find that the 256-color VGA version is really beautiful even today, as it has aged really well. The music is also outstanding, as it should be in a game which emphasises its use so much, but what really stands out is the use of excerpts from Chopin's Swan Lake.

Loom's plot is fairly basic at first glance, as it is basically the typical story of an unwilling young man who is tasked with saving the world, but Brian Moriarty weaved (pardon the pun) a beautiful tale around this basic premise. I can't get into any detailed analysis at the moment due to my amazing nearly-exploding head, but I will say that the story manages to surprise me with its depth and maturity even on my current (second) playthrough, sixteen whole years after my first experience with the game. The game is also quite violent at times, though the violence makes perfect sense in the context it's presented in, something that was another departure from most LucasArts/LucasFilm games of the day.

Sadly the game wasn't as successful as its peers, which presumably is a direct concequence of its unique nature. We tend to idealize about those times, but the early to mid 90's were a time when adventure games were the FPS's of today, and Sierra/Roberta Williams were pumping one sequel after the other, with the predictable results of often low quality, bug-ridden games. In that context, especially when considering that there was no fan-driven Internet hype machine at the time, it wasn't at all surprising that people preferred Sierra's by-the-numbers sequel than a completely new, and sometimes perplexing game such as Loom.

If you would allow me to indulge into a "What-if?" theorycraf rant, I'd have to say that it really is a shame that Loom wasn't a big mainstream success. Had it been such a success, more games would have copied its unique point and click system, which isn't based on such arbitrary verbs or icons for such things as "Talk" or "Use" and so on. But more importantly, more games would have copied its unique approach to puzzles, and its lack of inventory, instead of the countless bullshit inventory puzzles we had to endure over the years. You know, the kind where you have to rub every single item in your inventory of 20+ items on every single part of your screen and hope for some results. Makes one wonder how much more intuitive adventure games would have been had this design convention been abandoned, but oh well.

Rant's over, here's the intro of the game, alongside with some of the first few areas. I have to confess, listening to Bobbin's voice after all these years is a strange feeling.



There's also a speedrun of the entire game on YouTube, where some nutso finishes the entire game in 27 minutes. I haven't watched it, but it should make for an interesting watch for people who want to find out more about the game but don't want to play it. Though I wouldn't be surprised if he skips every single cutscene. At any rate, you can find said video here.

TL;DR version:

"The last leaf of Autumn."