The LOOP

The LOOP is a co-operative game of time-travelling, despot-busting, evil-foiling high-jinks where the players work together as Time Agents to defeat the Dr Foo, the crown prince of time. The board itself represents the seven eras of time, and Dr Foo not only whirls around visiting them, he also creates duplicates of himself: both have a damaging, potentially catastrophic, effect on the space-time continuum, so your task is twofold: to remove duplicates and minimise damage, and to stop Dr Foo once and for all.

It’s a fairly bananas set-up so we’re just going to dive in and tell you what you do on your turn: first, generate a random duplicate of Dr Foo (out of a bag) and place it in it’s starting era. Flip an artefact card and place it next to it’s matching era. Then flip a Foo card and rotate Dr Foo’s time machine – that thing in the middle of the board, and drop a number of red rift cubes down it: two plus how ever many duplicates are present in the era. A fourth rift cube in a single era is bad: it creates a vortex in the era, and a fourth vortex (or a second vortex where there’s already one present!) and the players collectively lose the game.

Then you take actions: each player starts with a small hand of artefact cards and has three to play on their turn, rotating them sideways to show they have been used. The actions are pretty simple: remove rift cubes, push duplicates, place energy where your Time Agent is… all of which is done with the goal of preventing vortexes from occurring – remember, the more duplicates of Dr Foo there are, the likelier it gets – or completing missions. The missions are simple too; at least in theory. When you complete a mission, such as placing 6 energy in Dr Foo’s era or removing rift cubes from all seven eras, then it’s removed from play: finish four missions to win the game!

BUT take heed: when a vortex occurs, it removes a potential mission, and thus reduces your chances of success. Two things – as well as shrewd teamwork – embolden your chances, however. If you finish your turn next to an artefact card, you may add it to your deck of cards – so your fairly standard starting deck improves as the game continues: if you run out of cards, simply reshuffle your discards and form them into a draw deck again.

The other is what gives The LOOP its name: you can spend one energy from the era you currently occupy to replay cards you’ve already used. And, in fact, you can loop again, and again… as long as you have the energy to do so. The first Loop only costs one energy cube, the second two, the third three, and so on. As expensive as it gets in energy, this chaining of actions can lead to some super-powerful turns in the game, critical to your chances of success. Players can win when their fourth mission is completed, lose when a fourth vortex occurs or simply run out of time: the Foo cards will only be cycled through three times in the game, meaning there are limited amount of turns for you to defeat Foo – and save the universe!