Games that make time a mechanic, can either be amazing or frustrating, but the moment you combine time with the rogue-like genre, things are going to get infinitely more complicated. Yooreka Studio were kind enough to give me some early access to Loopmancer and it was fun.

Loopmancer tells the story of Xiang Zixu, a detective who is called in to investigate the disappearance of a famous journalist, after getting the intel he heads to Dragon Town, a location known to be frequented by gangs, including one thug who has risen to the top over the past few years. However, before the investigation can get to much further than Xiang delivering a few well thought out threats, he spies a cat off to the side, but before he can refocus on the target ahead, he is killed. This is not the end of his story though, as he soon wakes up in his apartment, startled as if it was some sort of dream, only for his phone to ring, asking him to come in for a new mission, the disappearance of a journalist. Games that do delve into timeloops can be interesting with their story and while I only got to experience this loop a handful of times, no two times were the same, with Xiang either running through the conversation, or throwing out the old “I have done this before” line.

On the gameplay side of things, there is much more to get excited about, the game takes place in a world where cybernetic enhancement is possible, some folks seem content to keep replacing parts as needed and there are those that can not afford to. What this means though is that your gameplay options are quite open, given that Xiang has some enhancements, he can do things like double and hang from platforms and such. There may be more to explore with those enhancements in the full game, but the build that I played had just the basics, combat though, was where things got interesting. By default, Xiang brings with him one bladed weapon and one gun, plus a third ancillary item, usually for me it was a grenade. Before you start you run though, you are given the chance to stop by the armoury and equip for the collection of weapons you have unlocked. Sometimes that is just swapping a knife for one that is shaped differently, but after a few runs, you may have access to a katana or other long sword, to bring with you.

Knowing what weapons, you are taking into your run, is critical, I often found myself struggling, if I just went to the basics, but after getting enough credits to buy a better gun, I found that I was able to make more ground in each successive run. I know what you are thinking, yes having a better gun is always going to help you out, but it isn’t just the fact that it was new, it had different stats that made the impact. The default pistol offers just the most basic of attacks, but it had a better accuracy than my preferred gun, I stuck with that because it offered a larger magazine capacity. Guns though are not your main way of attacking enemies, that is left to your bladed weapon, there are some sword that you can buy in the stages, but they can cost quite a bit of cash.

The sword play was where I had the most fun, not only was it satisfying to slice through enemies, but it also required me to play a little bit smarter than I normally would. While you can just rush in and attack with it, some enemies can deflect your attacks and some can just dodge them and while they would all fall to my blade eventually, they could still kick my butt in the meantime. There was one run through, where the main zone where you encounter the gang leader, where there was extra platforms around, something that hadn’t been there before. Extra platforms were fine, just more land to run around on, but in this case, they came with some extra enemies that were tougher than the average ones, which resulted in my death, because I was too cocky. Learning how to parry and more importantly dodge, was critical to ensuring I didn’t die from the random thugs that the game has all over the place, the big boss though, that was something else.

There was only one boss fight in the build, and it owned me continuously, I just had to keep trying and hope for the best. Eventually though I did start to learn the signs of what attacks were coming and given that this one boss was able to like dash across the screen leaving a wake of lightning behind him and then back again it took some time and a lot of deaths to get used to. I also found that ensuring that I had a weapon with a longer range like a katana, or a gun that could do more damage was beneficial for me here because, while he was stomping slowly across the screen I could you know shoot at him. when I first beat this boss, I was ecstatic, so much so that I dropped the controller, and threw both hands up in the air fist pumping in delight. I'm honestly a little sad though that there was the only the one boss in the build because it was so fun to beat, I wanted more.

Having done about half dozen loops through, my time with the build came to an end and as sad as I was, I also didn't want to play anymore. This is purely because there is a story attached to the game and as a time-looping story, you can only learn so much before you get a general sense of where things are going and I didn't want to spoil the full experience for when the game is done. My time with the game was great, the combat was fast and fluid, it wasn't a breeze that you could just sail on through, it will kick your ass, but because of that it was more rewarding. If Loopmancer appeals to you from either a visual standpoint, a story standpoint or a gameplay standpoint then you really need to add it to your list, because it has everything going for it.