Adventure Gamers' Clubhouse #8 - Loom

Can you have a favorite game that you haven't played in nearly 30 years? I think so. But this month we put it to the test and return to a game that is probably the most reinstalled and replayed game from my childhood.

Look present an interesting and elegant counterpoint to the traditional Lucasarts adventure. There are no items to collect, cram together, and then force back into the environment. The closest thing to an item is the Elder Weaver's distaff, which is less inventory and more UI element -- it's only through this that we can truly act upon the world with any real assertion. Verbs have to be constructed from musical notes, they have to be written down and remembered, not just chosen from a permanently visible list. This deliberateness is a small change but it feels potent, the act of doing becomes a process itself. But at the same time puzzle solutions usually present their solution immediately and with a measure of instruction, which makes Loom feel more adequate than something like Mixed-Up Mother Goose in teaching young children the basics of adventure gaming, without the additional baggage of nursery rhymes feeling woefully infantile by comparison.

I think more than anything coming back to Loom, which felt so expensive and huge as a child and realizing that it's a game I can cruise through in less than the length of a Marvel movie, is fascinating, but it's no less rich the experience for it. Especially when taking in the subtle and at times deftly funny (but oh so self-serious at times) world building in the audio drama and Book of Patterns.

Loom is definitely an incomplete project, but there's a charm in that. Like the last bit of tattered tapestry hanging in the Elders' tent, being a remnant still holds possibility of what could have been and wasn't, the lingering potential of a child's imagination unencumbered by constraints like sales targets and brand identity.

Hope you enjoy this adventure with me this month!

Here's the link to the audio drama:

https://youtu.be/z5Wj5GOiJYg?si=QnQGmrFWGEqmmZ9Y

And this is the pdf for the book of shadows:

http://selmiak.bplaced.net/games/pc/index.php?lang=eng&game=Loom&page=redirect-BookOfPatternsMirror