Loop Hero is a dungeon exploring adventure game where you use cards to create a world for your character to survive. Rather than control the hero yourself, you take the role of designer (or Dungeon Master) who use cards to create a world that is hard enough to be rewarding without killing your hero character. This combination of card game, dungeon exploration and repeating adventure makes it unique and intriguing to play. Carcassonne meets Skyrim with pixilated Commodore 64 visuals.

It's set after the world has ended. You wake in a small camp and set out to rebuild things on a series of expeditions. Each expedition starts on a looped path in an empty landscape. Your character automatically moves around the loop, fighting enemies he encounters. You take damage from these encounters but regain health each day and each time you complete a loop.

At any point you can switch to planning mode to equip armour and place cards that you earn by killing enemies. This is the main way you affect the success or failure of each run. By playing mountain, meadow, forest and building cards you offer your hero different benefits. But you also need to be careful as these biomes can also spawn new enemies.

Careful placing of terrain features next to each other modifies their effect. For example, placing lots of mountains together provides additional health but also spawns new enemies. You also gain equipment from slain enemies that increase your attack, defence, health regeneration, and other attributes.

What starts as a super simple dungeon exploration soon evolves into a complex combination of selecting the right cards for your next run, then placing the correct combination of cards next to each other to maximise their benefits.

You make your way around the path until you reach the end of the loop. Here you have the option to retreat back to your base with all your loot, or carry on and risk losing much of it if you die. Either way you soon end up back at base you can use collected resources to build new structures offering better food and weapons.

Out on PC, coming to Switch.