Tales From The Loop Review

Save the day but you better be home before dinner.

Tales From The Loop is based in the universe of the same name. In a small town in Sweden, a group of kids investigates strange phenomena that wreak havoc on the town. Each round starts with the school phase where a skill check is performed. This is something that can help or hurt you depending on how you roll the dice. Each character is better at some skills versus others. To pass a skill check, you simply need to roll a single 6 from a set number of dice based on your skill level. After the school phase, the game really starts. Each player starts at school and needs to work towards a specific goal from the chapter deck. As you complete tasks you will continue to follow through the deck and will either eventually pass or fail the scenario. You will need to do some clever gameplay in order to do this because you only get 6 actions per turn and there are effects that can give you even less. You also need to end your turn at your house to be home for dinner or else you'll get in trouble and potentially lose even more actions.

The Good: The overall theme of the game is really interesting. I was completely unfamiliar with the Tales from the Loop universe so it was cool to dig into a new world. There is a ton of replayability in this game. Each scenario can be played through in different ways and there are a couple of expansions as well (I really want to see what that dinosaur is all about). I really liked the minis that were included with the game.

The Okay: I found it really difficult to actually be able to complete some goals. Especially in a solo game having essentially 10 actions to go around the map and complete objectives was extremely difficult to manage. I did pass the scenarios that I played but it was very close each time.

The Not So Good: As cool as it is that they included the robot minis, it bothers me that the players are standees. I personally also wasn't a huge fan of the character art. Maybe if they were in mini form I would have liked it better? This is me being particular, it's not at all a game-breaking issue.

Overall: 7/10

Tales from the Loop is a really interesting concept that didn't really click with me the way I'd hoped that it would. I liked the idea of investigating weird stuff going on around town but I feel like the game left me wanting more out of it. I almost never used items and only did stuff with robots when I was forced to do it. I just would have liked to see a little more depth to the game. It's not to say it's a bad game at all though. It has some really cool concepts. The almost choose your own adventure aspect is really well thought out and the stories were nicely written.

Thanks to Free League for providing me with a review copy.