Loopback by Dj Depressive

In the cybernetic future, there are many things to be feared. Among such fears is a threat only spoken of in hushed whispers. A threat that appears and returns to the void as quickly and ruthlessly, as it kills all who witness it.
You are that threat and it is time to leave the void once more.
Amazing concepts and character art by Karin-G
Stunning UI art by PcGameHunter
Really cool tiles and breathtaking voice acting by Theheheo
Great AI and weapons programming by BloooBird
Shitty music, character programming & weapons programming by Dj. Depressive

You control 4 characters of different classes with the goal of eliminating all enemies in an insecure area. Each character has different abilities and you get to plan their upcomming actions. When the actions are planned you can see how they play out and decide between redoing the action or proceeding from them.

There is now a hotfixed version which fixes the crashes and makes the menu more clickable
| Youtube | https://zapphire-studios.itch.io/loopback |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/loopback |
Ratings
| Overall | 1155th | 3.25⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 970th | 3.202⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 364th | 3.726⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 689th | 3.733⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 487th | 3.9⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 329th | 3.744⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 990th | 2.419⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 639th | 3.547⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 45🗳️ | 59🗨️ |





I saw couple of games, with similar concept, but playing for a full strike team, was so much better than having multiple same soldiers.
What killed it for me was the lack of user feedback. I didn't know if something didn't work because of a bug, or because I didn't understand some mechanic. Oh and I spent some time trying to figure out how to shoot, but that's just my small brain not realizing that it is not visible in the planning mode :laughing:
Good job nevertheless!
Btw, is the Threat image on top right supposed to change?
Good Graphics, Good Sound, Good art and very good game-play!
But it's a bit complicated and not very well explained?
There needs to be a bit more Feedback. I didn't even notice if an Enemy takes Damage from my shots.
Also... the Bars for each characters Loop time should be bigger.
I had some issues with that i really didn't know what shots were mine and what enemies, and in which situations my troops would be able to shoot etc. but i think with some kind of a tutorial etc. this could be fixed if you decide to work on this post-jam ^^
I wish the game had better feedback to show when my shots were hitting vs. when they were missing. And by the bossfight, my sequence had gotten pretty long (10+ moves). It would have been nice to have a way to fast-forward the replay, so I wasn't watching the same action over and over.
Overall, this is one of the coolest games I've played in this jam so far!
`%stream starts%`
> Finally, a tactical game! With the team of differently able operators, no less! I'm so excited.
Okay, the walking seems pretty straigtforward. Cool, I can rewind! Niiiice smooth effect.
> No enemies nearby, let's end the turn.
`*shooting sounds*`
What? where did you come from?
> Ok, the second turn, let's kick some ass, blue 1 go go! how do I shoot? I just.. click? Ok, apparently.
*some weird stuff happens, apparently, because I cannot in my life predict how enemies would move*
> What's next? wait, replay starts from turn 1 instead of where I left? that's.. not very convenient.
> Sniper shots are cool. Too bad I cannot see where I'm shooting. Although I can go look, rewind and aim, hmm...
*after that I've re-read the instructions and felt some shame about shift key.
> Tough guy activated shield. Cool, shield is damageable! nice effect. Oh wait, he is chonk and stuck in the corridor now. Rewind cannot pull his ass back out, he's apparently too heavy for the temporal generator! **Sir, we have a problem..**
> Oh what's that in the end? a boss? I'm gonna unload everything! It's going to be an epic fight! it's.. wait he just died?
> ..ok, the zone is clear, what do I do next? guys? guys?..
`%stream ends%`
Replays from the start majorly suck, 1) because I'm tired seeing same events again and 2) they are not really consistent, one time my guy is killed, the next loop he's alive and well! Action feedback is also really required here to be able to play somewhat predictably. Also, some explanations about units and abilities will be nice. You've made a hell of a lot of abilities/secondary fire options, but I cannot really know how and when to use them.
Otherwise - nice graphics, great mechanics, got quite a bit of fun out of it <3
good looking
smooth controls
just need to fix some bugs like display offset and but some in game options and this will be perfect nice job mate
Good job!