“Lootbound is a tactical roguelite with turn-based combat, loot management and D&D elements set in a dark fantasy world. Fight dangerous enemies, collect epic loot, recruit allies and lead them on a path of adventure.”

Lootbound is a turn based roguelite with an inventory management systems similar to Backpack Battles. You will find yourself juggling new loot between your three party members to help make them stronger as fight your way through three maps until you finally face off against the boss of the run. Who is this boss you ask? Well the boss is actually something of your own choosing. At the end of each map you will be asked to pick one of two pieces of a boss. The first map is the head that determines the buffs and debuffs it will have, the second is the body that will determine how much health and armor it will have, and the final map is the arms that will determine what type of attack it will be hitting you with.

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One Sword, Two Sword
Red Sword, Blue Sword

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The main focus of Lootbound is the loot and how you place it in your character’s inventory. Each piece of gear that you pick up needs to fit in your inventory, and like I said earlier, you’ll be familiar with a similar system if you played Backpack Battles. Each piece will give you stats, for the most part they are positive. Some items will have a negative stat so just be mindful as you equip items that you don’t goof up your build. The basic stats that you’d expect a standard RPG to have are present:

There are a couple that deviate from the norm which are order & chaos.

Once you have all that down, you have the different types of damage in the game: Base, Slash, Crush, and Acid.

Some higher rarity armor will also have auras. Auras will buff certain types of items as long as they are placed correctly inside the highlighted area giving them increased stats. There are also gems that can be added to any type of item that adds even more stats. You are able to move, rotate, and try your best to fit as many items as you can into your characters inventory. Some items will even rotate on their own between fights, causing you to need to constantly adjust your inventory to keep the buffs they give.

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Four is a Crowd

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At the start of a run you pick one of four classes you can eventually unlock. You start with the Warrior, then get the Witch, Paladin, and Bard.

• The Warrior focuses on slash damage as well as using thorns and offering some buffs to yourself and your party.
• The Witch unleashes curses and debuffs on your enemies and it is mainly focused on using chaos and vampirism to whittle your enemies down.
• The Bard uses order to heal and buff your party so they can survive and overcome all challenges.
• The Paladin uses order and armor to tank, heal and restore armor to the party so they can withstand anything sent their way.

Over the course of a run you can recruit two of the three classes you did not start the run with. There’s a catch though. You do not control them. Instead they have clearly defined ways they will act; for example: The paladin attacking the lowest health enemy or using a skill to restore armor when a hero has no armor left. Along side getting party members you will also be asked to pick three extra skills over the course of the run that will define what your build for that run will be.

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Branching Pathways

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As you pick your path through the three different maps you’ll face off against various enemies and encounter different events. When you happen upon some of these events you’ll have to make a choice of three things. One of these choices you can get without doing anything extra and the other two will have a difficulty class attached to them that will require you to roll a 20 sided die to meet or beat difficulty class. As with all dice rolls you have a chance to fail, which is where you have an option to use your 6 sided extra dice. When you roll this dice you add it to your failed roll so you can try and salvage it. Other events you will have more control over the choices you make. This could be things like picking new abilities or getting consumables. You can even camp and hear some banter between your party members.

Enemies and elites will be the remaining events you can find as you make your way through the run. Enemies when selected in battle will show off their attack power, how they choose the target of their attack, the type of attack, and if they apply a buff or debuff. Using this information, depending on the setup of your team, you can choose what enemies will be the most dangerous and dispatch them accordingly. Elites are similar to basic enemies. Generally they have more health and armor but offer better loot when you defeat them. Regardless, if you end up beating the final boss or your primary hero gets killed you run ends. At this time you will be awarded memory shards that can be used for metaprogression.

What makes this game interesting to me is the way it keeps you engaged in how you have your items placed into your bag. One of the runs I did, the paladin I recruited end up having two helmets that were forced to rotate after every fight. The helmets buffed any armor that was either above or below them. So I was always adjusting the gear in my paladins bag in order to take advantage of the buffs that the helmets gave. During the same run, my warrior was set up in away that every sword in their bag was buffing every other sword. This, along side with permanent stat buffs over the course of the run, had me at 100% Crit rate. Between my Paladin, who had the most armor and was often taking the hits for the team as well as resorting armor for them, and the Warrior almost 1 shotting every enemy that was not a boss. I felt that the time I put into perfecting the placement of the items I got was rewarded by an amazing build that, once I got to the boss of the run, I was able to quickly take him down over the course of 4 turn even after it healed itself and fully restored its armor.

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• Graphics– The pixel art is very clean and beautiful.
• Gameplay– Easy to learn hard to master turn based combat is always some of the best.
• Sound– The music fits the theme of the game but there were no track the stood out to me or got stuck in my head like other games.
• Controls– The controls are easy to use and understand as its a simple turn based roguelike.
• Story– While there is some story there is not a lot of it and it is mainly regulated to the end of runs and the camp events.