The LOOP Board Game Review

Some people might argue that Spirit Island is one of the best tabletop games. Even if just in its own genre of tower defense, threat management, cooperative game. Usually, for those people, there is no point in trying other games unless the game gives equal challenge.

However, for some others, while not denying that claim, feels that Spirit Island demands too much for their brain power. Especially with the expansion, playing with multiple Spirits and playing with the higher difficulty mode, the game might take multiple hours to finish.

Maybe that’s the reason you still see more games in this genre coming out in recent years. The LOOP is one of them and I see it being recommended exactly for that purpose. They say that is like Spirit Island but more approachable and accessible.

Title: The LOOP
Designer: Maxime Rambourg, Théo Rivière
Publisher: Catch Up Games
Artist: Simon Caruso

Genre: Time Travel, Scenario, Deck Building, Variable Player Powers, Cooperative, Official Solo Mode, 1-4 players

Overview

In the LOOP, players are time travel agents working together to stop Dr. Faux from messing with the timeline. At the start of every round, Dr. Faux will send out one or more of his clones to one or more eras while targeting a specific one.  That target era might already have clones. Each clone will increase the number of threats that can happen to that era, the previous era and the next era.

Using the Faux machine cube tower at the center of the board, you first point the machine towards the target Era. Then you drop red cubes or threats from the top. Those cubes might land on one of 3 Eras, the target one and the other 2. Dr. Faux will target every Era eventually but in random order.

When an Era has taken enough damage, that means Dr. Faux plan on that Era is complete and create a Vortex. Players lose the game when one Era has become Vortex twice. Or, if the 4th Era has become a Vortex.

Players can delay that from happening by decreasing the threats, marked by red cubes on each era. Or, they can also drag the clones back to their origin timeline to remove them. But all of that is not enough to win.

In order to win, players have to complete 4 missions, one from each Era. Each mission has its own requirement. Maybe on one, you need to destroy a clone in targeted Era. In another mission, maybe you need to generate Energy to an Era multiple times. After you have done the requirement, in order to complete the mission, one player has to end their action on that specific Era.

Only 2 missions are revealed at the start. After completing one mission, another will be revealed and only after that you can start working on it. Remember that a Vortex can still happen while you are working on a mission on an Era. If that Era becomes a Vortex then the mission and all of its progress is failed completely. So, players have to balance between making progress on the mission while keeping its Era safe.

Also, the longer you play, the more threats that Dr. Faux is deploying. But you can also get stronger by finding artifacts. Every round, a random artifact will be revealed in its origin Era. Players can try to collect them by also ending their action on that Era.

Complete 4 missions before eventually Dr. Faux unleash his biggest threat. That is the general idea of how you win in the LOOP.

As for how you play the game, the game is revolved around the artifact cards. These artifacts cards allow you to do various things like moving from one era to another. Some allow you to remove threats, generate energy or remove clones. The stronger ones even allow you to do multiple of those things.

Each artifact is unique and they work differently even for the similar purpose. For example, maybe one artifact allows you to remove one threat on your Era. Maybe a different artifact allows you to remove one threat but it has to be an adjacent Era.

Energy is an important resource for 2 things. One allows you to move from one Era to an adjacent one. The other is to do the LOOP. Doing a Loop means repeating the artifact card once again. And it is not just repeating one card but multiple cards with the same dimension type out of the 3. Because of this, you might want to get one character more artifacts with the same dimension.

You can even do multiple Loops but every subsequent loop requires more energy. So, making energy available for now and maybe more so later you can do multiple loops is part of the game.

Each player also controls one character out of 5. They all have unique powers and a set of starting artifacts. For example, Prowler can remove a threat cube after the drop as if they never happen but only on her turn. Another can generate energy by defeating more than one clone on the same turn.

The game comes with various modes where Dr. Faux behaves differently. Some have extra requirements that you need to complete in order to win.

Will you be able to defeat Dr. Faux and save the timeline before it’s too late?

Session Reports

August 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and Tumblr. For some reason I didn’t feel like trying the next different modes provided in this game. Instead, I decided to play 2-handed like each player having their own deck instead of combined one. Back with the SABOTAGE mode and I chose the Prowler and Robofinisher.

I completed the 4th mission during the 2nd card of the Phase 3. Two Eras already got Vortex. Neither of them was dangerous enough with the threat. That means there was one more active mission left which I didn’t make any progress at all.

I probably should have played with 3 characters to try instead of 2 to make a better comparison between this standard play and the solo mode. While I maybe like it as much if not more, maybe parts of them is because I only run fewer characters which is greatly helpful with the Prowler mostly.

With this mode, every player has their own deck they need to build, then they have to actively chase the new cards. Particularly the one that helps their LOOP actions more. With the combined deck, it really depends on the situation as that card might switch hand to a different character in subsequent rounds. But that means, you don’t need to worry who is taking the card.

I personally don’t think this make much different considering that which card they add per round is totally random. Only when later in the game when one era might have more than one card, then you can choose which one is better for you. While at the start, you just take them and maybe it can help you deck build in different way.

The difference that I felt is maybe more because I played with less character. I don’t know the detail of each character’s specialties but from these 2, it felt like I didn’t remove a lot of the clones. I ended the game with still 21 clones on the board,

Robo definitely has some cards but the cards are not for the Loop action. Not enough to activate their main ability that often. I think I got once in that session.  Prowler probably has one but more about removing the red cube or adding energy. Of course, that still helps by looping the action to remove clones later. I think I got one round when the Prowler did the Loop twice.

So, I’m not sure if the mode with separate decks is better but I also cannot say that the solo mode add that much either. While I definitely will try to activate the Prowler more because of her ability to mitigate the random drop of cube with the combined deck. Not sure if it helps with the other characters though.

So, for the next play I can either try playing 3 with separate decks or I can play with 2 with combined decks and see if I can find more noticeable difference.

Playing time was about 84 minutes.

March 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. This time, I tried one of the other game modes and I picked SAYAN SUPA CLONES. The difference to SABOTAGE is that in addition to completing 4 missions, you also need to destroy these Supa Clones. Depending on the difficulty level, they can be 3 or more.

The Supa clones are essentially the same as regular clones. It’s just when you destroy one of them by sending them to the correct Era, you then add 2 regular clones to that Era. On the other hand, now that Era will have blue cube which is essentially the same as Energy cube but you don’t remove them after spending them.

My mistake was that I decided to get rid of the Supa Clones immediately.  Instead, I should have just moved them so they were close to their Era and just finished the missions first. Or, if I wanted to destroy them early, it’s better to choose the Era that already got attacked in that phase.

I still won, using my house rule about dropping those cubes. But there were already 3 Eras with vortex. At the end, two of those vortexes had already full of red cubes.

I played the Robo Finisher, V-Girl and Prowler. Maybe their decks don’t have enough to get rid of clones so the problem got even worse. If I remember correctly, I had to do multiple loops for the cards that get rid of clones because of that situation.

I finished the game with 2 cards left of the 2nd phase and a lot of moment where I should have lost. I also only picked the easiest difficulty of this mode. So, definitely already more challenging compared to just the Sabotage. Not sure if it offers different experience though.

November 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Played the standard SABOTAGE mission again solo with Mr. Time, Prowler and Cztwyzzek. Finished the 4th mission with 2 cards left of the 2nd phase, already with 3 vortexes. Hopefully I didn’t forget anything like last time.  Playing time was about 80 minutes.

Playing time was about 129 minutes.

August 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Another SABOTAGE mission and another error. This time, I forgot to add Clones on every turn. I realized it made the first phase easier and I continued from that point by immediately adding equal number of missing clones.

In the end, V-Girl, Mr. Time and The Prowler managed to complete 4 missions but already with 3 vortexes and 4 rounds left. Playing time was about 120 minutes.

May 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Still with SABOTAGE mission after major error last play. Played with Time Prowler, Robo Finisher and the V-Girl. I completed the 4th mission during 2nd Phase with like 2 Era cards left.

March 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Played the SABOTAGE mission again with the Orange, Blue and Pink character. I thought I won but I completely forgot about completing a mission has to be done by ending the turn on that specific era.

November 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. This was my first play, using 3 characters with the official solo variant and the standard mode so a bit of first impression entry.

Got 2 sessions where the first one got beat up badly due to hard objectives right from the start. Then got better with the 2nd play. Probably played all characters in those 2 sessions.

More unboxing pictures of The LOOP on IG.