Change the future.
The Loop begins.
Loopmancer is a cyberpunk-themed 3D roguelite Beat 'em Up / Metroidvania platformer developed by Beijing's eBrain Studio.
2046, Dragon City a.k.a Neo-Hong Kong — after two decades of technological advancements, a MegaCorp who went by the name Tompson Technologies controls much of the city's facilities, from urban development to resource management and the medical sector. Especially the medical sector, where thanks to a breakthrough in organ transplanting technology five years ago, Tompson Technologies' lab-grown implants can now cure all diseases and extend lives of citizens. Within half a decade, millions of citizens now bears implants from Tompson's labs in their bodies.
Not that the Player Character have any interest in all these. Players are in control of Xiang Zixu, a detective, private eye and a disillusioned, broken man with a troubled past — losing his family in a car accident, Zixu was rebuilt from the brink of death and granted the ability to rewind time thanks to nanotechnologies, allowing him to travel back via "looping", the catch being that he can only do so by dying, and within a fixed point in the past. The time-frame of his daughter's demise being beyond his powers to reach, Xiang Zixu decides to use his abilities to good use, maintaining the peace within Dragon City.
Xiang Zixu's latest case sees him on the trail of a missing reporter named Lisbeth, abducted by the triads, with the city's lead crime lord, Wei Long, suspected to be the same man responsible for destroying Zixu's life five years ago but released because of a judicial loophole, being involved. Intending to further pursue Wei Long and put a stop to their further activities, Zixu throws himself into the case — only to uncover a far more sinister conspiracy involving Tompson Technologies. Inevitably, Zixu is the one hero who can reveal the truth to the public.
Gameplay-wise, Loopmancer follows a side-view perspective, in a series of missions that leads from the big city to rural villages and naval outposts, where Zixu can obtain upgrades allowing him to pummel through hordes and hordes of mooks.
Enter the Fascinating World of Eastern Cyberpunk
- Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Dragon City has a pretty huge one underneath their busy streets, which Zixu can swing his way around.
- All Your Base Are Belong to Us: The last stage where Song Boyong reveals his true intentions of usurping leadership of Tompson Technologies, and took over the robotic security besides hijacking the entire facility.
- An Arm and a Leg: Zixu lost his left arm and part of his legs in the backstory (after Wei Long ordered the accident that cost Zixu his family). The mooks tend to suffer this fate as well, having their appendages severed by Zixu's sword — expect mooks to audibly shout, "My arm!" every now and then.
- Ate His Gun: Zixu does this on purpose in order to restart the loop in a few cutscenes. From a first-person perspective, no less, where he stares down his pistol's barrel and the screen goes black after a gunshot.
- Bare-Handed Blade Block: The oil rig boss fight against Hiroyuki has Zixu grabbing Hiroyuki's katana by the blade in the finishing cutscene, though using his mechanical hand.
- Barefoot Captives: The unfortunate, unnamed young woman captive Zixu rescues in Ditch Village's underground facility for mutating villagers is shoeless.
- Body Horror: The effects of bio-growth from Tompson Technology, which Zixu uncovers after investigating Ditch Village and entering their hidden, underground lab filled with captured ex-villagers — besides growing multiple extra limbs, the unwilling test subjects also grow almost twice in height and sprout a hump on their backs, their faces becoming distorted as tumors and lumps start bulging through random parts of their bodies.
- Cat Stereotype: A stray black cat appears in the cutscene where Zixu confronts Wei Long the first time, after defeating the Brute, right before Zixu gets killed by an unseen sniper and sent back to the start of the loop. In the re-confrontation, the same cat appears, and players need to pass a Quick Time Event to avoid death this time.
- Continuing is Painful: Dying and restarting a loop costs Zixu all his credits and in-mission buffs, although he can keep Cores and Mementos for unlocking new skills.
- Cutscene Power to the Max: Downplayed, since Zixu is a highly-capable asskicker and fighter even in gameplay, but the cutscene before he confronts Hiroyuki on a rig sees Hiroyuki flanked by twenty or so ninja minions. The ninja mooks go first, and Zixu kills all of them in under ten seconds, including dealing a One-Hit Kill on mooks that, in gameplay proper, can tank multiple hits. Then comes the boss battle where player regains control.
- Cyber Ninja: Hiroyuki Ogata and his underlings are all ninja, and bionically-enhanced.
- Exploding Barrels: Tends to show up randomly throughout the game, even in the most implausible locations (what are these barrels doing in the middle of Dragon City's streets is beyond anyone's guess). Hitting them once will set them to explode within a couple of seconds, and Zixu needs to retreat from the blast radius — mooks caught in the explosion will be messily ripped to shreds.
- Flying Car: Dragon City, being based on what Hong Kong would look like after two decades of technological improvements, naturally have tons of flying automobiles in their skies.
- Genre Mashup: Heroic Bloodshed plus Cyberpunk plus Roguelite makes a surprisingly effective combination.
- Ghost Town: Ditch Village, a rural area in downtown Dragon City, which was evacuated years ago because of an alleged pandemic outbreak. Lisbeth, the missing journalist, was somehow reported to be near the area, despite it being cordoned off by the authorities, leading to Zixu's decision to investigate. And then he finds the civilians in a state he's not expecting them to be — sealed in an underground research facility and mutated to grotesque proportions, by Tompson Technology's biological department.
- High-Pressure Blood: Mooks tend to suffer some seriously bloody overkills. Finish off an enemy with Zixu's sword, and he'll fly halfway across the screen while erupting like a burst pinata filled with overripe tomatoes, decorating a mile with red stuff.
- Huge Holographic Head: Kouga Industries' lobby area has a projector for displaying either their boss, Shizue, or the second-in-command, Hiroyuki, as a full-bodied hologram that reaches the ceiling.
- Human Resources: Originally, the highly-revered bio-tech company, Tompson Technology, was assumed to have their resources grown from chimpanzees, but it turns out lab tests using chimpanzees tend to yield unpredictable results, and aren't as compatible with human bodies as intended. So instead, they form an alliance with the triads, led by Wei Long, to have the rural Ditch Village abducted and used for their experiments, with horrific results before sweeping the aftermath under the rug.
- Justified Save Point: The game's savepoints are fixed temporal loops; if Zixu dies in gameplay he gets reset to the beginning of the most recent loop. There are even cutscenes where he purposely kills himself to restart a loop!
- Look Both Ways: A requirement while crossing the busy streets of Dragon City, or navigating Zixu through tunnels. Passing vehicles will appear periodically and run him over, taking a huge chunk of his health if not killing him.
- Mission Control: Zixu's contact, senior mission intel agent Mona who monitors Xiang Zixu during his investigations serves this role.
- Mutant: Tall, deformed, lanky humanoids with multiple arms appear in an underground level in Ditch Village, and show up in large quantities in the last levels. They are the results of Tompson Technologies experimenting with the abducted civilains of Ditch Village.
- Neon City: Dragon City is filled with neon signs on buildings, rooftops, and even in the tunnels. It's supposedly Hong Kong, two decades into the future, after all.
- Noun Verber: Loop-mancer.
- Obstructive Foreground: Defied (thankfully, seeing how action scenes tend to get really hectic at times), in the case where foreground objects like pillars, trees, and stray walls gets in the way, Zixu and enemy mooks will be highlighted as orange silhouettes.
- Robot Soldier: The police and military in futuristic Dragon City uses robots as security guards. The final level in Tompson Technology sees them as Mecha-Mooks instead, where Zixu battles them in large numbers to reach Song Boyong.
- Running Gag: Various NPC characters calling Xiang Zixu a "petty detective" during cutscenes. Nevermind he's a One-Man Army badass who took plenty of names throughout.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The game's very premise; the player hero, Xiang Zixu, can reset time by dying and restarting the time loop, allowing him to try to set things right again and again and again. Unfortunately, there are limits to where the loop can extend, where he can't stop his daughter's death five years ago unless he unlocks the best ending.
- Stock Scream: The Wilhelm scream can occasionally be heard in early levels, whenever Zixu lands a kill that sends enemies halfway across the streets. It stops showing up after the first boss, though (even when landing kills that results in Wilhelms that would've worked in the first level).
- Sword Lines: Zixu's sabre tends to leave curved lines with each slash, as does most blade-wielding opponents and the boss, Hiroyuki.
- The Triads and the Tongs: Dragon City's underworld is infested by their members, with loads of triad mooks Zixu needs to battle across multiple levels.
- You Can't Thwart Stage One: After defeating the Brute, attempting to confront Wei Long, Zixu gets himself killed by an unseen sniper. He gets resent through the loop for the first time, and has to restart his investigations with his acquired clues.
- You Fight Like a Cow: For some weird reason, sometimes onscreen mooks will taunt Zixu with "You hit like a pig!"
