A Brief Look at Tales from the Loop

Hey Game Fans, we’re working on new focuses and ideas for our article series, and were going to broaden our horizons and show off some other role-playing games.  I picked up a bunch of these last weekend, and we’re going to get started with Tales from the Loop.  With a tagline of “Roleplaying in the 80’s that never was,” this game combines a very odd juxtaposition of the fantastic and the mundane and turns both ideas on their heads.  Characters in this game are children living in the 80s under the shadow of The Loop, a project designed to explore strange energies and they experience fantastical things that no one else understands.  The story explores the very real struggles that children deal with and the adventures they go through while experiencing their mundane lives.  Other folks have compared it to ET, The Goonies, Stranger Things, and other stories like this.  I would also compare it to the struggles the children have with Pennywise the clown in the first half of IT, from Stephen King, or the kids from the film Super 8.  It’s a very novel concept for a storytelling device and the game looks absurdly fun.