“We were just not prepared for this many players,” Blinch explains over Zoom, looking visibly tired. Yet for all the images this may conjure up of boozy celebrations and bloated bank balances, there’s a far more stressful reality to a tiny team finding huge success. Now, Four Quarters has found a large and devoted fanbase almost overnight. Aside from enjoying mild success with their 2015 release Please Don’t Touch Anything, making games wasn’t a career - it was just something they did for the hell of it. Without a single AAA studio on their respective resumes (or indeed a AAA studio in Russia at all), these creators came together purely for the sheer love of making video games. While many indie outfits are formed from the remnants of larger studios, these four mates from Russia have no such pedigree. It’s another air-punching hurrah for the indie underdog, but what makes this success story all the more impressive are Four Quarters’ modest origins. “We're all still pretty shocked,” Blinch says with a laugh. To put that into perspective, that’s more sales than publisher Devolver Digital’s best-known indie darling, 2012’s Hotline Miami, managed in seven weeks. Despite garnering little press in the run-up to release, in its first seven days on sale, Loop Hero shifted an impressive 500,000 copies. “We immediately got really positive feedback,” says Blinch, “and we decided to really polish this and make Loop Hero a fully finished game.” So, after years of building prototypes they never actually finished, Four Quarters decided to double down on the idea, sending out a fully working demo to their friends. It was actually a really peaceful game.”ĭespite this very public coding blunder, all the other core gameplay elements were in place for Loop Hero. “The game build was completely unplayable,” Blinch recalls with a wince, “It was just the hero walking around and not even having encounters with enemies. The first time Four Quarters showed Loop Hero to the public, it didn’t even work.Įntering the game into 2019’s Ludum Dare, a renowned Russian indie game jam competition, their five-year-old idea was finally ready to share with the world. “ Loop Hero was never meant to be a hit,” he tells Inverse an infectious laugh and a disbelieving shake of the head.īlinch spoke with Inverse about how a botched game jam sparked a global sensation, and how the small team of four friends from Russia known as Four Quarters has handled the game’s massive success. Composer and game designer Aleksandr "Blinch" Goreslavets is as surprised as anyone by the game’s sudden popularity. On the heels of Hades and Valheim, Loop Hero is another unlikely indie game that’s found a massive audience as the real world’s ground to a halt. It may look simple at first glance, but once it clicks, Loop Hero hooks its claws into you and doesn’t go. Each completed circuit brings new monsters and recollections of the old world, allowing you to rebuild your surroundings in increasingly complex ways. You’re a wandering amnesiac protagonist, endlessly journeying across a decaying world. On paper, it’s a mash-up of genres that brings to mind chucking half a decade’s worth of gaming buzzwords into a blender, but the resulting concoction is fiendishly addictive and refreshingly unique. Being trapped in a repetitive loop might not sound like escapism right now.īut for many among its half-a-million strong player base, the indie sensation Loop Herois an all-consuming obsession.
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