While waiting for my mail-ordered copy of Morpheus to arrive,
I was looking for something else to play and came across this enchanting little
game called Loom. I popped in the CD, rebooted to DOS, and was instantly
hooked. This game is a real gem!

You are Bobbin Threadbare, an outcast from
the Weavers Guild. You are summoned by the elders to your village and find them
at the Loom, a magical thing that weaves the patterns of life. The elders are
set to banish you but instead accidentally cast a spell on themselves that turns
them into swans, and out the window they fly. You pick up the magical distaff
of Atropos and set off to find the swans. You explore your village and learn new
spells, then sail across the sea to a green-glass city. In this city, you first
encounter the Bishop, who wants to raise an army of the dead to accomplish his
own evil ends. You explore the city and the surrounding terrain and defeat a dragon.
You then travel to the village of a Blacksmith Guild and prevent the forging of
the ten thousandth sword, which slightly foils the evil Bishop’s plans. He casts
you into his prison, from which you promptly escape, just in time to watch the
Bishop rend a hole in the fabric between this world and the netherworld. Chaos
escapes, destroys the Bishop, and pursues her own plan to take over the world,
and it is ultimately your job to stop her. The plot is pretty rich (no moss growing
on this one), especially for such an old game, so I give it an A.

The
graphics in this game were probably state-of-the-art in 1990, and they hold up
pretty well today except for the bigger pixels. Some of the scenes are beautifully
rendered, most notably the starry background in the “void.” It was easy
to tell exactly what was going on; there is no pixel-hunting, and all of the scenes
were very clear. I am going to pretend like I had played this game in 1990 and
give the graphics a B.

This is a third-person game with you controlling
Bobbin’s actions throughout. There is no “inventory” in this game. The
only thing I ever picked up was the distaff. By clicking on items or talking to
people you encounter in the game, you learn four-note sequences that turn out
to be magic spells when you play them back on the distaff. The items that give
you the tune generally provide a clue as to what the magic spell will do. The
trick is to know what spell to apply in each situation.

You have three choices
at the start of the game, Standard, Practice, and Expert. According to the handbook,
Standard shows the notes as they are played, and Practice lets you practice playing
the little tunes. Unfortunately, I didn’t read that part until I was well into
the game, having unwittingly picked Expert because I fancy myself pretty good
at adventure games. Also unfortunately, I am not very good at playing back tunes,
even if they are only four notes, but I did not want to start over again and so
decided to muddle through. However, this turned out not to be such a bad thing.
It is a LucasArts game, so you can’t die or screw up irremediably, and you get
plenty of chances to try things again. Also, you start off with only two or three
notes and gain more notes as you gain experience, to a maximum of nine (C to C),
so there is time to get used to them. I found I had to restore previous games
a couple of times, though, because I did not make note (pun not intended) of tunes
that I needed later in the game. However, this is not a long or difficult game.
I finished the whole thing in about five hours with no hints. I wish it had been
longer!

Because the gameplay is so intuitive and the interface unintrusive,
I give the game an A in this category.

The music in this game is
just lovely, but there is not enough of it. What there is has a classical/pop
flavor with a lot of strings and harp. The sound effects mostly consist of the
noise that happens when you cast a spell, which is a twinkly harp sequence. It
is not impressive but also not annoying and, along with the rest of the sound
effects, fits the mood of the game quite well. I get the impression from the two
copyright dates on the CD that the voices were added later when the game was transferred
to CD, and that usually means terrible acting, but not so in this case. Most of
the characters don’t have much to say, so none has a chance to get annoying. I
would say, though, that if they had talked more, I would have been irritated by
some of them, notably Bobbin, who sometimes sounded whiny. Some of the women in
the game, though, did an outstanding job. I really liked the voice of Chaos–she
was truly scary. Most of the voice acting was only adequate, but because of the
music, I give this category a B+.

This game gets a resounding
A and two thumbs up! The overall effect is just magical, and I would recommend
it to anybody. It’s got a lot of the standard adventure elements, but it just
so extraordinary overall that it was an absolute joy to play. It takes its place
right up there with the rest of my all-time favorite games.

Final Grade:
A