What got me to jump in with both feet was The Adventure Gamer started playing it recently, and in his LOOM: Introduction blog post, he made me aware of the existence of a 30-minute audio drama that came as a cassette with the game. It covered much of the backstory, setting the stage for the prologue of the game. I bought LOOM on Steam, so I had no idea the cassette even existed. The audio drama is fairly well done and uses all the voice actors from the game. You could gather the backstory from bits and pieces in the game itself, but I really enjoyed the 30-minute exposition. It pushed me to start playing immediately. Give it a listen on Youtube if you're so inclined.
In short, you are Bobbin Threadbare, a child born of the LOOM. Your mother, Lady Cygna, created you via weaving a single grey thread on the LOOM after losing yet another child. She did this in defiance of the Elders' wishes, who thought this would be playing God. This act of rebellion led them to transform Cygna into a swan, banish her for her disobedience, and left young Bobbin all alone. Fortunately, he was taken in by Cygna's friend Hetchel and raised as her own, and while she was given strict orders not to teach Bobbin the Guild of Weaver's craft, she defied that decree and taught him some simple drafts.
A draft is the weaving of threads by playing four musical notes with your distaff in a specific order to affect change in the world around you. For example, ECED is the Open draft, which can be used to open doors and whatnot. More notes become available as you progress, allowing you to play more advanced drafts that you'll learn along the way.
You'll have to write these drafts down somewhere as there's no way in-game to keep track of them. If you have the original boxed version of this game, it comes with a "Book of Patterns" to write these down in, along with some useful descriptions of the drafts that I'm sure I would have found useful in my playthrough. You can manage without it though so never fear.
Since playing these drafts is the main way to interact with objects in this game, the UI for LOOM is a tad different from other LucasArts games. You don't have an inventory, and the normal verbage of USE, LOOK, PICK UP, etc. is gone. The lower third of the screen is occupied instead by your distaff and an area to display the image of the currently selected object.
When you mouse over an object that's interactable, an image of it will appear in the lower right. Clicking on that object in the game world will keep it selected, and the image will remain in the lower right corner, allowing you to use a draft on it. Clicking on the image itself will allow you to LOOK at the object, making Bobbin say a few words about it.
These controls work well enough...but it is a minor pain in the ass that you can't look for interactable objects while walking. You have to be standing still for the images to appear. I can do two things at once, LucasArts. Let me be efficient. Navigation is also a bit odd when there's multiple planes in one scene. For the most part, clicking high or low on the screen won't make you go forward or backward in the scene. It's the left/right location that's important. In instances where there are multiple depths at which you can move, you'll have to ease Bobbin onto whatever bridge or walkway leads to that second plane because just clicking where you want him to go results in him moving to that lateral location on whatever plane he's currently on. It's odd, but thankfully only two or three scenes share this problem.
Trivial. It's fine. The important thing was that the story was interesting and kept me engaged. The backgrounds were very nice looking, and there weren't any puzzles that were so convoluted that they couldn't be figured out. I made sure to take my own advice and didn't feel rushed or antsy to finish. It isn't a very long game, making it doubly shameful to cheat and look up hints. The few times I did get stalled, I allowed myself to be stuck and came back to it later, confident knowing that it was solvable. This was because LOOM was one of the first LucasArts games to adhere to their code of not letting the user get into some unwinnable state requiring reloading from a previous save or worse, restarting the game entirely. I appreciated this change in game design ideology. It's too easy to think you screwed up in some gargantuan fashion rather than remain calm and assume you're just not trying the right things. This leads to reluctant cheating. Reluctant cheating leads to frequent cheating. Frequent cheating leads to being an asshole. Thanks for nipping that in the bud, LucasArts.
I enjoyed the world of LOOM. There were interesting characters, lore, and unique game mechanics. The game was a bit short and rather easy at times, but it was an enjoyable experience throughout. The real shame of it is that the ending is clearly open ended, setting them up for sequels which never were to be. I'm only 23 years too late, but somebody want to make that sequel? I'm ready now. Telltale Games, perhaps? Anyone, anyone? Bueller?
