
	Platform PC Genre Adventure Publisher Lucasfilm Games Developer Lucasfilms Games ETA 1990
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Loom

When LucasArts was just starting out releasing adventure games, a lot of their efforts were far more comedic in nature. There were titles like Maniac Mansion, and Zak McKracken that had a fairly relaxed, humorous sensibility, but in 1990 the company put out Loom, a far more serious, fantasy-based affair. Developed by Brain Moriarty, who had previously been making a name for himself via his text adventures at Infocom, Loom was a big step forward for adventure gaming at LucasArts.

What really made Loom stand out from other graphical adventures of the time was how it went about gameplay. Usually in adventure games, characters would wander around various environment and find things that they could pick up and use on other objects, thus causing some sort of event to happen, resulting in the game progressing. In Loom, gameplay was very much based on music. The main character, Bobbin, carried with him a distaff that was able to play musical notes. By observing things happening around him, he would learn to play different tunes on the device that would thus affect his surroundings. Sometimes players could even try reversing the melody and discover that it would have a different affect on their environment. This also marked the first time LucasArts made it so that the main character couldn’t die in one of their adventure games, which proved a bit controversial at the time.

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The game took place in the distant future where the world's knowledge was held by a variety of specialized guilds ranging from blacksmiths to shepherds. The most powerful of these guilds was the Weaver's Guild. It started by specializing in the weaving in cloth, but eventually became so powerful it could weave the fabric of existence. Thanks to this incredible power, the other guilds began

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to fear the Weavers, forcing the guild to relocate to a secluded island, where it continued to do its thing, and operated a massive loom that could control all of existence. The one problem that the guild had was that it was having difficulty producing offspring. In time, though, one was born through a member manipulating the loom. This caused an unusual, grey child to come into existence, the main character in the game. As he grew up, he was ostracized by the guild, and not allowed to learn the ways of the loom, though his caregiver taught him the basics in secret. Upon coming of age, the guild discovers what he has learned and expels the woman who taught him all of this. It's from here that Bobbin sets off on his adventures, eventually seeing chaos unleashed on the world, and being stuck trying to contain it after.

Loom was definitely one of the better looking adventure games of its time, with a lot of this coming from the rather unique, fantasy-based environments in it. The music was also quite impressive, being based on Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake suite, which sounded especially good on the CD version of the game in a time when a lot of game music was bleeps and bloops dependent on sound chips.

The game marked a time when LucasArts' adventure games were starting to grow up a bit, and try taking on a more serious tone. There were still plenty more humorous adventures to come from the company, but Loom showed that the studio was capable of plenty more than that.

Mr. Nash
February 13, 2010