Loom (video game)



"It was long after the passing of the second shadow, when dragons ruled the twilight sky, and the stars were bright and numerous..."

Loom is an epic fantasy Adventure Game, released by Lucas Arts in 1990, which tells of the Age of the Great Guilds, a time when the peoples of the game's world banded together to form city-states around their chosen profession. One of these guilds, the Guild of Weavers, eventually perfected their craft so that they could weave more than just fabric, and started weaving drafts into the very fabric of reality itself. Shunned by the other guilds as practitioners of witchcraft, the Guild of Weavers isolated themselves from the rest of the world onto an island of their own, naming it after the great Loom they held as the symbol of their guild.

However, eventually the Weavers discover that their numbers are dwindling and their seed is barren (probably due to inbreeding), and Lady Cygna Threadbare decides to take it upon herself to plant a thread of her creation into the Loom and, inadvertently, draws an unforeseen infant out of it, whom she surrenders to an old serving woman's care as she is banished from the village, as well as the mortal world, by being turned into a swan.

The planting of the gray thread has thrown the entire pattern of the Loom into chaos, and the Loom-child, named Bobbin by his caretaker, grows up shunned by the rest of his village. On his seventeenth birthday, as the Guild's rulers are about to reach a consensus on what to do with Bobbin, a swan appears in the village and transforms everyone but Bobbin into a swan. Hetchel tells him that the pattern is about to fall apart and he'll have to join the swans before it's too late. From thereon Bobbin sets out on a voyage into the world outside Loom Island, with grave consequences...

At its time of release, Loom was noted for its ambitious fantasy story, imaginative setting and surprisingly barren user interface: The only item the player could carry was the Distaff, a magical instrument used to shape the world around the player and solve puzzles, which was used by learning and casting short four-note drafts that could be heard around the game world. Most of these drafts were also randomly generated at the start of each game, meaning they would have to be re-learned on each individual playthrough.

Two sequels, Forge and The Fold, wherein the player would take control over two minor characters, whom Bobbin met in the course of Loom's story, were supposed to bring closure to the Story Arc started by Loom, but due to a lack of manpower, work on on them never began.

The challenge of the puzzles was mostly in figuring out which drafts to use and how: Some drafts could also be played backwards for the reverse effect. Unusually for an adventure game, the game also boasted three difficulty levels which would change the interface of the Distaff: the highest difficulty level required players to play all the notes by ear.

The CD version is available for purchase off of Steam. Give it a look sometime.

This game provides examples of:
"Bobbin: Can't say I didn't warn him."
 * Adaptation Dye Job: In the versions of the game with the original (voiceless) dialogue, Fleece the shepherdess has blue eyes. In the rewritten PC talkie CD, she has green eyes.
 * All There in the Manual: some versions of the game came shipped with an audio casette containing a thirty-minute audio drama that tells the game's backstory.
 * Animorphism: At the beginning of the game, the protagonist's foster mother and the village elders get transformed into swans.
 * Ambiguous Gender: Chaos, the ultimate Big Bad of the game, is an undead demonic Anthropomorphic Personification with no clear gender. Not even the game's developers were sure: in the original release of the game Chaos is referred to arbitrarily as "he" by other characters, but it became "she" in the later talkie upgrade.
 * Apocalypse Maiden
 * Ascend to A Higher Plane of Existence: Explicitly stated in the manual as the effect of the "Transcendence" draft. At the end of the game, you get to test it out. It also turns Hetchel into a swan egg so that she would stay behind to help Bobbin. Every other time, it's simply a regular swan.
 * Stealth Pun: What's the last musical spell you use in the game?
 * Back From the Dead:
 * Bigger On the Inside: The Weaver's tents.
 * Black Comedy: The haunting music and Crapsack World setting obscure some of the humor in what is ultimately a very funny game.
 * Boring but Practical / Awesome Yet Practical: The first draft you learn in the game, Opening, is also the one that gets used the most.
 * Brown Note: It is said to be death to look upon the face of the perpetually hooded Weavers.
 * Chekhov's Gun: The Scythe the Glassmakers are sharpening to protect them in case Bishop Mandible attacks them.
 * Convection Schmonvection: The city of the Blacksmiths, the Forge, is a castle protected by a moat filled with molten metal (and the drawbridge seems to be made of iron). Nobody feels any kind of discomfort when crossing it. Then there is Hetchel who . She comments that she "must not singe the feathers" but otherwise seems to be unharmed.
 * Crystal Ball: Spheres of Scrying, which give the gazer a glimpse into their future with little to no context.
 * Domed Hometown: The Guild of Glass Makers.
 * Doomed Hometown: Weaver Island, as well as . However, except for one, all the residents of Weaver Island survive the ordeal! In fact, in a strange way, the very act that doomed the hometown actually saved them all, and.
 * Dream Melody: C' - F - G - C.
 * Dummied Out: An early screenshot showed a room in the Glassmakers' City with three giant sandglasses, two of which had run out and were sealed up; the last one was open at the top and a worker was pouring sand into it to keep it running. The three sandglasses of course represent . The room was ultimately cut to save disk space. The sandglasses can still be glimpsed in the 16-color version, in the wide shot of the city (though they were painted out in the VGA upgrade).
 * The existence of a puzzle can be deduced:
 * Evil Is Hammy: Bishop Mandible and Chaos.
 * Evil Is Not a Toy: Bishop Mandible attempts to summon Chaos from the realm of the dead.
 * The Faceless:
 * The Weavers generally remain hooded due to the danger in removing their hoods. When one character tries to unhood the protagonist, the scene suddenly cuts to somewhere else (and in the highest difficulty level, is obscured by a flash of light) and the player sees Nothing Is Scarier.

"Cob: Why not? There's nothing to fear under that fine robe of yours, is there?
 * Bishop Mandible complains that he can't do his important work with all this screaming distracting him. Cob did not go quietly.
 * The Blank: Implied by Bobbin.

Bobbin: If you fear Nothing, then you'd better not touch me."


 * Fractured Fairy Tale: The game has a very dark but ultimately cathartic story that uses fairy tale tropes in very unusual ways.
 * Gainax Ending: Even with the Left Hanging stuff, the ending makes some sense until.
 * The Grim Reaper: The game implies that our image for the Grim Reaper comes from.
 * Hidden Elf Village: The Guild of Weavers.
 * If You Kill Him You Will Be Just Like Him: The Glassmakers are afraid to use the Great Scythe because it will turn them as evil as their enemy.
 * In the Hood: Why are all Weavers wearing a hood? Because you do not want to peer inside.
 * Invisibility Cloak: The camouflage draft.
 * Kansas City Shuffle: At one point Bishop Mandible traps you in a cage, but doesn't take your magical staff. Big mistake, right? Not quite -- what he really needed was the "open" spell. He watches you cast it and then takes your staff.
 * Left Hanging: The game will probably feel depressingly short for many players. Many potentially interesting drafts is only needed once and many plot points that could have been exciting to explore in greater detail is never resolved. The game was going to have two sequels, but these were cancelled because of other projects. It is a damn shame, really. Even worse, the Book of Patterns that comes with the game includes a host of unused spells that could have been very useful in the game proper, but were never heard.
 * Ludicrous Gibs: The "Unmaking" draft. Naturally, it's irreversible.
 * Magic Music: Every spell (or "draft") in the game is composed of four notes on the C-major scale, which Bobbin must "spin" with his distaff.
 * Meaningful Name: Lady Cygna. "Cygnus" is Latin for swan.
 * Also, a bobbin is a component of a sewing machine around which thread is wound, and the briefly-seen elders of the weavers' guild are named after the Fates of Greek myth, who wove threads corresponding to mortals' lives.
 * Messianic Archetype: Bobbin was miraculously born from the Loom itself, many will die for his name, but the world's salvation lies in his hands. Ring any bells?
 * Now Do It Again Backwards / Magic a Is Magic A: Drafts can be reversed -- that is, their notes played in the opposite order -- to create the opposite effect. A few drafts are palindromic in nature and thereby have no reverse.
 * It's implied that Bobbin is the first to figure out that this is possible: the manual makes no mention of reversing drafts, and Bobbin is genuinely surprised when he finds out it's possible.
 * Our Dragons Are Different: The game's dragon is female, afraid of fire, loves mutton and speaks with a Cockney accent.
 * Planet of Hats: Each guild is this, having the traits of their chosen craft as their distinguishing characteristics.
 * Public Domain Soundtrack: All the music in the game is from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake.
 * Rewarded As a Traitor Deserves: Chaos, to
 * Shout Out:
 * Several PC games after Loom, made by Lucas Arts or not, included references both to it and to Brian Moriarity. Bishop Mandible's assistant, Cobb, even shows up in The Secret of Monkey Island as an NPC pimping off this game.
 * The Space Quest series has a rather nasty Take That aimed at the game: the game features a Game Within a Game called Boom, which satirizes the simplified interface of Loom by having no interface or interactivity at all.
 * The home of the Glass Makers evokes imagery of the Emerald City from The Wizard of Oz.
 * Sinister Minister: Bishop Mandible.
 * Songs in The Key of Lock
 * Stable Time Loop: (of the "ontological paradox" variety.) The scrying spheres enable the user to see several hours into the future. At least one of the drafts is learned only by observing a future vision of Bobbin casting it. So where'd the future Bobbin learn it, and so on.
 * Swans a Swimming: Swans play an important role in this game.
 * Theme Naming: All guild members have names related to their professions, such as Threadbare, Goodmold, or Nailbender.
 * Unwinnable: If you didn't write down the notes for the drafts or don't consult a walkthrough, you'll get stuck and need to revert to an earlier point.
 * Updated Rerelease: The CD version, which featured a full CD-quality talkie soundtrack, although much of the previous versions' dialogue, animations, portraits and music were cut to fit the whole thing on one disc. Notably, the abbreviated talkie version's script was edited by Orson Scott Card.
 * Voice of the Legion: Chaos talks like this.
 * What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart Anyway: Beautifully subverted with the Dyeing draft. Bobbin really hates how he can only make objects green, but it helps him save a flock of sheep later..
 * Why Did It Have to Be Snakes: The dragon is afraid of fire, despite being its Breath Weapon.
 * Why Don't You Just Shoot Him: Averted. Mandible doesn't kill Bobbin because he needs Bobbin to demonstrate the Opening Draft, and Chaos doesn't kill Bobbin because he needs Bobbin to demonstrate how the Loom works.
 * Wonder Child: The protagonist Bobbin is given birth when the childless Lady Cygna weaves a magical thread into the Great Pattern, after which she is banished by being turned into a swan.
 * Worthless Yellow Rocks: What use is gold to a race that can bend the fabric of the universe itself to its will? Indeed it doesn't even require a weaver to reach a particularly high level before being able to successfully cast the Straw Into Gold draft.
 * Which is why the Book of Patterns notes the use of the draft is regulated to prevent inflation.