A little too abstract for me.

"Enjoy a stress-free, relaxing puzzle-solving adventure. "

The preview video stressed me out! But I'm not the target for this. Hopefully it finds an audience, it looks great for puzzle game lovers.

This looks like a slightly more colorful copy of Maciej Targoni's Hook or Hook 2, garnished with visual effects. I wish we had any of his games coming to GOG.

Hi, I'm the dev of Unloop and wanted to reply to this.

Unloop is not a copy of Hook, it is heavily inspired by it - Hook is a game I always loved. It is one of my absolute favorite games and something about its simplicity and the clear, instantly understandable main mechanic is just fascinating. I always wanted a successor, and at one point I decided to make one myself - the base mechanic of Hook is just ingenious, and I really wanted to use it in a much more larger, much more complex game.

I added a ton of new mechanics and new elements, making the game much more complex, longer and interesting. Each new element adds something to the game you have to incorporate into the solution, and some levels require a lot of thinking. Hook is great but its main issue was that it was very short - Unloop is much longer, has many more elements and mechanics that make up the levels.

Now, I still think there is much more that could be made from this idea, and I really would like if one day we would have a sub-genre of Hook-like games, like there are still countless Sokoban-like, Arkanoid-like, Tetris-like etc games iterating and improving on the main concept. In some cases it's too many, but the concept of Hook for sure is still good for a whole bunch of fresh, interesting puzzle games!

If you liked Hook, I'm sure you will like Unloop - just imagine it would have continued for 100 more levels and kept adding new things during those. That was my goal for Unloop!

Hello and welcome to GOG!

I want to sincerely apologize for any confusion my words may have caused. It wasn't my intention to suggest that your game was a carbon copy of Hook, devoid of your own creative input. What I meant to convey was that your game shares obvious similarities with Hook, but with added colors and visual effects. After reading your reply, I realize now that using the term copy without further qualification might have sounded dismissive, which wasn't my intention.

Your creative input is clearly visible, and I'm in no way underestimating your accomplishment in figuring out how to make it work and putting your own signature on the original concept. However, your creation of a genre name for your game, Hook-like, could benefit from a more catchy term. Absolutely, I couldn't agree more. It's fascinating how simple concepts can be transformed in countless ways. The creative process of coming up with ideas and discovering the possibilities, stretching ones imaginations, and ultimately unique and innovative solutions, is incredibly rewarding! I've done this with games like Snake, turned into Pac-Snake, Snake-o-ban, Snake-Dig-Dug, Snake Oil Tycoon... the possibilities are virtually endless and its rewarding to see how it plays - or doesn't. ;-) I'm sure I'll enjoy the experience of playing your game. My only question is whether there's a way to add or change background graphics to something simpler or more aesthetically pleasing?

No worries, I did not took any offense - I just wanted to clarify on that. I fully understand that looking at Unloop while knowing (and maybe loving) Hook might gave the idea that it's just the same thing with just different visuals, and I wanted to point out it's a labour of love to the original Hook with many original ideas and changes.

Agree on a more catchy term :) Exactly! I already have a whole lot of ideas for Unloop 2, and two of them would change the game quite drastically, while still keeping the connection to the original idea. I'd love other developers to have a try on that idea! There are 3 different backgrounds to chose from - if you prefer it simple, try "Abstract" - it's just dark abstract without own elements, so best to focus on the actual game elements. This one is the closest to Hooks simple background.
The trailer features the "Starfield" as it turned out to be the most popular with players.

1) I began playing the game, but there is something I could not figure out. How does one exit the game, short of using Alt-F4? EDIT: Ok, found it. One needs to press Esc. I expected it to be under some menu or submenu. As far as I can see, this is the only action that cannot be performed with a mouse.

2) It takes the game exactly 15 seconds to load every time, which seems a lot for this kind of small game, and is somewhat annoying, since I normally play in very short sessions (5-10 minutes or less). Are you perhaps checking for something on game load? Perhaps the presence of galaxy (which I do not use)?

15 seconds sounds suspiciously like the galaxy timeout.

Indeed. I hope the dev fixes this soon.

This looks like something that I should want to play, except that there are some color changes around 0:30 into the trailer. The issue with this is that it potentially takes the concept of a game with minimal graphics like Hook and adds something unnecessary that potentially makes the game lack accessibility for those of us with colorblindness.

I just want to say: Thank you for bringing this to GoG. I don't think it's my type of game but for this very fair price I'll give it a shot :)

I'm really glad you didn't take offence! :-) And you can and should be proud of the result. :-) There are already too many -likes, so let's give it a unique genre name instead! How about ZenDetanquil, a combination of Zen, Detangle and Tranquil? ;-) Thank you for answering my question! It would probably be a good idea to add screenshots of the other backgrounds to the store page as well. Show what you have!

I would also like to ask if it's possible to replace any of the existing background images or add my own. If not, is there any chance of you implementing a feature that would allow this? :-)

1) I can add a quit button to the settings to have full mouse control. Added it to the list for the next update, thank you for the suggestion!

2) I'm using the Galaxy Steam API Wrapper (it allows to use code made for Steam, and basically pretends Galaxy is the Steam client when the game tries to connect - this way the code for achievements etc can be the same for both Galaxy and Steam) and the 15s are its timeout when Galaxy is not running. It blocks the games executing during this time.
I will investigate what I can do about it!

I should probably add it to the description - Unloop has been made with colorblindness in mind and never rely on colors alone to convey information!

If you look at the element changing color (0:39 in the trailer), the outer pieces (which I call "antennas" as they look like bugs antennas) also move. There are several elements which connect to those of a particular type. This type is indicated with both color and the shape/position of the antennas. This is true for all elements in the game, they all have a different shape so they can be distinguished without relying on color! The only requirement is to be able to make out the shape against the background, but as there are 3 different background which all have different colors, it should be able to always find one that works.
Thank you! :)

Good idea! I have the Starfield background prominently presented in the trailer and screenshots as it proved to be the most popular by far (>75% preferred it from a little survey) but the others should not be forgotten either.

Custom backgrounds can not be added currently. It would be possible to implement, but would present a challenge in how to scale them - unless it's plain color or very abstract, just stretching/scaling to match the resolution would not look very good... The current backgrounds are dynamic objects that can scale themselves to any size, but this makes them not easy to change based on player input.

I will add it to the description later but here is how the abstract background looks: