Uploaded February 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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A playthrough of TTI's 1992 graphic adventure for the TurboGrafx CD, Loom.

Played on the expert mode.

Originally released in 1990 for Dos PCs, Loom was part of the long line of best-selling point-and-click graphic adventures put out by Lucasfilm Games in the genre's heyday. It's not as well-known as their later titles (Secret of Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Fate of Atlantis, etc.), but as those who played it can attest, Loom was no second-string effort. It's every bit the classic that its younger siblings are celebrated as being.

This is the story of a Bobbin Threadbare, a boy whose people weave threads through the fabric of reality. On the day he comes of age, a swan crashes through a window in the guild hall and performs the "Transcendence" draft on everyone in town. Now, as the sole remaining Weaver, Bobbin is the only one with the power to stand against the evil forces that are attempting to tear through the fabric of reality in a bid for ultimate power.

Loom has always stuck out to me for how different it feels from your typical graphic adventure. What at first appears to an idyllic fairy tale turns out to be anything but - things can get downright gruesome at times - and the gameplay mechanics are unlike any I've seen elsewhere. There's no inventory system, and you don't interact with the world through a list of verbs. Instead, Bobbin carries a "distaff" that can be played like a musical instrument to cast spells. Each segment of the staff represents a note, and spells are triggered by clicking on these segments to play the four-note "drafts" that Bobbin hears throughout his adventure.

For example, early on, Bobbin encounters a group of invisible guards in a forest clearing. As they uncloak to taunt him, you'll hear a four-note melody. If you repeat the melody on your distaff, you can make hidden things appear plainly before you. If you reverse the note order, the spell will have the opposite effect and make things disappear.

The writing, the art, the Tchaikovsky soundtrack, and the puzzles are all excellent, but it was the transparency of the interface that made me fall for Loom. The world's inhabitants already have an established vocabulary that they use to exert their will, and you're expected to learn and use it. The relative lack of abstraction made me feel like more than just a puppeteer, like I was actually acting through Bobbin. That was especially true once the supports were yanked away. The standard and practice modes are perfect for learning the ropes, but the expert level is where the experience really comes together. (And there's an extremely cool bonus scene that can only be seen in the expert mode!)

The TurboGrafx port was made by Realtime Associates, and they did a solid job in adapting the game to the console. It uses a good mix of assets from the EGA and VGA versions of the PC game, and it retains all of the original puzzles and dialogue. The cursor movement can get stuttery and the music cuts out whenever the game has to load data from the disc, but it plays surprisingly well on the Turbo. Far, far better than Monkey Island and Willy Beamish did on the Sega CD.

I recommend taking the advice of the pirate at the SCUMM™ Bar. He had great taste in games.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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