PixlBit

Oh, the strange stuff I find on Game Pass every week that turn out to be another obsession. This time it was indie game Loop Hero. Check it out. 

It's kind of an auto-battler, a tower defense game, a rpg, and a card game all at once. You begin with a randomly generated loopping path surrounded by, presumably, wilderness. Your character walks the path (the pace of which you can adjust to your liking) and encounters monsters which are automatically fought. Each battle win nets you cards which are either new equipment, environments, buildings or rocks. The environments and some buildings spawn monsters on the loop. Basically you place more things that spawn monsters so you can farm them for more cards. The equipment and buildings you win help you survive the required number of rounds and build up your campsite between adventures. 

It's a 2D game of 8-bit style. If you die, you respawn but lose a percentage of the gained resources. You can also retreat at any time but with the same penalty. I tried once to not place any monster generating environment cards since the game seems to let you hold as many cards as you want. Why place cards that will put enemies in your way, I said to myself. But this is how to lose. You will not fight many monsters and will not get good equipment drops and will eventually die as you gradually lose health. So you have to build up your loop even though it challenges you more and more. You will gain the required equipment and boosts from the cards won to attain victory.

Note the mountains you can place around the edge that net you resources during your adventure. Use those resources to build structures in your campsite in between adventures.

Each trip around the loop brings you back to your campsite where you will regain some health. You can also place towns along the way that will help but sometimes they get infested with robbers or attacked by nearby generated goblin outposts. At the end of an adventure the campsite expands to show you all you can build there with the resources gathered. Building different sites here gives you boosts on your next adventure whenever you pass through your campsite on the loop. 

Russian dev (don't hold it against them) Four Quarters made the game. It's darn good.