It was long after the passing of the second shadow, when dragons ruled the twilight sky, and the stars were bright and numerous ...The events of the game are preceded by a 30-minute audio drama.

The world of Loom is not defined in relation to ours, but the game takes place in the year 8021, raising the possibility it is set on Earth in a distant future.

People banded together to form city-states of a common trade "devoted to the absolute control of knowledge, held together by stern traditions of pride, and of fear".

The Elders Atropos, Clothos, and Lachesis, who are named after Greek mythology's three Fates, reprimand Cygna, telling her that it is not their place to play gods.

For these reasons, the Elders ban him from learning the ways of the Guild until a decision can be made on Bobbin's seventeenth birthday ("until his coming of age seventeen years hence", as it is described in the game's audio drama).

Bobbin reclaims the distaff from the dead Bishop and heals many of the tears in the pattern, along the way helping many of his previous acquaintances, who were hurt or killed by Chaos's army.

The in-game music consists of excerpts from the Swan Lake ballet by Tchaikovsky, arranged for MIDI by George "The Fat Man" Sanger.

[citation needed] The package also offered an illustrated notebook, The Book of Patterns, supposedly belonging to apprentice weavers in the game world.

The book contained a warning saying that wise spellweavers write in pencil; this is because many of the spells in the game have randomized threads (musical notes).

In the original disk versions, it also acted as a form of copy protection; the game would ask players for the notes of a particular draft in the book at start-up.

A common misconception about Loom is that author Orson Scott Card contributed to its original development, based on his name appearing in the credits.

Card mentions in a review for Loom that this is untrue, and that Moriarty included his name in the credits due to some very minor feedback he had provided prior to the game's release.

[8] Card's association with Lucasfilm continued, however, leading to more significant contributions to The Secret of Monkey Island, Loom's 1992 "talkie" release,[9] and The Dig (1995).

Loom was redeveloped for the Japanese FM Towns computer and released on CD-ROM in 1991 with enhanced 256-color VGA graphics and a new digital soundtrack.

The PC CD-ROM version of Loom was released through the Steam digital distribution platform for Windows on July 8, 2009,[15] with Mac support following on May 12, 2010.

[16] According to Rogue Leaders: The Story of LucasArts, Loom was a critical success, but "failed to sell in sufficient numbers to warrant sequels".

Though a few years old, Loom's unique music-oriented interface, strong story-telling, and incredible graphics still stand up to more current adventure games".

[21] Strategy Plus's Theo Clark wrote that Loom's "story is absorbing and exciting, and there is plenty of pleasure to be gained from encounters and from discovering the effects of the various spells."

He noted that players might consider it a "fatal flaw" that Bobbin cannot die, and that "any puzzle can be resolved by clicking on all of the available items and running through all of the known drafts".

The editors called Loom "an intense entertainment experience ... true to an original philosophical vision of its author in both story and presentation".

[25] According to Rogue Leaders, Loom was not designed to be the first game in a series, but "Brian Moriarty considered additional directions for the story" after development of the first entry had concluded.

It tells the story of Bobbin's friend Rusty Nailbender, whose home city (the Forge of the Blacksmiths) was enslaved by Chaos near the end of Loom.

Bobbin appears every now and then as a ghostly swan dispensing mystical advice, an obvious nod to Obi-Wan Kenobi of Star Wars.

The third game, The Fold, is about Fleece Firmflanks and her attempt to unite the shattered Guilds in a final, desperate effort to banish Chaos.

[26][9] Cobb the pirate reappears Return to Monkey Island (2022), but has grown weary of people asking him about Loom over the years, and only does so again after much prodding.

[27] In the "Legend of Monkey Island" expansion for Sea of Thieves (2018), Cobb can once again be found at the Scumm Bar, and will repeat his speech about Loom if prompted.

[27] In the 256-color remake of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure, a landscape painting in the vault of Brunwald Castle features a scene from Loom.