I thought we needed a Slay the Spire thread, so this is she.
Slay the Spire is a deckbuilding card game based around the theme of a lone adventurer scaling a deadly tower. As you ascend into danger, your deck will change and evolve based around your choices. In addition to cards, you will gather mighty relics, artifacts that somehow alter the rules of the game in a way you will seek to bend to your favor.
An interesting aspect of Slay the Spire is the designers’ decision to make all enemy actions transparent- you know what they are going to do next, so you can always make the maximal use of your cards to try to forestall or thwart them. This foreknowledge allows interesting choices to flourish, and flourish they do. Many card games end up with rote decision making at the actual tactical level of gameplay, with the interesting choices being all at the deckbuilding stage. Not so Slay the Spire, which manages to give you lots to think about at every level.
Slay the Spire currently has two completely distinct characters, with totally different card pools, and a third character should enter the beta shortly. It also has gradually ratcheting difficulty levels with a ton of gradation, daily runs to compete in, and online leaderboards to test yourself against Steam’s best and brightest.
I’ve put massive amount of time into this and am taking a break for a few weeks until the third character comes out. Definitely the best card roguelike I’ve played since Dream Quest, and in many ways superior. I do prefer Dream Quest’s plethora of characters over Slay the Spire’s plethora of cards though, if I had to choose. It would be best to have both!
I’m stuck at Ascension 11 (the higher difficulty levels go from Ascension 1-15) and I think it’s gotten to the point where I prefer the Daily runs over the base game. But that’s after many hours of play. And some of the modifiers on the Daily runs really do a good job of shaking up the play experience.
Yeah this is a neat game. Funny thing is that I nearly beat my first 3 level boss with the Iron Clad on my 3rd attempt with a strength build. It then took 30 hours for me to finally beat the boss. Having fewer cards available in the opening stages was a real plus. There is a weird middle period where the more cards you had to the pool of available cards, the harder it seems to get. This was all back in January.
I nearly beat the Time Eater on another run with the Iron Clad. If I hadn’t made some silly mistakes I probably would have. Still haven’t tried out the other character.
It can be an extremely frustrating game but it’s usually no more than an hour spent if you get to the last level and lose. I’ve also noticed that avoiding combat as much as possible is usually the best way to go. ? locations are my preferred choice especially if I can chain a bunch leading towards a merchant, chest or campfire. Level 3 champions tend to be more pain than the relic that they provide.
Bear in mind that normal enemy encounters are the chief way you acquire gold, which has a plethora of uses, and new cards for your deck, which are almost always straight upgrades from your original cards. An all ? path will make your advancement much more, well, chaotic.
Also, the Ironclad- at least prior to Ascension difficulty- should be looking to have no net loss of HP from normal encounters. This isn’t always the case, but you can do it quite often if you plan carefully.
edit- they give potions, too, which in turn can lead to easier encounters or boss fights.
High praise! It looks great from what I saw of Tom’s stream of it, but better than Monster Slayers, huh…thats dangerous timesink territory. Will pick up next time it’s on sale.
Good thread timing, as I just picked this up last night and played a little bit. So far so good. The bigger focus on energy and multiple simultaneous enemies in particular look like good additions to the formula, as they look like they should ensure that there’s some meaningful decision-making on a higher proportion of turns than in Dream Quest or especially Monster Slayers, where the decisions were mostly between battles.
I’m loving this game too. I just advanced to ascension 4 on Ironclad and 2 on Silent. I was stuck on 3 and 1 for a while, but then both happened within a couple days. We’ll see how long it takes me to move on. It’s definitely challenging.
In re: timesinkiness- I find that runs take me about an hour, less if I mess up enough. I also find either winning or losing a run to be a natural stopping point that prevents it from eating too much time. Unless you face the Time Eater…
Very good game. I have played a couple of hours each night for months now. Its a great comfort game. I can see me gently moving away from it later this year (it does get a little samey after you play a lot) but I have really enjoyed it.
Careful with what you are saying: I have been spending what I think accounts to nearly a hundred hours on Slay the Spire already, and I try to limit myself by not launch it too much nowadays! If it pushes your buttons, it is very dangerous!
The nifty trick the game does is that while there isn’t that much content, the interaction of cards and relics make you come up with what seems to be new builds all the time. It’s incredibly smart. One of my favorite builds so far has been one based around exhausting hands in loops. It didn’t requre much thinking once it was built (although I had to resist the urge to add new cards), but making it was very rewarding. In those circumstances, the game is as exciting outside of battles as it is resolving them in most other situations.
I guess what I meant is that you don’t need to play so many times to unlock content. In Monster Slayers it seemed like the game required to keep replaying each character to get enough unlocks to be competitive.
But if you like a game so much you want to keep replaying it then that’s a good thing! (mostly)
Yeah, it is worth mentioning that while there is some content you unlock, I am long past that and am playing it entirely out of love of the game, not because I am on some kind of treadmill.
I’m only a couple abortive runs in, but I’m coming to think that I should be declining to add cards once I’ve established something of a theme and nothing is presented that fits. Is that a fair assessment?
Am I missing something? Is there keyboard commands besides selecting a card? Would like to be able to play by keyboard, but it doesn’t seem possible.
I am still new, just picked it up today after seeing this thread, but that’s been my reasoning. Not that I am ever successful at saying no. Too often I think “oh that’s cool…” and pick up a card I probably don’t need anyway.
It depends on the relics & build you are going for (sometimes big decks are good) but USUALLY yes, once you get your key cards then you need to be in the deck thinning business.
For me I rarely turn down powers because I figure once I play them they are out of my deck anyway and they are giving me somekind of long term value BUT that bites me in the ass sometimes when they get in the way of my draw.
It can work all ways though, the hallmark of a well thought out systems design imho.
