So, I haven’t yet “beaten” Slay The Spire – but generally, I’ve gotten a handle on my feelings on the game, and I figure I might as well put my thoughts out there.
Slay The Spire is, for those who haven’t played it, what is called a “Roguelike Deckbuilder” – it’s a Deckbuilder in that you accumulate cards over the course of the game and cycle through your deck repeatedly as you take on various challenges, with strategy being based on the decisions you make in building your deck. The roguelike aspect comes in because the path through the spire is random each playthrough, with different branches and challenges being placed throughout, meaning your route is (generally) different every time – with the *like* part of the Roguelike being persistence through unlocking new cards and card types that you could potentially pick up on each run.
Where the strategy comes in is deciding what cards to keep and which to drop, with the “build” of your character varying based on what cards you get each run. For example, maybe early on you get a card that does more damage for every card with “Strike” in the name in your deck, which means you want to hold off on dumping basic Strike attacks until you can replace them with more powerful cards. Or if you get an artifact that deals damage to an opponent when you have a status effect card in your hand, you might want to lose any status effects you’ve picked up along the way, because those are (sort of) free damage.
Mechanically, it makes for something that I found I was quickly able to wrap my brain around and can also put down for a while and come back to without worrying about having to remember something in particular about how the game mechanics work. The graphics are also elegant and distinctive enough to work just as well on my computer as on my Steam Deck (which also makes it an excellent game on the Switch). And while I’ve never really completed an ascent, and never quite put together what I need on each run, I’ve also never particularly felt frustrated by that fact. Runs are generally quick enough that if you wipe out, starting a new one is pretty quick and straightforward.
If I have a complaint about the game, is that I feel the “level cap” for each of your main characters kind of comes a little too soon. The nice thing about this sort of persistent Roguelike system is that in theory, with repeat play you’ll eventually get the resources to be able to complete the dungeon with your selected character before moving on to the next one. It’s something that blunts the frustration potential of the main Rogue-Likes. It would have been nice if we still had some kind of more persistent progression, even if it slowed down considerably. For example, if after a “XP gain” once you reached the regular cap, you unlocked the ability to pick your artifact from one of three different artifacts at the start of each run by default, or to have a selection of your starting cards upgraded at random.
I’m still going to keep playing the game, at least off-and-on, but I think it’s going to stay as something of a “pass-the-time” game for me, rather than anything I play more seriously.
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