I have been spending the last 10 days or so playing way too much Slay the Spire. They say write what you know, and right now my brain knows nothing but the pleasures of building a badass deck to kill monsters with in a video game, so here we are.
Slay the Spire is one of the newer games of the roguelike-like-like-like-etc set, still in Early Access, which uses a card game for all of the combat. Go through a dungeon, which is set up as a series of nodes with various type of encounters, fight enemies, and pick one of three cards after each battle. Along the way there are potions, which are helpful one-shot boosts that can get you out of a tight spot, and relics, which provide powerful passive benefits. Usually, from your first few cards and relics, some sort of theme begins to emerge which will define the rest of your run, whether it’s intentionally damaging yourself to become more powerful, drawing a bunch of cards and using something to play all or most of them, or stacking up huge amounts of defense and either letting your enemies beat themselves to death against your defense. Or something else! I’ve beaten the game 7 times now, and each run still feels extremely different from all the others, based on its own synergies exploiting different game mechanics.
Currently there are two character classes, with a third to be added, and each character class has a unique pool of cards to draw from which the other cannot use. Unlike other card games with a similar class system, like Hearthstone, the main purpose to the classes beyond theming is to firewall off cards which would have game-breaking synergies together while pooling together those which have more moderate synergy. This greatly increases the consistency of each individual run, ensuring you mostly get cards that play well together, keeping the overall experience from degenerating into just finding one killer synergy to break the game.
The connected-node map reminds me a great deal of FTL, another rogueish-like-ish game, and I think there’s some basis for comparison – not just in the map, but in the multiple-choice encounters and in trying to scrape together the components needed to build something powerful enough to last until the end. However, in FTL I very frequently felt there was only one path to victory with minor variants – many offensive options became useless against late-game defenses, and certain defensive options were almost strictly necessary in order to stand a chance against late-game offenses. In Slay the Spire, everything is far more contextual, and I’ve had cards that would have been borderline worthless in one deck become completely game-breaking in another. I’m sure that once in a while, by random chance, there is the occasional run that is essentially unwinnable, but these occurrences are far rarer than they were in FTL – in every run I’ve lost so far, I can point to some poor decision, some key overreach, that precipitated my failure. Usually choosing to fight an elite enemy instead of resting, because I’m greedy like that.
On successive playthroughs you get points, based on how far you got, which contribute towards a bar that unlocks new cards and relics. I’m not a huge fan of this particular implementation, since it feels a bit grindy, but the unlocks themselves are very interesting, the cards usually themed towards some particular game mechanic which opens up new types of decks to experiment with. In this way its structure is similar to The Binding of Isaac, where each playthrough unlocked new items, enemies, and encounters, gradually opening up the design from something fairly simple and straightforward to something bigger, weirder, and more complex. Though, unlike Binding of Isaac, all of the unlocks are things you probably want to have, they also increase the odds of making a misplay as it becomes more difficult to consider all the available strategies. Something I’d like to see the developers approach, as it comes out of Early Access, is both unlocking these things in a more organic way, through special encounters and achievements rather than a grindy EXP bar, and increasing the range of things that can be unlocked to include new enemies and random encounters. Still, despite the less varied nature of these unlocks, in some ways their impact is more notable than in Isaac, since they open up entirely new ways of playing the game.
Because you construct a deck with a series of discrete decisions, each run feels much more something that belongs to the player, that was constructed with found parts, rather than something that the player just uncovers by happenstance. While each Isaac run feels unique, very little of the way the run develops, past mere survival and getting into the treasure room, is in the hands of the player. With every card you take and relic you find the context of the game shifts, and influences every future decision you make along the way. Perhaps it’s because of this that I regret having to give up my deck, the deck I fought for and with for two or three hours, when I succeed on a run. It doesn’t feel right for this beautiful machine I’ve constructed to just fade away and be forgotten. Maybe, though, that’s what keeps me coming back: I have nothing to keep, so the only thing left is to build another beautiful machine and let that, too, fade away. There’s probably some sort of life lesson there. There usually is.
Most of all I appreciate that Slay the Spire demands I pay attention to what I’m doing, in how even when I know the game well it’s easy to make a huge misplay that kills my run, just by carelessly playing cards in the wrong order or forgetting to use a potion. I have little patience any more for games that demand nothing from me. I don’t want to do things anyone could do without paying attention, in doing busy-work, in grinding away. Art that demands nothing gives nothing, and when nothing pushes back against my touch I can’t feel anything. It feels like there’s more room for that now than there was ten or twenty years ago, more room for art that demands attention rather than merely eye contact, but maybe it’s just that I seek it out more now.
Slay the Spire is a great game, which is especially exciting when it’s not finished and there’s still room for interesting things to be added. Aside from the things mentioned, there’s one other thing I’d love to see added: Some sort of hall of fame for winning decks. Even just being able to look back on your winning decks would be cool, but why stop there? What about some endless gauntlet challenge mode to play those decks in? Or a PvP mode for winning decks? A boss rush? New Game+? The idea of the game being not just an end unto itself but a method of building decks that could then be used for other purposes seems like something that could be explored in many interesting ways.
Anyway. Slay the Spire is currently $16 on Steam. If any of this sounded good you should go check it out.