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I enjoyed thrig’s posts about Rogue.
Rogue is, of course, the game that spawned a genre—the Roguelikes, and, more recently, Roguelites.
I say “of course”, but to be proper long form content this post should really define its terms. I don’t want to go into great depth on what a Roguelike is because it’s been done many times, so I’ll just pull out a few key defining characteristics for you.
A Roguelike has at least these general features: you go right back to the start when you die; making progress involves exploration through some kind of randomly-generated environment; other game elements are randomized at the start of each playthrough; and there is a way to gradually build the strength of you character, provided of course that you survive.
Games I’ve played that fall under this category include Nethack, an early Roguelike first release in 1987, and much more recent variants: The Binding of Isaac, Dead Cells, Hades, and probably others.
They are a pleasing way to spend time because they offer a fun “gameplay loop”—combat and exploration—in which you must nevertheless keep a close eye on your survival and long term goals.
Progress involves making frequent tradeoffs of the form: do I take the bigger risk for the bigger reward—or will that kill me? And, winning involves pushing the risk factor just high enough to become just strong enough to succeed.
Enough prelude; on to the game.
This is an unusual Roguelike in that some elements are very simplified; exploration, for example, is by picking from a small number of next encounters on a map. Some encounters are “dialogues” where you simply choose one of a fixed set of options; apart from that there are shops, combat encounters and places to rest or apply upgrades.
Upgrades to what? To your cards. “Slay The Spire” is a deck building game.
The core gameplay is combat sequences in which you take turns with a computer opponent. On your turn a number of cards are automatically drawn into your hand, you choose which to play, and then the rest are discarded. When the draw pile is empty, your discard pile is shuffled and becomes the new draw pile.
The most fundamental cards are attack cards, which deal a particular number of points of damage, and block cards, which add to your “block” count for the turn. One point of block stops one point of damage from an enemy attack on that same turn.
And then there are cards that cause status effects such as vulnerability, which increases damage taken by 50%; and then things start to get complicated, with cards that manipulate other cards and various gameplay mechanics caused by or affected by cards.
I said that Roguelikes need a fun “gameplay loop”; and fun it is. Well, that depends. If you enjoy fast paced micro-optimization of card selections to win a battle—you will have to do some adding up and subtraction—then it’s fun. One game could last anything up to an hour and a half and you’ll play hundreds of turns of card combat along the way, so you’ll want to be quick—but you’ll also need to make very few mistakes. I find this mental workout rather pleasant.
The long term goal is clear: you’ll need to build a strong deck. The game consists of three areas, each with a “boss” at the end; this is of course a much harder battle than what has gone before. When you reach each next area, you’ll find all the enemies are stronger, too. If you don’t improve your deck as you go you’ll quickly reach an impossible battle and lose.
Winning a battle gets you a pick of three random cards; and here, of course, is where the long term strategy gets interesting. The cards you could win are, on average, considerably stronger than your starting cards, so you can quickly build a better deck by taking whatever comes up. But you’ll find this doesn’t work: your mishmash of randomly acquired cards will likely fail you somewhere in the second area because they don’t work well together.
So the art is deciding when to not take a card. You will need to have some strategy—some deck that works well—in mind, and build towards it; and be ready to switch to a different idea if needed.
One of the best upgrades you can win—either through “dialog” encounters, bought in shops, or some other reward—is the removal of one card of your choice from your deck. You will usually use this to prune the weak starting cards, but you might also remove a more powerful card if it helps craft the perfect deck. There are also “curses”, cards with purely negative effect, that you will be eager to remove.
Along the way—by winning “elite” battles, or through “dialog” encounters—you’ll acquire artifacts.
These are collected items that give a huge range of unique bonuses that persist for the rest of the playthrough. For example, there’s an artifact that will decrease all damage taken by one point. Another gives you the option to discard and replace any number of cards from your first hand at the start of combat.
Then there are potions: these are picked up, usually when you win battles, and come in many types, each with different effects. For example, one potion causes you to immediately draw three cards. Most are played freely during combat on your turn, a few are played in other ways. A potion can save you from a battle that’s going badly—but you will have to be sure it’s worth it, because you don’t get many.
For beating a boss you are offered a choice of one of three artifacts, themselves chosen randomly from a small set of “boss artifacts”. These are powerful but mostly also come with a strong downside. For example, you could gain one extra energy point per turn, allowing you to play (usually) an additional card, in exchange for never being able to pick up another potion. Ouch!
Because of these downsides you will occasionally find yourself refusing to take any of the three on offer.
Another type of card besides normal cards and curses is “status” cards. These are acquired during one combat and disappear at the end of combat. For example, some enemies use fire attacks that put “burn” cards in your deck. When you draw them, they’re unplayable; at the end of your turn they cause damage.
But there is a possible deck that flips this around.
“Power” cards, when played, disappear for that combat, causing an effect that stays with you for the whole combat.
There is a power card that causes drawing any status card to deal damage to all your enemies; another power card that causes drawing any status card to immediately draw another card into your hand; and, finally, there are various attack and defence cards you could acquire that themselves cause status cards—usually, negative cards!—to be added to your hard.
If you manage to build a deck containing enough of these, and with few enough unrelated cards to dilute the effect, it’s very powerful: you will draw stacks of status cards each round, doing huge damage to all your opponents.
The game features four distinct “characters” each with their own card set and distinct play style, plus a neutral card set; and for each character there are numerous winning strategies to discover and explore. There’s enough here to keep you busy for a very long time indeed.
If you “beat” the game, you unlock the next “Ascension” level for that character—a way to make the game even harder, for example by making all the enemies stronger or having your character start the game injured.
There are twenty Ascension levels. At roughly an hour per playthrough, a perfect run through all wins on all characters should take about 80 hours. The odds against that happening must be astronomical; I’m at quite a few hundreds of hours spent and I’ve managed it for one character so far.
A picture is worth a thousand words, they say; having written over a thousand words by this point, I wonder if I’ve come anywhere close to conjuring in your head what a simple picture could explain. Here is one:
See?
> What a journey this game has been for me... As many people have already said, Slay the Spire has definitely revolutionised the roguelike genre. This is not an easy game, but the learning curve works so fantastically well that it truly feels like climbing a challenging mountain. Finishing a run is a feat in itself and completing this game demands mastering the different characters and deckbuilding potential. —mrpala62 on Steam
By now you should have a pretty good idea if this game is for you—if it is, and if you’ve hundreds of hours to spare, well: enjoy!
It’s available for Windows, macOS, Linux, Switch, Playstation, Xbox One, iOS and Android. Note however that it will be challenging to play on a small phone screen—you’ll need a huge phone or a tablet for the iOS or Android version.
So far today, 2024-05-13, feedback has been received 5 times. Of these, 0 were likely from bots, and 5 might have been from real people. Thank you, maybe-real people!
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