As far as deckbuilding games go Slay the Spire is the golden standard for how it’s done. Risk and reward are an important factor to keeping things varied and allowing players to be greedy to try and get a strong enough deck to beat the final boss without getting killed for their hubris. The risk comes from choosing to deal damage and win the fight faster or blocking it and prolonging the fight. But the tactics come from which cards you take after each fight, and which path you choose to climb on your ascent. The focus is deck building and combat but the path you choose is also important as unknown tiles can be dangerous, or they can also contain treasure and special events that have good variety and offer power…for a price. The experience is enhanced by the random events rather than bogged down by them as they don’t feel like a waste of a move since you can walk away drastically better or worse off after. There is a significant amount of risk and reward just on the unknown tile itself. The risk, as well as the deck building provide immense variety each attempt, fun and powerful cards to use for all the classes, and powerful items and distinct different classes.

each of the four playable characters use a unique set of cards with decks that all have different ways to play, and mechanics specific to them. Each run starts with choosing a class and then talking to the whale who offers you your choice of action to begin the run. These modifiers add some cool options to making runs feel reasonably unique from the start since the starting deck is pretty much the same for each character. Gameplay is simple, using a starting deck of twelve cards, five basic attacks, and five standard blocks and two special cards that depend on your starting class. Each turn you draw a new hand and use your three energy to play cards to deal damage and kill all the enemies.

To win you must clear all three floors by climbing up the spire. You choose a path on the map to go up and defeat enemies along the way as well as by surviving events, fighting elites for powerful relics, and doing the occasional shopping with your hard earned coin. Defeating enemies will grant you rewards from cards, potions, and gold to help make your deck and bosses offer relics to add special abilities to your deck that can be game changing. With each map being random the replayability of the experience is infinite as each floor has new enemy types and a decent pool of bosses waiting at the top of each level. Each boss provides a unique challenge that requires smart choices.

With so many factors in each run the player is provided with a lot of choices to make, the difficulty of those choice depends on how the run is going, but the risk and reward is usually present in every choice. However, Slay the Spire does an excellent job of being transparent about things to the player, and visually it is very sleek. Percentage chance, damage you’ll take, and other negatives are all told to the player so they can make an informed decisions about the risks they will be taking. The bad stuff is always written in red, and the good is always written in green. Cards with special clauses are always highlighted in yellow to display that they will do the special effect so the player doesn’t have to guess. Every part of the game is communicated clearly to the player so they can focus on the decisions they’re making rather than what the consequences will be. For risk to be satisfying, it must be presented clearly so the player knows what they are losing against what they are gaining. Randomness never feels good when the consequence is starting over and it feels like losing was out of players control, but the RNG in this game is something the player can influence in some ways. The cards a player chooses from the random three they are offered as rewards is a big factor of manipulating the chance of the game. By creating a solid deck one can prepare for the future and influence what kind of hands they will be drawing. Without big block cards, expect to take damage. Without big attacks and damage combos, expect for engagements to be drawn out and the enemy buffs and debuffs to be piling on. There is a lot of incentive to choose to win fights faster at the cost of some damage so that is up to the player to decide on a fight-by-fight basis. There are also potions, which act as game changing items that can each used once for free. You can only hold three so there is incentive to use them rather than not since you will be offered them often and passing one by doesn’t feel good unless you really like the three you’re holding. These potions are extremely powerful in a pinch and can give you a second chance at times when all hope is lost.

Another important aspect of a deck building game is the character variety and the types of decks they can each build. The variety in the types of decks you can create is important for the longevity of the game and luckily that is no problem here. With four drastically different playable characters there are many decks to be built and they all play differently. Each character has a few mechanics that they solely posses and cards that let them capitalize on niche interactions. There are a lot of moving pieces to latch on to for a deck theme that often you can get away with including a few different ones. Each character is a lot of fun to play and has different enough cards and playstyles to not feel repetitive on consecutive runs even if you play the same character each time which is very important in a roguelike game.

The Ironclad

The starting class: Ironclad is a fighter, armed with strong attacks and block abilities, Ironclad is all about fighting, with hard hitting attacks due to strength buffs, and lots of choices for various attacks. High damage at the cost of drawing useless and sometimes harmful status cards. Basic to learn, but satisfying to hit for 100 with Ironclad is a great intro to the games mechanics without being overwhelming to play. That’s not to say he is boring as getting those heavy hits takes some good strategic choices and often come with consequences. Be ready to trade health for damage often, which is alleviated by his starting relic healing for six after every fight.

The Silent

This is one of my favorites, The Silent is your average combo character equipped with draw and discard, as well as cards that effect the next turn. Able to find the right cards at the right time, The Silent is able to pull off some insane damage in the form of dagger slices and poison ticks but also has many cards that grant energy back to keep the combo going granted specific clauses are met. The class with the most combos, and able to set up their next turn with more power and energy, The Silent is satisfying to play, and rewarding for those that know her secrets. Using poison and daggers The Silent can pull off some crazy DOT damage, as well a death by a thousand small shiv cuts. Or both.

The Defect

The Defect is one of the more unique classes. A robot who can channel orbs, power up, and adapt to any situation. Each orb has a passive ability that goes off at the end of your turn, or an evoked ability that is stronger in nature but consumes the orb. From lighting, and frost, to darkness and plasma, The Defect has a lot of versatility that makes each encounter feel puzzle-like. The Defect also has lots of different powers to buff him and his orbs to make it stronger the longer the fight goes on. You can choose to be more combat focused and ignore the orbs entirely even. This character didn’t appeal very much to me but after playing him some more for this review his insanity has grown on me. I enjoyed focusing on orb triggers and using his insane block cards to zap my foes down without lifting a finger. It was also cool to combo tons of powers that made each end turn cause a chain reaction of ability triggers.

The Watcher

The Watcher is about patience and creating openings. She uses stance and switching between them as her method of creating opportunities for devastating combos. She can do this by scrying to look at the cards she will draw to gain knowledge of the future. Calm stance and wraith stance are her two modes and upon exiting calm she gains two energy to help her extend her combo, as for wraith stance all damage she deals and receives is doubled. Exiting calm into wraith is a great way to all-out attack and try to wipe out all your opponents and she can easily kill some foes in one turn. Use caution however, as entering wraith without winning the fight or having a way to switch out can be fatal. She uses a lot of powerful attacks, AP increasing miracle cards, and scrying to set up powerful combos with wraith, and knowing what she will draw next turn by scrying her deck and seeing what is coming in the next hand. She is a lot of fun to play but takes some skill to ensure you build an effective deck and that you don’t get hit too hard in wraith stance because you did some math wrong and don’t have a card to get out of it with.

Conclusion

Slay the Spire is an excellent deck building game that is a lot of fun to master and its variety in its roguelike elements lend heavily to how replayable it is as well as keep each run fresh. The balancing act of risk and reward that every roguelike has is well executed with player choice creating more or less risk for yourself. the ability to choose healing or to upgrade your cards at rest sites lends heavily to risk as you are full healed after each boss so holding out on heals can be a balancing act. Each character has a decently sized card pool to unlock that allows for a lot of experimentation with each characters unique mechanics. Despite the random elements that roguelikes have. This game is a great intro to deckbuilding games for those interested and is a lot of fun hundreds of playthroughs in. But that’s not the reason I’m talking about it. My next post will be on Klei Entertainment’s new game deck building game: Griftlands fresh out of early access. To even begin talking about all the cool things Griftlands does, one must understand the roots of a deck builder and that’s what Slay the Spire encapsulates perfectly. Slay the Spire is the standard, and next week, I’ll be talking about what Griftlands does differently that makes its unique take on the genre work so effectively.