Take one part extremely well-made deck builder, put in a dash of a bad rogue-like reward loop, and sprinkle in some cheap bullshit and you get Slay the Spire - an extremely satisfying roguelike deck builder that will let you build yourself up and feel great before pulling the rug out from under you, kicking sand in your face, and laughing at you.

Slay the Spire genuinely has some incredible highs, but the lows of having what feels like an invincible deck and then getting the perfect combination of bad card draw and enemy attacks that results in your sudden defeat feels bad. Nothing feels better than feeling like you’re in control of how well you do in a game. Consequently, nothing feels worse than feeling like a loss was totally out of your control. Making it worse is how long the runs are and how little you get when you finish one.


My favorite roguelites are the ones that respect your time. The ones that let you progress and unlock meaningful upgrades whether you win or lose a run. Slay the Spire has no interest in this. It has no interest in rewarding you for your time. The best you’ll get are a couple more relics and cards added to the pool. Nothing that helps you feel like you’re progressing and certainly nothing to make future runs easier. Your success in Slay the Spire depends 100% on 2 things - your ability to build a good deck, and a decent amount of luck… and maybe more patience than I have.

I’ve spent hours dying in countless other games in this genre. I’ve got no problem losing in roguelikes and lites. What I do have a problem with is spending over an hour in a single run with nothing to show for it at the end of that time. I ain’t got time for this. I’d rather spend my time playing something that respects my time. And yet, as I sit here bitter about my most recent loss to the bullshit final boss, all I can think about is booting the game up and starting another run. Because despite all the parts of the game that feel unfair or unsatisfying, the core gameplay is just so damn good.

+ Genuinely some of the most satisfying deck-building I’ve ever played
+ Getting a good deck together that synergizes well feels real good
+ Addicting

- Losses often feel unfair and kind of bullshitty
- No cross-run progression
- Runs are too long
- Heavily luck-based
- Ugly art style

Slay the Spire does what the best games in the rogue-whatever genre do: throw you into a pit of chaos and teach you how to control it. It's no Synthetik or, like, Spelunky, and as with many roguelikes, just completing your first run will maybe take a few hours, but the structure of the game, the depth of strategy present in each deck+relic combo, and the contained tone of a short, but dangerous ascend through an evil tower make for a great, everlasting experience.

The overall presentation of Slay the Spire is probably it's most underappreciated aspect. The visuals are spotless, with a level of polish in the UI you don't see in a lot of the most popular indies, let alone AAA videogames; everything is clear, understandable, and technically inscrutable. The designs of the characters are not the best, but some of them are extremely memorable, especially when it comes to some of the Boss and Elite enemies. The sound, --- oh, man! Each floor's and special room's theme is very simple, but very memorable, and there are a lot of quirky voice-lines and crunchy sound-effects that give every card used a real sense of weight. And the overall art-style does a lot of small little things to stand out from the competition, and especially from, like, 97% of the games in the subgenre StS ended up birthing.

Overall, with it's level of popularity and importance for the industry, I wouldn't be surprised if this game came down as one of the 2010s best games, even if I wouldn't consider it one of my favourites. It's kind of been my addiction through most of 2022, and now it's just a comfort game I play every day to try and beat the next challenge, stave off the voices, that kind of thing. But though I praised the quality of Slay the Spire's technical aspects, it ultimately doesn't have a personality strong enough for me to connect with, and by its very nature exists to be experienced in short bursts of fun mind-jogging, much like checkers or beer pong. And there's nothing wrong with either of those things, and this game definitely deserves to be a lot of people's favourite thing ever, but it's not for me. Though it is a damn good time.

In conclusion I be Slaying her with my Spire. Thank you.

Sights & Sounds
- The card and character art are fine. There's nothing that's too interesting or ugly. It just looks fine
- The music is also just fine; serviceable but ultimately forgettable

Story & Vibes
- The story, if I'm undersanding the tiny bits of lore and hints that are dropped, is not very complex. A whale/god gets kicked out of his tower (the spire) by some evil new power, and now he's sending adventurers to go wreck up the place. You're one of those three (eventually four) adventurers
- I'd mostly refer to the vibe as "austere". As nice as the gameplay mechanics are, Slay the Spire feels bereft of personality or charm

Playability & Replayability
- The gameplay is an interesting mix of deckbuilding and roguelike mechanics that, for better or for worse, spawned a slew of cheap imitations. I suppose that's the sign of a good (or at least financially worthwhile) idea
- The deckbuilder mechanics are fairly standard. The character you choose has a standard deck of cards that you can upgrade or remove throughout the course of play. Sometimes, you'll be given additional cards as rewards or run into a shop where you can purchase them
- Some cards, however, are only obtainable through leveling up characters
- You'll also obtain relics, which can add boons or provide bonuses to make your life easier. Choosing good relics that play well into your deck's strengths is the key to doing well and finishing a run
- The actual card game is pretty standard: deal as much damage as you can while avoiding as much damage as possible. It's always in your best interest to finish battles quickly to minimize HP loss; sure, there's opportunities to heal, but they aren't always predictable
- This is the sort of roguelike that gives you a map of branching and converging paths for you to choose from. Charting a course is a strategy game in itself. For example, if you're at half health, do you take a path that leads to a boss battle you're somewhat confident in winning (high risk/high reward), or do you take the path to the shop, which won't kill you but also may not be selling anything you want?
- A game like this is basically infinitely replayable if you enjoy the mechanics

Overall Impressions & Performance
- I can see the quality and depth of the gameplay, but I grew bored with Slay the Spire not long after unlocking the 4th character. It's not that I dislike deckbuilders in principle; I just need some narrative, art, music, or literally anything else to hook me. Without that, it just seems like a CCG without the social aspect. I was never much of a lunch table MTG kid, but I did like borrowing a deck and playing with my friends
- That said, the interactions, rules, and synergies that make up the core gameplay are good. I'd probably love this game if it possessed at least one other interesting quality

Final Verdict
- 7.0/10. A high-quality, mechanically deep deckbuilder that makes good use of the roguelike mechanics but is otherwise devoid of bells, whistles, or personality. Its gameplay can carry it a long way, but not all the way

What I find the most incredible about Slay the Spire is that: this is a game that released in 1997, on the Playstation 1, kicking off a whole generation of roguelite deckbuilders that continues to this day. You would bet that, in those 30 years of developers trying to catch up with Slay the Spire, they would have done it by now, and might have even surpassed it in its own genre, right? But they hadn't. You can buy all the roguelite deckbuilders on Steam, and not one of them dethrones the masterpiece that is Slay the Spire.

THEY CALL ME 007

0 SKILL
0 SPIRES SLAIN
7 SUICIDE ATTEMPTS

Where it Shines:
Card System - 9/10
Replayability - 8/10
Custom Runs - 7/10

The Good:
StS is undoubtedly the gold standard for Rogue Like Deckbuilders. It deserves the praise it gets, for the most part.
Runs feel satisfying, you learn quickly, and the relics, shops, events, cards, etc, all feel really fun. It's definitely the "Just one more run..." game.
The game on steam also has an incredible modding community and there are tons of extra characters, modes, modifiers, and other changes to breathe life into the game once it gets stale.

The Bad:
For all it's praises, the game really does have a lot of flaws. It's easy to just 4 star review this and move on, but I want to highlight areas where I think it really desperately needs some attention.
- music is serviceable, but very generic
- artwork feels like an early 2000's flash game. You'd have expect to see homestarrunner and his gang pop in
- only 4 main characters, half of which are very basic and make runs too easy, the other half of which are overly complicated and runs feel like a coin toss
- good run customization, but the game needs a sandbox mode where you can experiment without restriction
- ported a ton of times over the last 6 years but no real improvements made at all
- some relics and run modifiers just flat out suck. Like trash garbage, unusable.

Summary:
So is it good or not? I think base StS, although hands down is the best out there, still has flaws that drag it down. However, it's still fun overall to play. Will you get bored of it? Sure, but that could be 20 hours in, 30, 40, 100...it depends on how into it you are. And then you can mod it to get even more life. It's probably the most average game I've put over a hundred hours into and counting, which is maybe why I'm so critical of it. I want it to be better. I want it to sound better, look better, play better. Because people keep making rogue like deckbuilders, and they keep trying to reinvent the wheel when StS has the fundamentals down pat. I just want someone to copy StS and give it the polish it deserves.

Note on my ratings:

Treat my stars like Michelin Stars - just having one means the game is worth playing in some way.

1/2 ⭐: hot trash garbage, since you can't do zero stars here
⭐: below average, needs work
⭐⭐: average
⭐⭐⭐: pretty good
⭐⭐⭐⭐: excellent
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐: all time favourite

Slay the Spire along with Vampire survivors are not story driven, but both revel in reinventing a much-beaten genre. I correct myself not reinvention but the ability to look at something that already exists with a lens that speaks directly to the player's feeling of accomplishment. They made so a card game and a game you just walk around gives the same gratification as killing a Boss in dark souls would. The two put card games and monster wave games in the roguelite genre, and had the sensitivity to develop in a way that the game doesn't become frustrating, it flows and you constantly discover new things that make you feel like you're the best in the world.

Individual who played Magic the Gathering in high school who fell off after they stopped having the money to spend on it loves Slay the Spire, more at 11.

Genuinely though, this the most masterful deckbuilder I have played outside Magic which has a 30 year head start on this lol. The diversity of builds, the strategy required to get through every fight and the ability to feel like you are simultaneously in the drivers seat yet never comfortable makes this impossible to put down.

I probably have a phase every year since this came out where I put like 30-40 hours over a month, and I will likely to continue doing so unless it has its Rogue Legacy moment where the sequel comes out and basically makes this one reductive.

If you have any interest in the deckbuilding genre, start here.

I haven't played every game in the genre, but as far as I'm concerned this is the best roguelike deck-builder there is. Excellently crafted, tragically difficult, addictingly entertaining.

The game is brutally challenging, but that's part of why I like it. I do A20 Heart runs and I only win maybe 10% of my runs. Most other games I would quit if I lost that much, but to me there is something so satisfying about winning that it makes up for losing most of the time.

It is a problem solving game at its core. If you feel like you want to hone skills in this department then I would recommend this game.

eu vicio em 2024
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I don't know where the time went with this one. It started out just trying out a game that combined cards and roguelike mechanics, 2 genres I didn't have much experience in. I played for a bit on Steam, then dropped it. Eventually, I found some Youtube content on it, picked it up on the Switch to play on the couch...and then 500+ hours later I got every achievement and climbed to A20 with each character. Once I had climbed every Ascension and "beaten" the game...I made a new file and did it all over again, for FUN!

This game is the ultimate pick up and play game. The sheer variety in game play between characters, Ascension levels, and the randomness of rewards, make it almost infinitely replayable even after almost 1000 hours across multiple systems. There is nothing quite like learning to recognize what you need to make a deck pop-off, and learning how to maximize your chances of doing that. You can min-max by spending hours trying to craft the best play to get through a given fight...or just unga bunga your way through a quick 45 minute run, all while still engaging the same parts of your brain that likes to problem solve.

For me, this is the game that all roguelikes, deckbuilders, and even puzzle games will be compared to, because the satisfaction of crafting a winning strategy in this game is like a drug. I cannot recommend this game enough, especially on a handheld device like a Switch or a Steam Deck.

Steam Version Only: Special mention to the officially supported Downfall mod, an excellent expansion to the game endorsed by the original devs that adds so much high-quality content, that the game might literally be playable forever.