Reviews from

in the past


Slay the Spire in my opinion is near perfect and the best roguelike/lite come to market. The breath of options for building and creating a deck, the relics, and completely different playstyles of all the characters are enough to satisfy for hundreds of hours on their own.

A rewarding yet difficult roguelike deckbuilder. Unforgiving and punishing at times, Slay the Spire rewards players that are patient and adaptive.

É um jogo que é mecanicamente bom, tudo é bem fluido e tem uma identidade bacana. Ele só não me cativou para jogar além das quase 10 horas que o experienciei. A progressão nele não me motivou a continuar fazendo runs devido a grande dependência de sorte em certos casos.

Talvez com o 2 que estar por vir eu seja surpreendido com uma evolução desse game.

Fucked up the entire landscape of indie videogames as a whole.
In less than 5 hours I had seen and beaten everything the game had to offer. Maybe a patch solved it or didn't, but that doesn't quit the fact that it still was the origin of all the spam of card games on itchio.


Efficient card game but a real story should allow more interest like Inscryption.

Although I'm a level designer, which means I work in the industry, I struggle a lot when it comes to be informed of which game is currently on development, which game is launched when and how is its reception, both public & critical.

A colleague producer recently recommend me "Silence on joue!", a french speaking podcast produced by Libération newspapers to follow videogames news. It works well, I recommand you this program if you understand french.

The main individual behind Silence on joue! is a huge fan of cards games (which I'm fond of since hearthstone, Kards and much more since LoR). He constantly talks about Slay the Spire, which I never heard of, and which is supposed to represent a whole genre : the rogue deck building. The game cost me 6€. Let's try it.

First and foremost : I have a strange relationship with rogue lites. I love Spelunky & Risk of Rain (& its sequel), I have mixed feeling about Noita, FTL & Rogue Legacy, I hate Binding of Isaac, and I've bought without taking the time to play them Hades & Enter the Gungeon. Why is that ?
Well, to me, it's all about faireness. IMHO, a good rogue lite relies both on skill AND randomness, not either one either the other. I hate Binding of Isaac because when you pick up an item, if you don't have a wiki openned on the second screen, you absolutely aren't able to tell :
- 1 : what this item it going to do
- 2 : In which way it is going to do it
- 3 : As a consequence of the first two points : if you must take it or not.
For instance if you take the peepee item while you already have big tears, it'll nullify both advantage of big tears (which are range+dmg) and replace them with the peepee which makes you shoot fast at a very low range. That means that peepee is, in this situation, abolutely NOT a power-up, but is actually a malus ! I think it's really unfair, I hate it and I don't understand why players tolerate it. An item is a reward, a reward is highly influenced by randomness in a rogue lite, certainly, but it should ALWAYS be positive.
The other aspect of rogues lites I dislike is difficulty. Most of the time, these games simply are waaaaaay to difficult for wrong reasons. It is the deal in order to give the player the feeling of progression, the advantage of experiencing multiple builds and techniques, and to progressively master the game. But it should be used with a lot of care, because it can lead to a feeling of injustice.

Slay the Spire is... Wonderful considering all the things I said above.
- 1 : It is honest : BEFORE you make a choice, it clearly shows you its benefits and its defaults
- 2 : It is hard, without being impossible : I finished the main game mode in about 6h, which constitute about 3 runs. I've not beaten the entire game tho : there are other game modes, other difficulty modes, a lot of characters to play with, daily challenges and a lot of options to customize your runs and never be bored. But I feel like I beat the game already because I did beat the main adventure (which I never did in 50+ hours of Rogue Legacy or FTL for instance).
On top of this (which means on top of the game's rogue lite structure), the game is smart and good. It focuses on what I love in card games, which is the deck building section. You constantly have to make choices that will affect your run in both short, mid and long term. I must also point out that the game's has a very good production value. Gamepad controls are great, interfaces are wondeful, accessibility is good enough (except maybe it lacks an option to adjust the font size), french translation is quite good and the detailled history of your previous runs is a wonderful feature.

There are no reasons you should'nt play slay the Spire unless you know you hate card games. It is fun. It is smart. It is well produced. It is a good introduction to both deck building and rogue lites. It can be played by a children. It is cheap.
I'm glad this game exist and I hope I gave you the desire to play it.
Have fun.

it's really hard to not love this game

It's crazy how much time I sunk into this game, the different builds you can do with the cards in your hand feels almost infinite

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.

I LOVE this game. Somehow I'm not sick and tired of it yet. It's very simple, it works wonders, it's fun, challenging and weirdly addicting. When I think of this game I don't really think there's anything particular that stands out? But it works so so well. As I'm writing this I have 270hrs, having reached the final difficulty level on 3 characters (beaten with 2 of them). Every once in a while I just come back to this. It's really a comfort game.

I don't like deckbuilding games very much.

Achei o jogo bem divertido com um dos personagens, e não tanto com outros. Acabei só finalizando com os dois primeiros personagens e decidi que já era o suficiente pra mim.

Achei as runs um pouco demoradas também, apesar que dá para pausar e voltar depois. Se o jogo tivesse runs mais rápidas para mim ficaria mais interessante.

Likely the best deck builder I have ever played. Ridiculously addictive.

a game’s gotta be good when i can be this ass at it and still always be having just the absolute most fun

Um jogo fantástico que criou o gênero de cardgame roguelike, extremamente viciante e desafiador, mesmo sendo um dos primeiros desse gênero, continua sendo um dos melhores até hoje.

Quantas horas já gastei nesse jogo? Acho que estou viciado

i dont know what happend to me but i have played this game everyday for a month straight but it never gets boring there are like infinite possibilities and even when you might exhaust (hehe exhaust get it my fellow ironcladders) the normal runs and ascensions you can do custom runs ITS FUCKIGN AWESOME !!!!! defect ftw btw

This is like playing Magic the Gathering but without the friend who spent $300 on a card that makes it so they can’t be killed and they win instantly (true story)

É difícil explicar esse jogo, ele PRECISA ser vivido, é EXCELENTE do inicio ao fim, todo preconceito que eu tinha com roguelikes acabou aqui, é SURREAL a qualidade, o carinho, os combos, relíquias, inimigos, bosses, ascensões, faltam elogios pra descrever isso aqui.
Peak.

Despite the losses, the unrelenting force of the spire continues to call.....and it is a call I will always answer.

Solid roguelike experience, but playing the base game gets a bit boring for me. Despite the fact I was addicted the first few hours, it grew old on me when I realized the enemies and areas were pretty much always the same. Haven't tried add-ons yet though.

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.

i mean it made a genre. thats prime 8/10 material


My favorite deck builder of all time, mixed with a rogue-lite, it's a masterpiece and still very difficult.

Such an amazing game if you like rougelikes and/or card games. In my case I love both.

One of the most mechanically deep games I've ever played. This game is so carefully crafted to the point where adding or removing 1 damage or health point from something can drastically change how this game plays and feels.
It's incredible how almost every single card has a use case, and how fun it is to play around and test all these different playstyles.
The difficulty can be ramped up to absurd levels, and beating the highest difficulty is a real challenge. Funny enough, my last completion of the highest difficulty was centered around a card and relic I previously thought weak, yet those two combined were the exact reason I managed to win so easily.
it's an incredible game, and there are some modders in the community adding their own twist to it for extra replayability.
The only turnoff for most would be the presentation. This game doesn't really look enticing, and I don't blame those who shy away from it due to its appearance, but I truly wish that people gave this game a shot regardless of the way it looks.
This game has inspired a decent number of games, like Monster Train and Inscryption, though none have ever hit the same heights as Slay the Spire in my opinion. It is, without a doubt, the GOAT in the genre.

Slay the Spire (2019): Detesto los roguelikes y este me ha gustado, así que malo no es. Me sigue frustrando el diseño inherente al género de volver al principio cada vez para avanzar un pasito más, pero este es entretenido y sobre todo muy agradable de jugar (6,45)