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.

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.

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.

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.