Right up until November 14, 2017, my disdain for the card battler genre was both all-consuming and utterly ignorant. Though I had tried my hands at earlier fare such as Blizzard’s Hearthstone among others, it’s fair to say that card battler games just didn’t click with me and as time went on I just couldn’t work out why I kept bouncing off this seemingly much loved and popular genre. Thankfully my ignorance would come to a surprising end when on that aforementioned date, indie outfit Mega Crit released Slay the Spire into Steam Early Access, essentially turning my odious view of card battlers upside down and giving me the most unexpected Game of the Year candidate ever.
With Slay the Spire 2 in the works, here is how the original Slay the Spire became the gold standard for the card battler genre and what still sets it apart from the many games that followed.
Clarity Above All Things
One of the most overlooked aspects of Slay the Spire’s heady calibre is just how clear and concise the whole thing is. With a blissfully clutter-free screen, coupled with a resolutely clean presentation and colour-coded cards which indicate their function, Slay the Spire’s lean UI is a breezy world away from many of its peers in the card battler genre and helps newbies to hit the ground running. Other card battlers could learn much from Slay the Spire’s restrained and wonderfully streamlined presentation, that’s for sure.
A Short, Sweet Gameplay Loop That Anybody Can Pick Up
What chiefly allows Slay the to Spire to succeed in welcoming genre newbies is the beautifully lean and compelling gameplay loop that defines the core of its experience. Slay the Spire is wonderfully easy to understand – you take turns playing cards against your enemies, using energy which is replenished each turn. The aim is to use your correspondingly numbered cards until you whittle down their HP to zero by using a mixture of attack, defend, skill and power-based cards.
When you’re not fighting with enemies, you’ll be making your way up through the map that each act provides, collecting treasure chests, dealing with random multiple-choice, gamebook-style events and tackling toweringly tricky bosses – and it’s all devilishly easy to pick up and play at a moment’s notice. Slay the Spire is simultaneously a gateway to the card battler genre and also an offering that sits at its apex.
Four Very Different Characters With Unique Mechanics
One of the biggest ways that Slay the Spire meaningfully separates itself from the competition is in how it offers up four different characters (most of which are unlockable – but we’ll get to that in a bit) that each change up the moment to moment gameplay in a number of interesting ways.
The barbarian-like Ironclad has the highest starting health of any character and automatically gains six health points at the conclusion of each fight, making him a super suitable choice for less-tenured players. Meanwhile, the poison-loving assassin, Silent, not only leverages damage over time poison cards but also gains two extra cards at the beginning of every battle. Veering into the more sophisticated territory, the Defect is a powerful automaton that can channel different elemental orbs which are triggered at the end of every turn, increasing its offensive or defensive capacities dramatically. Finally, the Watcher leverages different stances that accentuate the defensive or offensive qualities of various cards. Put simply, there is something for everyone with Slay the Spire’s quartet of playable characters and the potential for mastery of each character for those willing to invest the time is substantial, easily running into the high hundreds of hours and beyond.
You Are Always Progressing And That Feels Great
Beyond its supremely compelling gameplay loop, Slay the Spire manages to keep players engaged by leveraging its roguelike design DNA to make sure that even in defeat, you’re still progressing. Essentially splitting progression into the micro and macro, Slay the Spire lets you build out your deck, gain potions that can be used on a per-battle basis and loot powerful relics that can provide a positive effect for the remainder of your run – although you do lose all of your in-run loot should you either perish or when you defeat the final boss in either the third or secret fourth act. Beyond such micro progression on a per playthrough basis, Slay the Spire also has progression on a macro scale, with you gaining precious experience points – even when you die – at the end of each playthrough which is then used to unlock a broader variety of new cards for each character that will be shuffled into every consecutive playthrough.
In addition, Slay the Spire also neatly incentivises you to play with each character, since while the Ironclad is the first and only character available on your first playthrough, you unlock the Silent by attempting a playthrough with the Ironclad and then unlock the Defect by attempting a playthrough with the Silent and so on. When taken in tandem with its straightforward UI and easy-to-grasp mechanics, the progression that Slay the Spire provides makes a hugely enticing card battler even more so.
Risk And Reward Taken To Another Level
As you gradually amass a collection of gold, potions and numerous relics on your journey through Slay the Spire’s four different acts, there is no shortage of opportunities in every playthrough to risk your booty for a shot at better loot, often at the expense of something else. For example, upon felling one of Slay the Spire’s many bosses, you’ll get a choice of three special relics to choose from and one of them might provide you with an extra energy point for each turn (more energy points allow you to play more cards or can be used to play fewer, more powerful cards), but at the expense of being able to upgrade your cards at the various camps that dot each level. This then encourages you to really consider whether the benefit of that particular relic outweighs the weakness that it brings to the table.
This commitment to embedding risk and reward in its overall design permeates elsewhere in the Slay the Spire. At the beginning of every act you’re given an overview of five or six different paths to the boss fight and you’re allowed to choose which path you start with and you can also elect to change your path based on your tolerance for risk. See an elite enemy fight that you want to avoid, so you can heal yourself at the next camp? You can do that – albeit at the expense of potentially beating that elite enemy and scoring an elite relic that would potentially make future fights easier. Ascension levels are another great example of this too, since these are unlocked after beating the game and satisfying several conditions, resulting in more challenging runs that are at once filled with more challenging elite encounters, but also the potential of more elite relic loot opportunities as a direct consequence.
Genuinely Clever Enemy & Boss Encounters That Really Test You
Perhaps Slay the Spire’s superb design is never better exemplified than in the spread of boss encounters it forces the player into at the end of every act. Far from pedestrian tests of your card-battling expertise, these big bads are smartly engineered fiends that subvert Slay the Spire’s gameplay loop in a whole host of surprising ways. Take the creepy-looking Time Eater for instance. A towering demonic fiend, in the early going it seems like a fairly straightforward scrap, right up until they engage a magical clock which progressively shortens your turn length, forcing you to think and act extremely quickly with the dwindling amount of time that is available to you.
In another example, three black slime monsters present an interesting threat – not least because all of them are connected by a ‘life link’, which results in them being brought to life so long as one of their comrades remains standing. This means you have to balance out your damage output across all three to make sure that they all perish at the same time, rather than defeating them individually. A real treat, the numerous enemies and bosses of Slay the Spire are certainly one of its marquee attractions and invariably aid in triggering that ‘one more go’ sensation whenever you fall in battle against one of them.
