Slay the Spire Review

The Spire Doesn’t Sleep…

It has been nearly eight years since the early access release of Slay the Spire, and five since its full PC release, but I am still finding myself playing it after all this time. Last night, as I lay in bed trying out some new strategy in deckbuilding, I couldn’t help but feel a bit of amazement that the game remains so captivating so far beyond its initial release. It should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the game that it is widely considered one of the best deck-building video games ever made, if not outright the best. It is certainly the most influential — in recent memory, at least. In the eight years since its first release, I’ve never really managed to put down my thoughts on it. So, what makes Slay the Spire such a monumental achievement and influential project?

Publisher: Mega Crit, Humble Bundle

Developer: Mega Crit

Platform: Played on PC (Steam), Mobile (Android)

Availability: Released on Jan 23, 2019 for Windows PC, MacOS, Linux; May 21, 2019 for PS4; June 6, 2019 for Nintendo Switch; August 14, 2019 for Xbox One; June 13, 2020 for iOS, and February 3, 2021 for Android.

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Slay the Spire is best described as a deck-building roguelite dungeon crawler. Using one of four distinctive characters, you’ll make your way through floors of enemies, bosses, and events in order to reach the top of the spire. As you advance, you’ll need to build a deck based around each character's unique properties, facing increasingly difficult enemies along the climb. Managing your health, money, and deck space will be fundamental to finally reaching the top, but each new encounter will bring new trials, giving you valuable experience to learn from — even if you never make it to your final destination on any individual run.

Immediately upon starting a run you are given a choice by the game’s narrator and guiding force, Neow. What those exact choices entail vary run-to-run, but they can involve trading health, gold, or even your starting relic for some other boon. From here you must choose a starting path, with your map showing you the sequence of encounters to be had on each trail. The legend on the right-hand side of the screen gives you an idea of what each encounter icon means, but to fully understand, you will need to engage with the various types of rooms you can explore. Enemies are small foes that offer prizes upon defeat, while elites are souped-up monsters that drop an additional relic on top of the normal encounter loot. Merchants offer a way to buy or offload cards and relics, while “Unknown” can be anything and everything under the sun, except for a rest point — including choose-your-own-adventure type events that can confer some sort of benefit or detrimental effect without combat. 

Core gameplay revolves around a very simple concept. Your character has a set amount of energy to use per turn (base 3), and each card in your hand (base 5) uses a set amount of that energy as noted on each card. Once you have played your cards and ended your turn, the enemy takes their turn, where they do a single action that is telegraphed above their head. If you win your combat encounter, you will be rewarded with cards that you can choose to add to your deck, money to spend in shops, and other possible goodies. 

Everything about this game impresses — there's a clarity and focus that few titles ever achieve.

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The increasing difficulty of these enemies necessitates some tinkering with your available cards, but other factors go a long way to help, such as relics that bestow innate abilities or effects. The puzzle-like quality of each altercation offers additional lessons, as enemies have mostly set attack patterns that can be learned and worked around. Once an encounter is complete, you’re put back on the map to choose your continued path. That simple conceit belies the absolutely absurd depth of this game.

The visual style is a superb, as well. All of the characters and environments have a simple, almost cartoon-like appearance, but every enemy or card is visually striking, with marked differences between each one to keep them easily discernible from one another. Visual indicators for buffs, debuffs, enemy actions, and every other aspect of the game are clear, allowing you to absorb a ton of information at a glance. This helps keep things moving, as having to highlight and read every icon as you play could very quickly become tiresome. Luckily, there’s no limiting timer either way, so you can take your time planning your next move.

Each character not only has their own skillset or innate strengths and starting cards, they all have distinct card pools to draw from in the rewards. With 75 distinct cards per character, and a total of 178 relics available to the player (including some character-specific ones), the possibilities for building your deck are endless. Pathway and enemy variance, rotating boss types per floor, and RNG-related encounters all add to the fathomless pool of choice laid bare in front of you. This is even further exacerbated by gameplay settings such as Ascension level, which introduces some additional negative modifier per level, and other game modes like the daily climb, which is a challenge mode with unique run modifiers and score-tracking. All of this is to say that no matter how many times you play, you’ll never have the same run twice (unless you use a set seed and deliberately make the same choices).

Pathway and enemy variance, rotating boss types per floor, and RNG-related encounters all add to the fathomless pool of choice laid bare in front of you.

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For some, the magnitude of depth may be daunting, like an insurmountable wall of stuff to sift through in order to win, but I think that the volume of choice presented to the player right out of the gate may be among Slay the Spire’s most compelling aspects. There is always something to be gained from a run, whether it's unlocking new cards or relics to play with, learning enemy movesets, or even just figuring out how everything works together or how best to manage your health and cash. Every loss helps you learn, every choice taken is a thought experiment unto itself. It’s just so damn compelling.

I’m at the point now where I am familiar enough with the game to not have to read card text or relic information to know what I’m going to do on any given turn. Having beaten Ascension 20 with each character multiple times, there are no more cards, events, or relics left to discover. For me it's more about experimentation, opening myself up to the possibilities laid before me and diving into trying something new, intentionally. 

After such a long time from release, I almost can’t believe that I’m not tired of Slay the Spire. Every run brings something unique, and I feel like I’m still learning what works and what doesn’t, how best to optimize a run, and how to challenge myself in new and interesting ways. A fantastic mix of simple to understand systems and impossibly deep decision trees makes this one a never-ending joy to engage with. It's not surprising to me that so many titles have looked to this game as an inspiration over those eight years. In fact, I think we may end up looking back on Slay the Spire as the single most influential title since Dark Souls.

Verdict

Slay the Spire is simply the best roguelite deck-builder out right now. Easy to understand systems combined with deep and thoughtful gameplay decisions make the game simultaneously easy to play and difficult to master. While it may be a deeply challenging title, especially on higher difficulties, making your way through each floor remains delightfully satisfying. It’s a masterwork that has spawned countless imitators and exactly zero equals.

Image Credits: Taylor Rioux and MegaCrit, LLC