Description

At its core, Slay the Spire is a deck-building roguelite, and it features the player character trying to escape the spire by defeating enemies throughout three acts. Each acts culminates to a final boss, and beating it gives you a special boss relic, which can change your play style for that run. Winning each fight allows you to customise your deck by adding additional cards, and defeating special “elite” enemies gives you a relic which changes the way you build your deck. The game is $22 with no in-game purchases required. Thus far, there have been no paid DLCs, in fact new content has been available for free and these range from bug fixes, to a brand new character.

Lens 7: Elemental Tetrad

Mechanics:

• During each combat, the player has a limited amount of energy each round, and playing cards cost a varying amount of energy.
• Cards can do damage, provide defense against enemy attacks, or various other utility effects.
• Some cards are one-time use per combat, as they will exhaust themselves during the combat, which means the player has to decide the opportune moment to use them.
• Enemies have an intent which signals to the player what they plan to do that round.
• Since health only replenishes between acts, the player’s health is a resource which they
• After a battle, the player gets the choice to upgrade his deck by adding another card to his deck, which can make him more powerful in future fights.

Story:

• The player is trying to climb the Spire, and ascend its floors though the span of three acts.
• Each act is culminated in the final boss.
• Even if you defeat the final boss, the player will lose consciousness and will have to start from the first floor in future runs.
• Thus, the story in Slay the Spire is not particularly strong.

Aesthetics:

• The game is entirely in 2D, and its art style is consistent throughout the game, choosing to utilise a more hand-drawn cartoon art style.
• Each card is made to seem like a traditional card game (TCG) card, and they have their own art work.
• Overall the aesthetics are clean yet bring about the fantasy theme, which allows for a crisp gameplay.

Technology:

• Slay the Spire is not very resource intensive, as its graphics are not as intricate as other AAA titles.
• This is perfectly fine since it can be run on lower-end PCs and consoles. The game can even be run on mobile, making it very accessible.
• The game runs well, even though each run is procedurally-generated, making the gameplay smooth and enjoyable.

Lens 39: Meaningful Choices

The game is filled with a multitude of meaningful choices, such as:

• Choosing which card/relic to pick after each battle, and there’s an option to not pickup a new card if it dilutes and weakens your deck
• Choosing which path to take on the map, since the player could opt for more combat rooms, which gives them the option to accrue more cards at the expense of health, or to visit other utility rooms such as event rooms or the store
• Choosing what to spend your gold on in the store. The player can buy new cards, one-time use potions (which are cheaper), or to remove a card permanently from the deck, thinning it and making each draw more consistent.
• During battle, the player has to juggle between choosing to deal more damage to kill the enemies quicker, or to raise your own defense to mitigate health loss in the long run

The fact that the game is filled with meaningful choices, means that if the player ends up losing a run, they are often able to pinpoint exactly where they messed up, and they can learn and adapt in the future.

Lens 34: Skill

Over several runs, the player will slowly start to learn how each enemy type behaves. For example, in a battle against a cultist and a knight, the cultist will keep buffing and healing the knight, so the player will learn to focus down the cultist first, so the battle will end quicker.

Additionally, the player will start to pick up what kind of playstyle he enjoys, whether they prefer doing big damage, or going for a combo-centric build where they aim for a small synergistic deck.

The game highly tests the player skill and ability to adapt to whatever he is given. Since the map is procedurally-generated, each run will be different so the player cannot use the same strategy each time.

Lens 46: Reward

At the end of run, the player is awarded XP based on how well they did. Even if the player’s run was short, they will still earn some XP, which is used to increase your player character level to unlock new more powerful cards and relics. These can unlock new strategies and play styles and often allows the player to progress even further in the run. Each time they beat the three acts with a character, it will unlock a different character to choose from, which plays completely differently and provides new mechanics and nuances in the player’s abilities. This rewards the player for just playing, and motivates them to try out all the characters.

Lens 98: Community

The game has plenty of mods, developed by the community, ranging from new custom developed characters to various gameplay tweaks such as providing a bonus if you kill the enemies with the exact number of damage. These shows how much the community is invested into this game, and the fact that the community is constantly churning out new content for the game means this game can last well into the future, even if the developer stops producing new content for it.