Slay the Spire

I first played Slay the Spire near the end of its Early Access period, I did 1 run with the Ironclad character and completed it in the first run. It's not that I didn't enjoy my time there, but I dropped the game after that thinking I had gotten what I could out of the game and that I was just very good at card games to complete it on the first try. I've recently revisited the game to give it a proper chance and it's much more challenging than I first try. The 2nd and 3rd characters are much harder to complete which I haven't managed to, there's much strategy when it comes to them.

Slay the Spire's concept is pretty simple, a roguelike card game. You start with 10 cards in your deck, and for each enemy you defeat you get to add one card in your deck. Relics can be found for permanent bonuses and these really help out along with potions. As your deck gets stronger, your enemies also get stronger too. The goal is to complete the 3 acts without dying, and if you do die you have to start all over again. In true roguelite fashion some new cards get unlocked when you achieve a certain amount of points to make your runs a little easier as you play more. Once you complete it with 1 character, you can unlock the ascension mode to add extra challenges (but the game is already challenging as it).

While I've played Hearthstone for 500+ hours (I don't know exactly how much, but way too much), the solo player content was always my least favorite part of the game... this is kind of the same as that, playing against AI with predictability which for me doesn't match the experience of defeating real players and playing the mind tricks with them. Still Slay the Spire is pretty fun, and will get you thinking plenty of times at which cards to choose or which road to take to make it to the finish line. As you play more runs, you get a good feel of what deck style you prefer with each character and it's worth noting that the 3 characters have a completely different style giving the game a lots of variability.

On the whole I do find Slay the Spire to be a slightly overrated game, it's not exactly a game of the decade candidate like many are claiming it is, but it's still overall a pretty fun experience and it does the job pretty well. Definitely looking forward to playing a run here and there, and also for future new content with a 4th character in the works. It seems to be spawning several clones and I do think that one day a new game will eventually come and outdo the original.