I just played the digital card game of the physical card game of the digital card game Slay the Spire, called Slay the Spire: The Board Game, and it was *fantastic*!
I love the Slay the Spire video game and about a week ago, I found out that there was an ongoing Kickstarter campaign for a board game port of it. Unfortunately, by the time I was ready to back the project, it had ended. I signed up for the late pledge notification and resolved that I might have to just wait for the retail release. However, when I was reading over the FAQ for the project, I found out there was a semi-scripted Tabletop Simulator workshop mod for playtesting. It was a mistake to play it because now I’m kicking myself ten times as much for not backing it immediately.
The game contains three acts of winding maps and branching paths littered with enemies, encounters, loot, and bonfires, as well as a boss at the end of each, followed by a very short act with a difficult final boss. I have only completed one run so far as the class “The Silent” and I went for a build based around both the poison and shiv mechanics exclusive to that character, with the lynchpin of the strategy being a rare card that caused poison buildup when using shivs. Poison is so much stronger in this game than in the video game, and so are shivs, just to a lesser degree. This is because of how little health enemies have. For each poison counter on an enemy, they lose one health. This, compounded with the fact that unlike in the video game, poison doesn’t decrement each turn, leads to health bars ~melting~ under the strain, although it is admittedly harder to apply poison as rapidly in this version.
The multiplayer aspect of this game adds some interesting tension, as if any player dies, the run is ended (in true roguelike fashion). There was a boss fight where myself and another player were absolutely scrambling to kill the enemies targeting our third as he was only at one hp for the entire back half of the fight. The first run we did ended because despite my poison shiv build demolishing one of the Act 3 bosses, the other one was doing the same to me. I had thinned my deck to the point that I had at most two block cards and with only nine total health, it just wasn’t enough when the boss was attacking for two more damage each turn the fight went on. That being said, my next run was as The Ironclad and I went for a heavy block build. That game is still in session, and I have yet to find the piece that makes it able to deal meaningful damage.
It’s pretty cool how knowledge of the video game translates into playing this board game, as almost all cards, enemies, and mechanics are functionally the same, with the only alterations being made to work within the constraints of lower health and multiple players. I would definitely recommend this game to anyone that has played and enjoyed the Slay the Spire video game, and I would absolutely recommend the Slay the Spire video game to anyone that hasn’t yet tried it. It’s one of my all time favorite deck-builders *and* roguelikes, and it’s really great to see Contention Games’ take on it!
What’s your favorite “broken” build? Let me know down below!
(Also, I haven’t experienced it all yet, but Dead Cells, the crossover roguelike title of the decade, just added in content from Slay the Spire, Risk of Rain, and a few other titles and I’m beyond excited about it. Slay the Spire is eating good this year!)