Slay The Spire – For That TCG/Rogue-like Itch of Yours

Hey there people. As always, popping on and off like zits on your face, Wolvenciel here with a game showcase this time around. Now some of you might have heard of Slay The Spire as its been in alpha for quite some time but it was only properly released late last year. So I’m gonna jump right to it.

A Good Blend of Cards and Deaths

Now as the title suggests, yes this is a roguelike card game. Slay The Spire lets you choose a base deck at the start of the game and as you climb up the Spire you’ll fight enemies and these enemies will give you more cards to add to your decks. Some stronger enemies and treasures along the way will also give you useful and/or detrimental passives to help with climbing up.

The first base deck unlocked for you is the Ironclad. You'll get the other two as you play the game.

Its basically a draft match one after another.

And yes as all rogue-like games are, this one also has its own bonfire for you recuperate.

Climbing Up

The Spire itself is random-generated but the cards you get will all follow your base deck’s color (unless its a colorless card) so you wouldn’t have to worry about the deck being too much of an abomination as you add more cards to it because most of the choices have a semblance of synergy to one another.

Say if you chose a red deck, you'll always get red cards to add to the deck.

You can also choose what route you would want to take as you climb. These rooms range from you bog-standard monsters that add common cards to your decks to even random text-based choices that could totally alter your decks for you. So each climb would be very different from one another.

Each stage has its own sets of enemies and encounters and you choose your routes via the map

The fact that its random also means sometimes you’ll get lots of crazy stuff that enhances your deck and make you a spire-slaying god and boy does it feel good when that happens.

An example of a crazy enough deck that happened from me stacking relics on top of more relics.

The Spire will have three levels each time you climb and after you finish all three levels with all three base decks the game unlocks a new challenge for you.

When you beat the stage boss, the game lets you choose a rare card to be added to your deck.

And of course, a rare relic which are mostly core to your play through.

The End Game

The title of the game is pretty self-explanatory. Slay the goddamn spire. Each time you climb and reach the end you’ll deal an amount of damage to the Spire’s heart and each time you climb with a deck you’ll unlock more cards and relics for the decks themselves.

Some examples of the relics you can unlock.

Although if you happened to finish the climb with all three decks, you’ll unlock the Spire’s keys. On all your runs afterwards you’ll have chances to collect these keys and fight the main boss one on one. If you do get to that point, I wish you luck.

You'll also gain access to shops to spend your hard earned cash. You can buy cards, relics and even remove cards.

No I have not beaten the main boss of the game yet and I don’t know if I ever will. It… was quite the shocker for me. If any of you readers did beat it, do tell me in the comments below.

My Thoughts On It


I’m a fan of card games so Slay The Spire really just made me fall head over heels for it. One fact that just made me fall in love with it is the core mechanics of the game. This game lets you see the enemies intents and you can decide how to react to that. It never hides any of the monsters’ special abilities from you. The game expects you to look at the problems presented to you and find a solution for it via the deck that you built and the hand that you have drawn.

Ironclad uses a ramp style deck which focuses on buffing you up and hitting the enemy with big cards

I’ve been playing the game for quite some time and still haven’t managed to beat the main boss so you can already surmise I’m not that good a card game player. Maybe you guys can do better yeah?

One of the bosses on the third level. Got lucky with a loop deck. But yeah. Even this deck wouldn't be able to beat the Extra Boss. Good luck with that.

See you guys next time. Wolvenciel, signing off.