While I've failed miserably to review any thus far, I happen to be something of a board game geek, and one of my favourites is Dominion. This is a deck-building game, in which players draw from a varied set of cards, in order to each amass a working deck, that they can then use to amass points by attacking, chaining combos together and buying more cards to create a deck that can smash your opponents.
Now, Dominion is a funny game in that it can be very different depending on the number of players. A group of four or five can be chaotic, with effects coming from multiple corners, whereas a two-player is a very savage, cutting battle, with acrimony easily kicking in as you attempt to tear each other to pieces. What Dominion is very bad at however, is a single player mode.
Which is where Slay The Spire comes in.
This takes the deck-building concept, and applies the mechanic to an RPG, in which the player is exploring a tower full of death, anguish, merchants and monsters.
Action is turn-based and rogue-like, with a new dungeon being created everytime you die. There is a variable path system in place, which allows you to frequently select between a fight, a fight with an elite, a merchant, a resting point and a "random", which can be any of the previous or a choose your own adventure style scenario, with a little bit of narrative and a choice which results in a positive or negative effect (or both).
Fights begin with you drawing five cards, and using them to either apply straight damage, build up "block" which gives you a defence against the enemy attack, or skills. Skills can increase your strength, improving attack effectiveness, give you more energy to allow you to perform further attacks or improve draw number and so on. These can be combo'ed to create incredible effects if the random number god is on your side.
Fights can be frustrating, but mostly in a fun way. You will die, and loss of progress can be annoying, but it's very easy to get going again, and the journey itself is enjoyable. The boss fights in particular can be an impressive struggle, often going down to the wire with me ending up with almost no health and a hand full of wound cards. Again, losses are painful, but not massively, because you're always keen to have another go at it.
I'm still a relatively short distance into the game, and there are plenty of additional things to be unlocked. Further stages, additional cards, more playable characters, with different characteristics and various challenge stages. And it's probably not finished, because it's still technically in "early access". That's not usually something I get into, as the game can be fairly shaky, but this one is more than a little decent.
It's a fun game, and one that I'm likely to keep coming back to for a while. Especially if they keep adding features.
Tagged: Game Turn-based RPG 2D Average difficulty PC