Slay The Spire, a roguelike deckbuilding game, is the first installment in the series that launched in 2019 by Mega Crit Studios. It’s a game I ‘ve been enjoying a lot lately where you begin a run with choosing a character e.g. a warrior, a mage/necromancer etc. and that decides from which card pool you are going to be choosing cards from, how many HP you are going to be starting with and also in addition, each character has their own special starting power called the “starter relic”.

You start at Act I and are shown a map with multiple starting paths to choose from which contain battle encounters, rest points, merchants, elite encounters, “?” encounters; which can be a curse or a benefit and of course at the top sits the Boss of the act. If you defeat the Boss of an act you move on to the next one and are fully healed but if you die at any point its game over and then need to start over again losing any relics, cards acquired.

A classic gameplay loop that most games nowadays have forgotten and its thanks to that addictive gameplay loop and huge potential card combinations that Slay the Spire became so successfull staying on top of the most played games on the Steam deck for many months.Speaking for myself, Slay the Spires’ gameplay loop had me playing for hours on end the first time i played it.

I would recommend this game to anyone that loves straightforward gameplay loops with no strings attached. Fair warning though, it might be deciptively simple to get into but its hard to master, requiring some quick decision making that will make or break a run.