Going into Monster Slayers I was skeptical. The art looked low quality, the music had low sound quality and was a very short and somewhat annoying loop. And all together it looked to be a less polished slay the spire. And for the most part that's exactly what it was! And yet, it was still very entertaining. I found myself so entranced by the simple game loop that I forgot to go to my classes today.

So, getting down to it. Monster Slayers is a deck building roguelite that play somewhat similar to Slay the Spire, you are put in a dungeon with limited paths to choose from and either run into a merchant, treasure, an enemy, or a few other npcs that can build your additional stats. Unlike Slay the Spire you have a skill tree and equippable items that you keep between runs. While you can slowly learn more optimal deck builds the transfer of items will help you more reliably progress from run to run.

- 12 playable classes (starts out with 6 and the additional 6 are earned by beating the game with each of the original 6 classes)
- Skill tree allows for easier progression and some customization for how you want to play
- Game is simple and easy to pick up

- Game is possibly too simple, not much customization of decks to make different play styles. It feels like every run you should just minimize the amount of cards in you deck instead of building a larger strategic deck.
- The graphics are not great.
- The music and sound quality are less than stellar
- Items bought from merchants in the dungeon can't be equipped (as far as I can tell) until after you leave the dungeon
- It doesn't feel very doable to be able to beat it on the first run through. By this I mean I feel like you HAVE to level up the skill trees and have items earned in past runs to be able to succeed. Optimally it would still be possible to succeed on your first try though it would be harder. I didn't feel like it was even possible on my first run.
- You have to recustomize a new character after every death. I would prefer an option to use my same character and they just reset to level 1 instead of having to recreated them over and over.

In conclusion I think this game could be a good use of $9 and would be of even more value if you can get it on sale. If you loved Slay the Spire and would be interested in a more casual deck builder to scratch that itch then this game is for you.
Solid 7/10