I find this game very hard to review. Not because I’m torn, but I’m unanimous in my praise but it’s really hard to place why without fearing spoiling the aspects of discovery of the synergy of mechanics in this game. I have tried to write this review several times. I sank like 70 hours in no time, one after another right after getting my ass kicked. And I still feel like there’s so much I can do and learn. There are many reasons I can place that make it feel different to other rogue-likes and it comes down to the tight synergy and variety, the degree of choice and chance, and the impeccable sense of balance.

The game is simple: you start with 3 energy, use those to play cards to help block, attack, or later on use a power. You can read enemy intents, the enemies themselves have a clear behavior and a general pattern. It places it in a different spot to other card games. As a single player game, your goal is not to consider an opponent playing in the same rules as you with their own deck, not against a horrible AI or just cheating odds. You are instead using your wits and taking chances to try and become a David against a Goliath near the end. Where you start with only 3 energy and 80 HP facing a 420 HP behemoth but string cards well enough to empower each other through them feeding strength or block through some mechanic through each other well enough to well, Slay the Spire.

And it feels great. So great.

The name of the game of Slay the Spire is synergy. It is using cards and relics to cyclically boost each other's attack, block, energy, card draws. It makes for a very interesting, dynamic style of play, a feeling of cleverness as you use your wits to form interconnected dynamical play. Those wits aren’t just in battle but also happen while you are always in the question of how you should build your deck or which relics to go for, as you learn to build a deck to enforce these synergistic powers to your best advantage.

This game's novel style of deck building creates a constant intrigue and engagement. It’s not just about picking the right card you already have but making do with what you have, considering whether to go a certain direction as certain kinds of cards come, and weighing what you’ll encounter in the future, constantly engaging in a creative way to see what you can make work as a dynamic strategy emerges. This is probably the first game where I felt the luck, that element of chance, is one that is genuinely what makes it so great. It adds uncertainty, unsure of how things will pan out while not being unfair. It stops the game from making it a purely theoretical computational study.

I imagine a possible feeling is that there are only 4 characters and so many cards. This is where I’ll note every character feels completely different, usually with entirely different mechanics their cards can employ. They each have their own colorful feel to them. Ironclad is heavy, tanky, iron on iron. The Silent is crafty, using numerous weak cards to build something very effective, and a variety of tricks to avoid attacks. The Defect is robust and high-tech, preparation and power oriented. The Watcher is focused on foresight, planning, manipulating the deck, and right time right place type play. These descriptions alone do a dis-service to underlying the real extent of the layers the characters have. There are enough cards to support all kinds of different kinds of plays, different ‘archetypes’. Between the characters, even similar archetypes (eg, the energy building card drawer) feel different because of the manner they are incorporated, broadly in the style described above.

Every character I had a moment where I felt ‘this is the best, they’re my favorite’ and characters I might not have instinctually gravitated to as much showed their deeper colors very quickly and I feel they’re all amazing. It’s hard to explain so it’s not just anything they do, they each genuinely feel so different and colorful. They are distinctive enough and with enough layers that among my many runs I can still name off all kinds of different builds and ideas, all completely distinct.

Most amazingly? There is not one character or build I feel is really better than the other. The kind of build I first used to really beat the game was not one I had thought would have been viable, I didn’t even use cards to boost a certain aspect I thought must have been required. And the other I used to ‘beat’ the game on my first run was a quite spastic deck relying on random costs, 0 cost cards, and drawing to just overpower which was a completely different approach to the other strategy.

I notice when I play a different character, other kinds of enemies that I didn’t struggle with before become harder, but other aspects help others. The different enemies encountered each have felt designed to act as a possible deterrence of one possible weakness of a deck, but it's spread out differently over the different enemies. Because the characters and builds are different, there will always be an enemy of this form and it gives that degree of chance that feels so balanced among every possibility of your build. It's not really the enemies alone that are meant to give the fight interest as much as the context of those enemies, your chances, and your kind of build and how it works.

If there is one thing I credit to all this, it is *because* the game is a bit more lean. It makes it incredibly tight, allowing all these close together synergistic connections. It allows it to be very well balanced, to let that element of chance really work and keep you coming back for more.

I also want to comment on the art and characters a bit since I quite like them and it grew on me. It’s a bit more for lack of a better term flat but it feels fitting and the aesthetic is well tied throughout the cards, enemies, characters, and UI. The characters are also a lovely unique diverse distinct cast whose card styles, art help build entirely different images of what you’re doing. The music is not per se anything to sing home on about but it does provide the right sound for back to back plays, the foreboding dungeon theme saying “ready to go again?”.

A small note to add is there is also a modding community. Slay the Spire laid the groundwork for a new approach to single player card games and that framework has been used for people to infuse their own characters with their own cards, even new relics and enemies. I personally tried my hand at a time stopping Sakuya Izayoi, The Servant, a magic building Reimu, or a soul building mechanic for the knight of Hollow Knight. There are others of generally more acclaim and balance. Or, you can just become Saitama and kill everything in one punch. I found these all interesting if quite a bit harder to use.

On the whole, Slay the Spire comes off as a very unassuming game at first sight but I urge anyone to give it a chance and see it through a bit farther to uncover this immaculate tight blend of synergy, variety, and balance.