izigame.me

What if Slay the Spire had an element of randomness and the characters had innate abilities?
It's impossible to avoid the comparisons to StS, so I'm going to lean into it. Bottom line up front, this evolves the Slay the Spire formula in fun and interesting ways to become it's own thing, and is worth your money. It does fall behind in staying power and iconic environmental world building.
For reference, I have put in about 40 hours into the game, unlocked all characters and gotten to level 3 of both the world and Astrea tiers. All characters are level 4, so not everything unlocked, but a lot of it is.
I'll section out my observations.
-Mechanics-
I saw this game being streamed by Rhapsody and was instantly intrigued by these variations on the StS formula. Basically this is a deck builder where the spells are six sided die which you draw and roll each turn to utilize whichever face comes up. Die have good and bad faces with 4 tiers, Safe (no bad faces, weak effects), Balanced (2-3 bad faces, moderate effects), Risky (4-5 bad effects, great effects), and Epic (no bad faces, great effects). The enemies also have die with various effects, and during your turn you may have the chance to re-roll or discard the various dice to affect the combat. As a character, you start with a full health gauge, called corruption, each fight, but have a limited number of lives which are only refreshed between floors. The health gauge is also tied to various unlocking abilities tied to each character which can trigger attacks and effects. A lot of the mechanics involve manipulating your health gauge up and down in order to repeatedly trigger and utilize these effects. These are the biggest deviations from the StS formula, and it adds a whole new level of dynamic thought to the game. The various characters' mechanics feel fresh and very distinct from each other. There are at least 4 or 5 viable building lines for each character and many many more synergies appear with the right artifacts. Having to build around randomness leads to a different kind of deckbuilding where you are always conscious of risk, but it avoids feeling cheap or unlucky by giving you many powerful mitigation tools in the form of abilities, spells, and companion machines which can fill in for weaknesses in your deck.
My one major complaint with the mechanics has to do with the enemy and boss pool. The enemies mostly feel one note, with no particularly different mechanic you need to solve. It's not that differences don't exist, but with a very few exceptions they just don't seem to matter much. Once you have your character line down you just play it out and it doesn't really need to deviate much for the enemy. A few of the floor bosses have some limited interesting mechanics, but generally don't make you adapt your play that much either and it feels like the game could do a lot more with this. The boss pool also feels really limited, with only two options for each floor and mid-boss. I really wish there were a third option, and I wish you needed to build towards solving them instead of just looking for a viable line. Maybe it is just too difficult, since you have to put so much effort into finding a viable deck there may not be enough latitude to worry about building towards the bosses. This is the kind of inventiveness and balance problem in game design that is really hard to solve, and despite the weakness in enemy design I really respect the work they have put into the deckbuilding.
-Atmosphere-
The world building is not great. On the good side, the story is serviceable, and sets up the stakes and goals fairly well. The Oracles all also have a description sheet which gives clues into their distinctive natures and mechanics. The world itself is almost completely lacking though. I feel like there a lack of communication outside what is explicitly explained to you, and the designs and events don't really serve to build up anything or make it feel lived in. The enemies have names, but they don't really imply anything so what is the point? All of the events are basically "encounter a place or thing and take something from it". I really feel like they missed out on a lot of opportunities here to sell this universe which supposedly has existed for thousands of years since the apocalypse event. This is one of those places where it really compares unfavorably to StS, where the explicit story is non-existent, but clues about the nature of the Spire are everywhere.
The art of the game is bright and colorful based around primary hues of blue for good and red for bad. While the art is distinctive in theme, it lacks a little in impact from being kind of washed out. I blame this on adhering too closely to the color guidelines. While the world becomes more somber and dangerous as you approach ground zero, the levels don't really feel that distinctive and the environment and enemy art don't really communicate much more than "corrupted denizens of the worlds become scary monsters." The character designs are pretty good, utilizing different races as the oracles and enemies, but the washed out blueness takes something away. The star boon visual design also feels like a missed opportunity. Finding powers within constellations was a great idea and I was totally there for it, but was disappointed in how limited the imagery for this was in the reveal before seeing the actual boons. The event art is pretty good, but lacks anything to make it feel like more than a placeholder. A few boss designs are great, and feel legitimately threatening. Basically the art is good, but there was a ton of missed opportunities and nothing here feels iconic.
The music is somber and mysterious. It sets the scene, but honestly I found it lacking and repetitive. Nothing here stuck in my head or enhanced the experience, and I actually found the final boss theme distracting. There's not much in the way of a hook in the tunes, and it all felt a little washed out and generic in the same way the art did.
-Final Words-
A few thoughts at the end.
The level unlocks were handled really well, and unlock new depths to the mechanics at the right time. The mechincal companions were a great idea, but a few of them are way more useful than the others (you're always going to hope for a dice mechanic bot like reroll or draw and usually the Oracle specific bot).
A run at a leisurely pace takes me about an hour, which feels about right.
Overall even though I am being critical the game is great. I think it might be slightly too easy, but that can be subjective to your experience and I haven't gotten close to the high tiers yet. I was worried about buying it full price at $25, but it is definitely worth that. There is a ton pf game here for the money.