PC/Mac/Linux
Last Friday we returned to our weekly glimpse into the future and I stated that I would be playing the hell out of Divinity: Original Sin 2. Well, I lied. I didn’t even open D:OS2 all weekend. I have a good excuse, though. You see, no one told me that a little card game called Slay the Spire had left Early Access last Thursday. If I’d known, I would have been forthcoming with the fact that I planned on playing the living hell out of Slay the Spire all weekend long.
Slay the Spire is one of those games that I became very involved in when it first arrived in Early Access, but then stumbled off to more polished pastures. I hadn’t looked at the game in a long, long time. So, when I heard it went full release last week, I re-jumped into it and–I’m not exaggerating here–it’s incredible.
The Ironclad is still around, albeit with art that allows me to tell just what the hell the Ironclad is. There are other classes as well, a thief-like sneaky dude with a bony face, and a sentient golem-like thingee. I didn’t get their names because I spent the majority (all) of my time with the Ironclad trying to suss out how the Spire works. On Sunday night, I finally succeeded.
Slay the Spire is a deck-builder, but you build your deck in minute steps, one card at a time, and those come only after lengthy battles with the Spire’s less affectionate denizens. There are merchants where you can purchase other cards, but money can be tight especially if you’re saving up to pay the merchant to remove the less-useful cards from your deck instead.
I did mange, finally, to put together an Ironclad that made it through all three stages of the Spire and started to play with the roguish character, whose cards were completely different than what I had been doing with the Ironclad. Sure there were attacks and blocks, but the cards available after battles were completely different, requiring a complete rethinking of what the hell I was doing. It was pretty great.
Anyway, the entire point of writing this up was to alert you that Slay the Spire has left Early Access and is now in a fully-polished released format that I highly recommend. Of course, it’s also coming for Switch at some point, so if you really don’t want to buy it twice (but you probably should), you can wait for that to happen.
I love this game, but recently made it to the third tower for the first time and then died horribly. I didn’t have the stomach to start over so haven’t played it since.
I should try again.
You should. Finding that perfect build on Sunday night was one of the best gaming moments I’ve ever had.
I’m not too busted up about my inevitable double-dip with the Switch version. The PC will have all the mods for when I wanna get weird, and the Switch will be there for me when I want to play without breaking my focus for a poop break. And I think I only paid like $10 for the PC version.
I’m already mourning all the games I’ll never get around to once the Switch version comes out.
I really got back into StS last week. I finally won a standard run with the Silent the other day. I’d always focused on poison-heavy builds with that character, but I emphasized defense instead and pulled off the win. Now, if I could just finish an Ironclad run …
My ironclad that made it through was heavy on blocking with a few high-damage dealing cards, so maybe that’s the way to go for every run?
I’ll give that a whirl. I think I probably need to finish unlocking Ironclad cards to be successful, though. That was one of my keys to success with the other two characters.
I think I am up to A8 for Ironclad and around 4/5 for the other two.
Such a great game