I wanted to try a new type of post: just taking a particular videogame and see if there are others who would like to talk about it.
To start I’m taking Slay The Spire. A beautifully balanced game with infinite replayability. What are your favorite classes? What is your favorite way to win the game? What is the highest ascension you’ve beaten? Are there similar games you enjoy? Let’s go!
Card based roguelites are one of my favorite genres and StS is maybe the best one. Wish there was more content.
Lately, I’ve been having a bit of fun with Monster Train on steam.
i will never not simp for shiv silent. easily my favorite way to play. wonderful game.
i like to play what I call A20EZ cuz I’m not the best at the game: play A20 on custom, with sealed draft, vintage and the ending modifiers. it’s very fun to just start with a strong deck and get tons of relics!
it also feels like it teaches me what is actually strong in terms of raw card synergy, which has been very nice for learning how to get better at the game without suffering through being bad at the game as much.
I could never really get into this one. Too much to try to remember with the cards and just not my style overall. Seems like a great game for the genre just not my cup of tea.
I found it one of the only ones that did click for me, because all effects are explained on the screen itself (or behind a hover). So I was glad I didn’t need to remember every mechanic to get started with the game.
But I totally understand you, I’ve also bounced of certain well regarded games.
I really struggle to stay alive, I find I am always having to heal and spend resources on staying alive instead of attacking. Are you guys that are making successful runs constantly defending???
It helps to shift your mentality to “how can I do the most damage as fast as possible to minimize the number of turns a fight will take”
Real success, especially at higher ascension levels, comes from maximizing draw and energy so you can play more cards to do more damage more faster
I also seem to end up with the same problem. I either defend too much or die attacking and it’s annoying. I can’t seem to ever find a middle ground that works. I swear all my runs I’ve run are just flukes.
This is a game I keep coming back to. I love it, and it’s got great replayability. I’m glad the phone version works well now.
Was it bad previously?
My experience with it on Android had several weird bugs
- Consumed a lot of battery
- Crashed on swapping focus to another app
- Opening the app would get stuck connecting to the game state server (even though the app works fine offline) so I had to use airplane mode to launch the app
These seem resolved now
Ironclad is my first and still my favorite class, strength scaling is just so satisfying when even your strikes start to do insane damage. I also love entrench to get very high block and then body slam to turn that into damage :).
Completed all characters on A20 with heart kills.
Ironclad is so good to rely back on for consistent builds, I feel like. I think I have the most fun with The Silent and The Defect, personally, but Ironclad runs are just so straightforward and there’s so many good builds.
One of my favourite games! I’ve got over 400 hours on Steam and some more on mobile. Did all achievements but I’m still struggling with A20 Heart kills so I haven’t gotten tired of it yet. My favourite class is probably the Silent. I also like the Watcher a lot, but she’s a bit too easy and her decks can feel a bit too similar. The Ironclad has grown on me since I’ve realised that the exhaust cards are good actually. And that he’s not really focused on attacks. Defect is my least favourite but I do play all four. My favourite way to win is with Snecko Eye! Getting an early Snecko Eye and then picking all the expensive cards is a lot of fun.
I’ve been meaning to play a few similar games like Monster Train or Wildfrost but so far I’ve always felt like I need to get back to StS to improve a bit more instead.
For people looking to improve I’d recommend jorbs and Baalorlord on Twitch and YouTube, they’re chill and very good at the game.
A similar game I really enjoy is Beneath Oresa.
I enjoy it, started playing recently! All the fun for me is in trying to find good loadouts completely on my own. I don’t want to watch some YouTuber show me the absolute maxed out best loadout, because that’s the entertainment to me. Progress is slow, I still haven’t cleared the game lol, but when I do, I know it will be my own choices that got me there. No shame in researching how to win if that’s your thing, I just love diving into games like this blind.
This is the game I play on my Steamdeck the most. Great for five minutes or 45. I’m at ascension 14 or so.
Haha the same, thanks to my deck it became over half of my total steam game time :D
I almost exclusively play for A20 heart kills. I play all 4 classes but in a “whichever I feel like today” way. I tried rotating between the characters for a while and really didn’t enjoy playing silent or watcher while in the wrong mood for those classes.
My favorite deck in recent memory was probably a silent discard combo with Grand Finale as the only damage-dealing card in the deck. My favorite archetype in general is probably ice defect. A good all-you-can-eat ironclad run is great too.
I don’t think I agree that STS is especially well balanced - some regular hallway combats do irrationally more damage on average even to players much better than me (for example, floor one jaw worms or any act 3 darklings). In general, the game could be quite a bit harder on A20 and still be fun for players who want a challenge. It’s also weird to me that A1 makes the game easier compared to A0. Between the classes, there is a class which is clearly stronger than the others. However I also don’t think this is a bad thing. Imbalances create more opportunities for new experiences, and for different kinds of players to have different kinds of fun. And that certainly agrees with “infinite replayability.” I’m sure in 5 years’ time I will still be seeing interactions I’ve never seen before.
If you haven’t played StS: Downfall yet you should.
Ok I’ll try it out soon! Thanks for the recommendation.
Cool, I’ll check out this game now. On GoG and a native Linux version
Haha how did you end up here after all those months?
Oh I didn’t even realize it was that old. All the subsequent posts have links to the past discussions. All the posts seem to have interesting games so I was looking through them all for ideas. Thanks for the discussion!
Haha I’m glad the links are being used, I included them for exactly that reason!
Slay the Spire is one of my favorite games of all time, so good choice if you decide to take the plunge!
I absolutely love this type of post! If there is interest I would definitely be down to make this another weekly stickied thing alongside the other thread. Anyone feel free to chime in if they want to see that
I was hoping to get some conversation going and it seems to have worked out well! I would love to help out / keep posting these kinds of things regularly. People could dm possible candidates for the next post or put them at the end of their comments. I’m also interested to do this for games that I know are popular but that I don’t play, always fun to hear people being passionate about stuff :).
I mostly play it as a kind of chill casual game. I like to do endless more on ascension 1 and slowly build up the most broken deck imaginable (there’s many options). I just stop when I get bored of it, I usually don’t die ever on endless if I made it past the initial run.
I’ve beaten the game(act 4) with every char except the poison one. The best phone game ever. The balance is a bit iffy though, Watcher is just way more consistent than other characters but Defect is my favourite
As for similar games I like Monster Train, I’ve enjoyed it nearly as much but it doesn’t have the same longevity imo.
Man wtf? Defect and watcher are the two that make no sense to me at all, especially the defect. I’m best with the silent. And by that I mean I’m A17 on the silent and like… A2 on the defect
How the crap do you play the defect??
There are many strategies, the most obvious one it to
- get orbs so cards like capacitor
- get focus so orbs do more, cards like defragment(most important!)
- get generate lightning orb cards to fill the orbs
- ideally get electrodynamics that makes every orb hit every single target
- get evoke cards for massive burst damage
You can also do the same with frost instead of lightning, you’ll have so much block nothing will touch you, you can then use cards like claw for damage. Upgraded Buffer card might be my favourite in the game
The problem with defect is that the cards you get on a given run might screw you over, not fitting any strategy whereas the watcher always has a valid strategy based on switching between calm and wrath stances if he doesn’t get something better like divinity or alpha.
Every character is 100% consistently winnable at low ascensions, I believe
