Slay the Spire is a sort of Roguelike deck building game and if there is a story involved then I sure as fuck wasn't paying attention to it. Basically there's a big spire and you gotta go fuck up all the demons inside it. When you fire up the game you get a choice of either a warrior guy or a sort of thief type guy and for the one run I did with my buddy we played as the warrior. From there you are given a map of levels and each level will have a battle or some kind of event that could either help or hinder you. You fight your way through each map until you either are killed or you make it to the end which sounds easy but if you didn't know what I meant by "Roguelike" before, that means that death means you have to start all over again, no saves.
Anyway the big pull of the game is the whole deck building things. At the start you're given a bunch of basic shit like attacks, blocks and a skill or two and as you progress you get more and more cards for your deck. However just putting cards willy nilly is a sure fire way to get killed pretty quickly as you have to juggle things such as cost, synergy and deck size. For example, if you clear a fight and are presented two cards that don't really fit well with your deck it might be better to pass so that you aren't drawing shit from a bloated deck later on. Cards aren't gone once you use them either (unless it says "exhaust" on it), you just get 5 randomly each turn so keeping your deck well focused is pretty key. You can also level up cards so they have greater effect and there are also non card relics (or artifacts or something like that, I forget the exact term) which you can equip for various buffs and effects.
While I did have great fun with the game, and the core deck building element is extremely solid, I have two big problems with Slay the Spire. One is the fact it's early access, but only because I fucking hate early access with every inch of my being. Granted, the developers are being very good with it and clearly are putting the effort in but I still can't bring myself to buy a game with that label on it. If you stumble across this post AFTER the full release then disregard this point, obviously. The other problem I have is the art style and general look of the game. Now I'm no artist, I struggle to do stick figures in MS Paint but Slay the Spire just doesn't look like a game you'd spend money on. It looks like the kind of game you would have found on Newgrounds back in the day, like the whole thing has been made in Flash or some shit.
However don't let that deter you from picking it up if you don't mind the early access because it's a pretty incredible game. I didn't finish the one run I tried, I died somewhere fairly late in game so I'll be watching the updates carefully for the full release so I can have my revenge.
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