f13.net

Amazing we don't have a thread for this yet.  Pretty sure everybody in Discord has purchased and played the hell out of this game already.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/646570/Slay_the_Spire/

Its a deck building roguelike.  It's still early access, but amazing already (I've sunk god knows how many hours into it).  Not often I've picked up something this immediately addicting in a long time.  Just play the damn thing.

This game looks like a great concept and I definitely have it on my wish list.  For now I'm holding off until the game gets a bit more tuning.  Several streamers have been playing this and it looks a bit too easy to build decks that cruise through content.

I've been watching Celerity (https://www.twitch.tv/celerity) stream it. I expect I'll get it at some point.

The game feels less "random" than I would expect from a Rogue-like / TCG mash-up. You can plan your route through the dungeon (so you know where shops and certain encounters are) and it feels like there's so much card draw in the game and the decks are so small that the random draw aspects of normal TCGs are minimized.

I'm forty hours in.

He needs to triple the number of cards for each class and quadruple the number of monsters and events.

Upside, he probably knows this and will make enough money to do it.

I'd love to see this game with something better than grade school art.

I hope you're correct.  It's a fabulous concept and well done so far. 

Iron clad is fun. Build a block deck and never died. Finished the spire with a 550 ish score.

The “art” is mostly placeholder art and looks really bad. There’s almost no animations. The amount of cards, monsters, bosses and events is much too low. The game is entirely too random, you can steamroll out of control but also easily die starved of good cards and health on the second act.

The Silent is badly balanced and it’s only half of a game. O.

I’ve also spent an ungodly amount playing it. This could be really great eventually. The basics are there. It “just” needs more content and lots of polish.

Hmm, I found the game a bit 'less' than expected, even with all the warnings.

Not many interesting decisions to be made, really?

The concept is great.

Mechanically I think its pretty broken atm. It's very random and there's not enough to mellow out the randomness.

My runs usually either end early because the cards I collected along the way have no synergies and don't really make up a coherent deck and an elite or boss curb stomps me. Because most Elites and Bosses have built in enrage timers (Strength Buffs that increase, the Hexaghosts mechanic, etc.) and a deck without synergies will eventually kill you. Also because every card pickup is a gamble, especially for the Silent who only really works on deck/relic synergies in certain builds and you never know if you're gonna get the cards you need along the way. Alternatively I completely steamroll the game and the deck gets completely out of control very quickly. Had two runs back to back, in the first one I got killed by an Elite on floor 10 or so and in the second I completely smashed the Timelords face in in five turns.

For a game that swings so hard the runs take too much time. Ascension mode ascerbates the balancing problems because the enemies get harder and there are more elites.

There's too few opportunities to manage your deck and your upgrades along the way, especially since camp fires make you choose between healing or upgrading (shop doesn't offer card upgrades). I also feel that I should be able to sell relics and cards at shops or trade them in even if it's at a loss. Game needs something similar to the dice and dice rooms Binding of Isaac has or a similar mechanic that let's you better manage your deck and the randomness of card pickups

Lastly. If you full block an attack the debuffs shouldn't be able to land (and the Mugger shouldn't be able to steal). Would make the Silent much more manageable.

There's also too much UI clutter atm. You have to click too often and the UI doesn't really have a decent flow.

There's nothing in the current build that's not solvable. The game mechanic is sound. I don't really have any hope that they'll do that though. Last beta build only added features pandering to Twitch streamers (you can now let your Twitch chat vote on card pickups). Yet there hasn't been much progress towards balancing changes or more content

 I’m over 50 hours played and can’t stop.  Please help.

Have yet to win a run as the Silent. The awakened one murdered me on my last run.

Phase 1: 22 and 6x4 attacks (+ strength modifier)
Phase 2: 42, 12 and 10x2 attacks (+ strength modifier)

How I should be able to reliably block 30+ damage atacks per turn as the silent is beyond me. Maybe if you get corruption and barricade.

I'm also more than 50 hours in at this Point.

I'm still trying to run a good silent deck.

I think you need to get that malaise? Card.

I haven't played a ton, but I've won with Silent a few times. Mostly by building an extremely defensive draw engine (Backflips, Legwork, as much extra energy as possible) with a source of passive damage or strong poison.

Ironclad, on the other hand, I won with on my first try and now have no idea how I did it. He seems more vulnerable to bad draws than Silent (less cycling, no Well Laid Plans) and his starting deck is much worse. I keep getting ground down in act 1.

I regularly win with the Ironclad and never with the Silent

Silent breaks my heart.  Maybe 10+hrs in?

Key with Ironclad is big hits.  I'm at Ascension 6 with him, and many of my wins had decks where I was smacking guys for over 100 damage per card on the first turn.  Pure offense, either Strength/heavy blow build, or Precision Strike build.  I'm told he can make a great shield/turtle deck, but I end up getting worked every time I attempt it.

This game suffers from Streamer‘s bias. The changes they make on the beta branch are mostly balancing changes that make the regular game harder or add quality of life improvements to people broadcasting this game on Twitch.

The „professionally streaming ascension level 14 runs on Twitch every day” crowd.

Apart from that they haven’t added any content to the game for several beta updates. No new monsters, bosses, relics or cards, no new mechanics, nothing that helps mitigate the increasing difficulty. Just “balancing” fixes that make the game harder or fix synergies that let people break the game.

I wonder if this will be yet another game that took of with professional streamers and gets completely tuned to cater to them. Like Isaac or Darkest Dungeon

To be fair Darkest Dungeon ramped down the difficulty when it was released, including making all the worst features optional.

I wish every game had the brains to realize a self-selected group of hardcore fans aren't the best peer group to balance your game for the greater market.

They added Twitch integration before they added the third class or the missing acts or anything they promised to add during release. The latest beta branch update makes the normal game mode (not the ascension mode) significantly harder (new enemy combos, enemies now do more damage). It's currently one of the top ten games on Twitch and streamers like Cobalt and others attract 3 - 5,000 viewers streaming ascension mode (usually on level 10+). The next beta update extends ascension mode to level 20 because most professional streamers are already at ascension 15.

I'm not optimistic. Right now the game design seems to run completely on hardcore gamer and streamer feedback. Including the in my view rather ridiculous obsession with "balancing" a single player game so that there are fewer OP Combos and the game becomes more "challenging" - even though that's what Ascension mode could be for.

For me the biggest issues right now are:

most of the enemies have built in enrage timers. Usually due to stacking of buffs (strength, block, explosion, thorns etc.)  on themselves or stacking debuffs on you (burning, dazed) or enrage attacks like the hyper beam, the time eater's power or the hexagost's ability. So it's always a damage race because block is very easily outpaced by strength (or by debuffs cluttering your deck) and if you concentrate on block you won't do damage. For me enrage timers and damage races are a clear sign that you have severe issues with your core game mechanics. The good streamers focus on energy and damage and usually try to take an encounter down in two or three turns. Alternatively a Silent run that completely turtles up and kills via poison. They lose when they get damage outpaced by the encounter.

There's too few opportunities to heal especially since you have to decide if you want to upgrade or heal. There's too few opportunities to upgrade cards and manage your deck (especially removal is much too rare with the shop being the only viable option on most runs)

AoE is almost non existant and too weak

There's no interrupt mechanic and no stun which would open up a lot of possibilities. Basically you are almost never able to influence what the enemy does next, with the slime, the birds and one of the bosses being the only exceptions and there it is a scripted event.

You should be able to put the "Innate" ability on more cards to manage the randomness a little better (innate makes it so the card is always drawn first on combat start) make it an option whether to ugrade a card or make it innate or make it a shop Option that costs money and is limited (like removal). This would make powers (like barricade, noxious fumes, best laid plans etc.) more useful

Finally gave this a shot. Pretty good stuff, well worth the $15.

Jeff i think you want this game to be something it isn't.

Maybe. Right now my feeling is that it lacks, something.

It has a lot of room to grow, but for now I'm fairly confident it will just get better.  I can understand catering to streamers because frankly, that's going to bring in all their revenue to help with development right now.

I get it. It’s also the wrong crowd to balance a game around. In general. It’s basically a focus group of professional gamers with a very specialized requirement set.

It makes it so the game is better enjoyed being watched played professionally on Twitch than being played yourself casually.

Still playing, send help

Is there any part of the roguelike runs that persist? Pure roguelikes that start over each time try my patience, but if there's some small component that carries between attempts, that gets me to play every time.

Well, there are two aspects like that.  One is that your guys gain experience and level up.  Each level up unlocks new cards and relics for you to use.  The other is that, if you make it to at least the first boss on one game, your next start you get to pick one of 4 perks to help you out on the run.  It’s not a lot of things, but the framework is in place.

Mostly unlocks of cards and relics. It’s nothing like for example rogue legacy

Finally won my first run as the Silent. More due to luck than skill.

Drew Jack of all Trades turn one which gave me an upgraded Apotheosis (due to toxic egg). That’s about as lucky as you can get.

Basically Jack on turn one in a 35 card deck. Jack of all Trades gives you a random colorless card which was Apotheosis. Apotheosis upgraded all of my cards for the whole combat. Don’t even know the odds of that particular combo.

Still Time Eater got me down to 20 hp before it died.

My Silent win was a result of stacking poison cards, plus getting both the +1 Poison relic and the Poisons transfer on death one. I've beaten it a few times with Ironclad as well; still haven't unlocked Ascension. I will say the prospect of playing it over and over on harder difficulties doesn't seem much fun to me, so I think I'm done with it until they add some more content. It's a great experience (and the price was right) but I've largely grown out of repeating games over and over again in order to score higher.

This is really really fun. They could stand to add more things (more classes, cards, enemies, bosses, events, relics, etc) and tune some things that are too strong/weak but the core gameplay is super addicting.

Started playing this. Silent is better than Ironclad and way more consistent. In fact I say its easier once you get the basics down.

The game values playing as many cards as possible and cycling through your deck as quickly as possible in order to spam as much free damage as possible. Or fuck your instincts to preserve your health and swing as hard and as early as possible. Ironclad is great for speed running but again, requires you to fight your instincts to balance turtling with damage or attempt a "balance" route. Pick something obnoxious early on and tech into that as quickly as possible. My wife and I are nearly fighting over whose turn it is to play and we don't share much in common when it comes to video games.

Gonna go ahead and say you haven't played it enough for that to be your opinion.

I tried for the <20 minutes achievement with Ironclad and finally got it with a Double Tap/Whirlwind/Flex deck. I wouldn't really try it on higher difficulties, there I usually find myself in Barricade/Juggernaut/Demon Form decks more often than not. Silent struggles a lot more in A1 for me in high ascension due to the lack of offensive power early on. If I can grab an early Dagger Spray that helps a lot.

Hmm no. I'm 2 for Silent and 2 for Ironclad. Comparing both runs, Ironclad + whirlwind was the easiest but that was a matter of some really lucky rolls and teching really hard into supporting whirlwind really early.  I would have been 3 for Silent but i didn't plan out my fight against the The Time Eater so i kept hitting his 12 cards cap without realizing it. The most abusive decks for Ironclad are the most high risk, so you either win hard or bust in the exact moment you don't expect.

I'm Ascension 13 Ironclad, Ascension 3 with Silent.  Schild is correct.  The most effective deck in the game is snecko eye with a bunch of 2-3 cost offensive cards.  Cut all defense.

I'm 7 with Ironclad and 8 with Silent but that's only because I put a lot more time into Silent. Silent is harder. Ironclad has a number of standout cards that work well in most builds. Silent has a lot more variety which makes it more fun for me but the downside is you might not be sure of what kind of deck you're making until you've finished the first floor or possibly even later. Most of my best runs on Silent were due to a lucky combination of Relics that I could never foresee, whereas you can get a couple Perfected Strikes early on Ironclad and have the start of a strong deck.

Also if you make a deck focused heavily on Shivs and run into Time Eater at the end you're likely fucked.

not likely, you're 100% fucked

I had a nearly perfect run and time eater destroyed me

i don't like that every boss is a hard counter to at least one strategy

Meanwhile against the time eater

(https://scontent-iad3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t35.0-12/28767874_10155044003891184_382712609_o.png?oh=fe25cc13c6c3f18c622e430de1c0368e&oe=5A9FD9BB)

The third character (The Defect) has been out for almost a couple weeks now. They also have a 'Daily Run' that can be fun to do every day as well, as it introduces a bunch of potentially crazy modifiers like "cannot remove cards, gain 3 copies of each added card." I'm putting in a lot of hours trying to get Defect up to Ascension 15.

I completed this at last, after 12 attempts. Managed to win with only 2 hp to spare, which made it extra satisfying.