Slay The Spire

What we talk about when we talk about running

-  NATHAN BROWN

Developer MegaCrit

Publisher Humble Bundle

Format Android, iOS, PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One

Release 2019

For once, the Corrupted Heart doesn’t stand a chance. This is the optional fourth boss of Slay The Spire, its toughest enemy by far, the ultimate test of the deck you’ve assembled. It has the largest health pool in the game and hits like a truck. It fills your deck with garbage, limits how many cards you can play and how hard you can hit it each turn, then makes you take damage for each card you play.

In the more than 1,200 hours we’ve spent with MegaCrit’s beguiling deckbuilder, countless runs have ended right here. But this one is a dream – that rare moment when everything comes together and you feel as if you have cleaved the game clean in two. The Heart’s health bar melts away in the space of a few turns, and we take barely a scratch. There are few feelings in games to match it.

Luck plays a part, sure, though not as much as you might think. Much has been said about the impact of RNG in games such as this; about the way that, regardless of the player’s skill or the intelligence of their decision-making, the inherent randomness of a deck of cards means they are only ever one bad draw from death. But Slay The Spire offers you enough ways to mitigate against the effects of randomness to ensure that – even if it was the number generator which delivered the final blow – you can always be sure the outcome of the game was your fault, not the fates’.