The Defect is a robot… wizard? With orbs? That it channels?

Getting to grips with SLAY THE SPIRE’s mecha-magical new class.

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I’m not very good at slay the spire, and it’s been quite a while since I last took a run up its steeple, which is still in Early Access. But the promise of getting to try its third character, The Defect, is enough to draw me back into the intense push and pull of its card-slinging strategy. This is the kind of game where a three-act drama can play out in just one hand, as joy turns to despair and back again. Or, for me, despair, ill-founded joy and then back to despair. And I love it.

The Defect is unlocked by completing a game as The Silent, during which my dim memory of a favourite strategy of spreading poison and then playing a card that deals extra damage to poisoned enemies carries me through to the second level. It’s all flooding back to me.