I miss Dream Quest, the simultaneous gentleness and complexity of it compared to the unblinking leanness of Slay The Spire. The last run, I was playing Defect, and got a Lightning build with Thunder Strike (7-9 damage for each Lightning channeled this combat) and a few Static Discharge (channel 1-2 Lightning upon taking damage), so each enemy hit channels 4 or 5 Lightning. In the same way that adding or removing one card can totally upset a brilliant balance, so too does dragging me away when I am in the middle of things, with these long-term plans for what my hand will be once I face down the Time-Eater or whoever. I can't leave a run unfinished (whatever its eventual outcome) because it feels so urgent, because the sum total of cards in my hand and the strategies in my head or so specific for this moment right now. I can't stop playing, by which I don't mean simply "I like to play this game often" but rather that when I do play it, it takes little short of the threat of violence to pull me away from it. I thrill to its purity and its urgency, a grand accomplishment for a turn-based game. (There are unlocks but they make for gentle remixing, whereas DQ's new cards could revolutionise your next playthrough.īut DQ was like a long country ramble as darkness gradually fell and the shadows grew longer and more threatening, whereas Spire is like a steely sprint through a warzone. With DQ, I had a greater sense of why I was playing, there was so much more to gain access to, with each new run permanently adding new cards to your potential hand, whereas most of what you can get from Spire you have from the start. Slay The Spire doesn't quite the fill the gap - particularly, its between-fight travel mode is a lot less interesting, and it has only two characters/classes to play as, as oppose to DQ's dozen-odd. If youve sunk hundreds of hours into the roguelike card-battler Slay the Spire, then youve probably defeated the Act Three Boss (Awakened One, Time Eater, Donu and Deca) or gotten fairly close.But even if you have, dont think the game is over just yet, as there is still one more secret to Slay the Spire you have yet to unlock.