Slay the Spire joins Hearthstone and Magic: the Gathering as a compelling, indulgent luxury for anyone looking to escape the stresses of reality (I'm looking at you, anthropogenic climate change) and embrace a clear but artificial sense of purpose towards which you have agency. It's all about the journey and its interesting choices, but then how do you feel afterwards?Unlike after a story in which I have no control (other than to generate the imagery as with a book, or imagine what the characters in a movie are feeling), and am thus witness to the philosophy and values of the author(s), this game is in the Choose Your Own Adventure category and as such doesn't leave me with much to chew on afterwards except from a game-design perspective.For me, games like this are unhealthy. I hope your use of them is not to delay growth into a meaningful adulthood too much; like the character climbing the spire, it's okay to stop. Choose your path(s) and keep iterating!

My son in law introduced me to this game. It’s also how I learned what a “rogue like” game is. I love this game and I’ve learned to appreciate rogue-likes. The game plays consistently, cleanly and has just enough complications to keep it interesting with every play-through without making it too tough to figure out. As a matter of fact, I was finally getting GOOD at this game - I was starting to form real strategies with the different characters, something I never have the attention span to accomplish, when I discovered the fatal flaw. I finally ascended to the point of revealing spoilers when an app bug stopped my progress. The “end turn” button glitched out so I couldn’t finish my turn. The only solution I could find was to start a new save-file which abandoned all my progress. On my second play-thru, I got even farther (twice as fast the second time, as I always say) but the SAME glitch eventually showed up. I abandoned the run and tried again - the glitch persevered. I tried the daily challenge but the glitch was still there. No matter what I tried, unless I start a new save file, the glitch stops me at the bottom of the spire. To be clear, the glitch didn’t appear for a long time, so I made lots of progress and enjoyed it the entire time; however, don’t play if you plan to try to 100% the game. The glitch will get you.

This is my first time playing this game, I’ve always wanted to try it out but was never sold on the idea of the whole card game mechanics. Well it turns out I’ve had an absolute blast playing this one, it’s simple, balanced and rewarding. As fun as the game is, the controls tend to be infuriating. Tapping a card in your hand to look at it almost 100% of the time will bring it up and put it right back down so you either tap it again or do this weird longer tap maneuver to actually look at it, I’d rather just being able to see your hand without having to tap the cards. And on the iPhone 14 pro, a lot of UI elements are entirely too small to read when there’s plenty of space to be utilized, so that’s kind of annoying. And with the cards right on the home bar, when trying to exit the game using the home bar you’re very likely to throw a random card out by accident. I’m having a great time playing this a couple hours in, I’ve just completed my first run and I plan to continue. If these issues get addressed, it’s an easy 5 star game. Really solid release to have on arcade among the wave of not very good games. Also super easy on battery life and playing the game doesn’t seem to even change the temperature of the phone, let alone get even slightly warmer. Solid port overall I would say.

I don’t write reviews. But I have to for this one. This game is wonderful. But after putting in quite a few runs I’ve figured out what I don’t like about this game. It’s the battles that from the get go, you’re facing an attack of 30-40 damage. And it keeps being that way round after round. It’s just not possible to block all of that unless your entire hand is defensive cards, and you can’t get through it with more than half your health. Then a couple battles later, you hit another one. You can have what feels like a perfect run going, great cards, great relics and still not be able to make it. If you’ve only done a few runs, you won’t understand yet. I grab every defensive card I can to try and counter this and it still isn’t enough. When you’ve grabbed every defensive card you’ve had an option to get and then your hand comes up with no defense in it and the enemy is about to hit you for 37… and then if there were more ways to regain HP other than only 30% once or twice per act.. but when they can hit you in one turn for more than you can heal at the campfire.. the game went from fantastic, to frustrating, now I’m probably done with it.