Slay the Spire 12+

As expected, the text is tiny in the iPhone 13 mini, however I’m not sure why there isn’t a text size option. Also, when try to tab out of the game by dragging the bottom of the screen, it can be a tad fiddly, and you may play some cards you didn’t mean to play by mistake. On the plus side, I do like how the game saves during each part of a run, so no need to do a run in one sitting, as sometimes the app resets itself, so this would have been incredibly frustrating if it didn’t have a save feature.

I recently bought this on the PS4 and loved it. Brilliant for an hours entertainment. But I spent 7 hours on it on first load! I wondered if they’d ported it to iOS and was really happy to see they have. And it’s absolutely the same as the PS4 version. It was £8.99 and worth every penny. I love card based combat games like MTG. This has nothing like the variety of cards in MTG but it has some very interesting ones and lots of ways to use card combinations. Also, love the relics that you find. I’m still finding new ones every so often, despite being 90% through the PS4 version. The relics just keep on coming and some have extremely powerful effects. As do some power cards you find or buy that stay on the table for the whole battle (example “the first card you play each turn is played twice”). Have to say the battles are for the most part very well balanced and seem fair, even the boss fights. There are a few though that I struggle with. There’s a boss that summons two minions, next turn the boss and minions will hit you for over half your maximum hit points. There’s not much likelihood of coming back from that, particularly as if you kill the minions before the boss, he just summons more! But with a bit of good luck on the cards I’ve drawn, I’ve beaten him a couple of times and it was very satisfying. Definitely worth the money.

A really really good game that’s got a nice learning slope and stays fun for ages once mastered. A really nice concept, well executed with interesting dynamics and very good balancing. The combination of a roguelike with a turn based card game works so well and is especially well suited to mobile gaming. I can’t recommend it highly enough… although be warned: you might find yourself sinking quite a few hours into it! The negative reviews criticising the interface port aren’t wrong, and there’s a few bugs I would appreciate being fixed, but because the game is turn based you can take the time to be careful with the interface while you’re new and once you’ve played it a couple of times you should get used to it fairly easily. I especially like it on the iPad but increasingly play it on my phone too, on the commute.