Slay the Spire 12+

Keeping away from five stars for now since the port has a few kinks to get knocked loose. The game itself is great, highly addicting and superb replay-ability (since it’s impossible to play the same game twice), and the majority (if not all) of the game has been refined to its best state. When the iOS port was announced and subsequently released I was ecstatic, and bought it immediately!

However, as it’s meant for smaller screens and played with fingers, the port needs, in my opinion, some QoL changes to help the UI feel more friendly. First, many of the options in both the main menu and in other locations with small text are too small to comfortably use, as misclicks are all too often. Second, as others have said before, the card selection mechanics are a bit wonky ; to elaborate, there are multiple times I select a card to read it’s use, but then wish to play a different card. Due to the selected card hovering around my card-hand area, it makes it difficult to select a new card to play (especially with cards that can be played just by placing them on the field; those have a tendency to be played instead of de-selecting). Besides this slight nuisances and the occasional sound glitch, the game is amazing performance-wise for a full PC-to-iOS port! Must buy!

Slay the Spire is a flawlessly designed and executed game. The only reason it didn’t receive 5 stars is because the developers were limited by the game itself. The genre—roguelike deck-builder—is brilliant and very innovative, but I can’t imagine any game of either of these genres receiving a perfect score. These genres, despite being fun and entertaining, lack the freedom to make a game that deserves a perfect score; one that’s not only fun, but exhibits emotion like Last of Us, tells a beautiful story like Half Life 2, or brings people together in some way like Rainbow Six Siege. The developers created Slay the Spire in the best way that anyone possibly could, they were only limited by their genre.

The actual gameplay is fantastic. It’s snappy, self-paced, easy to pick up, very fun and casual, and can become as complex as you want, depending on your skill or effort. It has practically infinite replayability, especially with the inclusion of many modifiers and challenges and fascinating synergies.

To consumers: it is worth noting that the cards can sometimes be difficult to accurately select on smaller devices. To avoid frustration or accidentally using the wrong cards, I highly recommend playing just a tiny bit slower to make sure you’re using the right cards.

Edit: upping my review buy one so as to t punish the amazing developers for a subpar port . You do get accustomed to the crappy controls after a while. StS is one of my favorite PC games but playing on iPad is a pita because the card selection controls are so bad. There are countless games where you have to read and select cards and I’ve never once complained about how it was implemented. The first issue is the text is off the screen (which is completely unnecessary on iPad). So you have to tap to bring the card up (usually you just tap hold in games to read a card). But it’s a fine line between whether the game thinks you want to read a card or use it. Sometimes you think you’ve dropped a card and go to play another but play the first card. It’s just janky and sticky. If you read a card that doesn’t require a target and tap to dismiss it, it plays it instead. I’ve played more wrong cards in this game in 5 plays then in every other deck builder combined over my entire life. Fix it for five stars. Also the sound is really tinny and there are some sounds that sound literally like static.