Slay The Spire, Room for Innovation

Slay the Spire was a pleasant surprise to the card game community in which a single player card game managed to demand the attention of millions, and yet the space of a rogue lite card game is for the most part, unexplored. Blizzard threw their name into the ring when they launched Dungeon Run and its many clones, but there is still room for innovation.

While Slay the Spire chooses to go with a dark, sullen feel to the game, my take on the genre focuses on a more colorful, autumn feeling game.

Goblins vs Gibbons (The WIP title name) tries to give more of a Pokemon feel in which you the player will be fighting alongside your champion through the island and building your deck along the way. The player character can buff his champion and plays second fiddle to the champion who is the focus of the gameplay experience.

I started the game by studying what made Slay the Spire so fun and engaging to play. Naturally, I came to the cards, more specifically, the intricacies of the archetypes within the game. The cards were made with enough subtlety that it felt rewarding assembling your deck in the direction of one of the class's archetypes, yet there was enough direction within the cards to make synergies intuitive. The differing classes and their unique identities was another thing that was incredibly appealing to keeping the player engaged over multiple runs. Each class having a set of strengths and weaknesses gave the runs a more individualistic feel and was a major factor in the replayability of the game.

The starting 2 classes are Goblins and Gibbons:

The Goblin Class TL;DR:

The Goblin class looks to have high numbers, straight forward play patterns, and just overall be reminiscent of a warrior.

Pros: High Armor, High Single target damage, Ramp, Enrage(benefits for taking damage)

Cons: Bad AOE, limited card draw, Low combo potential

The Gibbon Class TL;DR:

The Gibbon class is a combo class in which they play several weaker cards a turn and summon weaker allies to fight alongside/help with the combos.

Pros: High potential Damage output via combos, multiple hits a turn, card draw, supportive synergies with the summoning, Recycle (discard a card, draw a card), discard synergies.

Cons: Less consistent damage, Low Armor, heavy reliance on combo