Slay the Spire is a roguelike deck-building game where players ascend a spire, battling enemies, building powerful decks, and discovering relics to ultimately defeat the boss. It's available on various platforms, including PC, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, iOS, and Android.
Here's a breakdown of the rules and how to play:
1. Objective
The main goal is to guide your chosen character through multiple floors of the spire, defeat enemies and bosses, and ultimately slay the Spire's final boss. The game is designed for replayability, and dying is a part of the learning process.
2. Setup (for the board game adaptation)
While the video game handles setup digitally, the board game version involves several steps:
* Place the Act I board (double-sided) in the center.
* Randomly draw and place map tokens (dark and light) onto their corresponding spaces on the board, then flip them face up.
* Each player chooses a unique character (Ironclad, Silent, Defect, or Watcher), each with their own starting health, gold, a unique starting relic, and a starter deck of cards (mostly strikes and defends).
* Players set their energy to 3 and block to 0, and place their character mini at the bottom starting point of the map.
* Shuffle and place various decks like the rewards deck, rare rewards deck, boss relic deck, potion deck, encounter decks, event deck, curse deck, daze deck, and status deck. Some decks, like Summons, Daze, and Status, are not shuffled and can remain face up.
* Randomly choose an Act I boss and place its card face down on the boss space at the top of the Act I board.
* Deal Neow's Blessing cards to each player, offering bonuses.
3. Gameplay Flow
Players navigate a branching path up the spire, choosing which rooms to enter. These rooms can contain various encounters:
* Monsters: Standard combat encounters.
* Elites: Harder combat encounters that offer better rewards, including relics.
* Bosses: Challenging fights at the end of each act.
* Events: Random occurrences that can have positive or negative effects, often involving choices.
* Campfires: Allow players to either "rest" (heal HP) or "smith" (upgrade a card).
* Merchants: Shops where players can buy and sell cards, relics, and potions.
4. Combat
Combat is turn-based and involves playing cards.
* Start of Turn:
* Reset energy (usually to 3) and block (to 0).
* Draw 5 cards from your deck (some characters like the Silent may draw more). If your deck runs out, your discard pile is shuffled to create a new draw pile.
* Roll a die to determine enemy behavior and relic triggers.
* Activate any "Start of Turn" abilities.
* Play Phase:
* Players play cards from their hand by spending energy. Each card has an energy cost.
* Cards can be:
* Attack: Deal damage to enemies.
* Skill: Provide utility effects like gaining block, drawing cards, or applying buffs/debuffs. Block prevents damage, and any remaining block is removed at the start of your next turn.
* Power: Effects that last for the rest of the current combat.
* Curse: Negative cards added to your deck.
* Status & Daze: Temporary negative effects from enemies.
* Players can also activate relics and use potions.
* Enemies "telegraph" their next move, showing what they intend to do (attack, block, buff, debuff).
* Players can target enemies in any row.
* End of Turn:
* Discard all remaining cards in hand (unless they have "Retain").
* Trigger any "End of Turn" abilities.
* Enemy Turn:
* Any leftover enemy block from the previous turn is removed.
* Enemies take their actions as telegraphed, typically attacking players in their row unless they have an area-of-effect attack.
* Enemies may have "cube actions" or other abilities that trigger.
* Combat ends when all enemies are defeated.
5. Deck Building and Progression
* After each fight, players are typically offered a choice of three new cards to add to their deck.
* Improving your deck involves adding good cards, cards that synergize with your existing deck, upgrading cards at campfires, and removing weaker cards to improve your average draw.
* Relics are powerful items that provide unique abilities and are primarily acquired from defeating elites and bosses, or from treasure chests.
* Buffs and debuffs are static effects that persist between turns and are crucial for maximizing damage and mitigating incoming damage, especially against tougher enemies.
6. Winning and Losing
* Players win by reaching and defeating the boss of the final act.
* If your character's HP reaches zero, you lose, and it's back to the beginning of a new run (roguelike element). Each death offers a lesson and helps unlock new content, characters, and cards.