Slay the Spire is a pretty cool game

[NJClaw]

balatro has made slay the spire completely irrelevant

Balatro is a fun game, but I can't understand the constant comparisons to Slay the Spire. Balatro is a more casual game, with way less planning, deckbuilding, and strategy.

 

[Kruyurk]

balatro has made slay the spire completely irrelevant

Balatro is a fun game, but I can't understand the constant comparisons to Slay the Spire. Balatro is a more casual game, with way less planning, deckbuilding, and strategy.

Yes, both feel very different. In Balatro you must build combos that compound a lot and create huge numbers, and you can play around only one combo, there is no attrition between "encounters" because you have only one life. In StS you must balance your offence and defence, there is attrition between fights with the health to manage. Resource management during fights is also very different.
And there is no reason to play only one, both are excellent and can be appreciated without sinking hundreds of hours (even if you might).

 

[Ironmonk]

Recently I played the demo for Deck of Haunts, where you play as a haunted house, building rooms and using your cards to deal with civilian/hunters investigating the house.



There was a game like that a few years ago, but not interesting as this one... I think it has potential to become a good game.

And I also decided to bite the bait and bought Vault of the Void, but after playing it for about 5 hours... yeah, I didn't like it... it feels like super cluttered... the dev probably picked StS as a starting point and to differentiate, added a bunch of stuff that not only overwhelms the player with too much information that are ultimately pointless, but in the end, IMO, doesn't have any fun factor to it.

 

[Kruyurk]

...

Have you played Monster Train? It is very good and much different from Slay the Spire. The basis is simpler than Vault of the Void but you can build crazy combos.

 

[NJClaw]

Recently I played the demo for Deck of Haunts, where you play as a haunted house, building rooms and using your cards to deal with civilian/hunters investigating the house.

It looks interesting, I will check it out when it gets released.

Monster Train

I've heard about it multiple times, but I can't get past the artstyle... it looks like an ad on Facebook for a mobile game.

Recently I gave Wildfrost a try, since it was added to the Game Pass:



Discovering and exploring different strategies is fun and satisfying, but the game looks very simple and I can't imagine it being too replayable.

 

[Kruyurk]

Monster Train

I've heard about it multiple times, but I can't get past the artstyle... it looks like an ad on Facebook for a mobile game.

It was the same for me, I waited a long time to give it a try because of the art style. But the interest is in the gameplay and it is fast-paced, so I could ignore the visuals after just a little while. The animations can be sped-up a lot, almost instantaneous.

The premise of the game is a bit retarded as well: you are on a train where you invoke monsters to fight other monsters, but after a while you ignore that as well.

One thing I really like is that you can customize your deck right from the start of each run. You pick a major and a minor deck color (think MtG colors), a main monster that is much more powerful that the rest, a few starting cards and a relic. It is not like StS where the first few fights are always the same, until your build starts to appear after gaining some cards and relics. I hope they will address this in StS 2.

 

[Ironmonk]

yeah... I checked the steam page for Monster Train several times, but it never hooked me.

From the ~10 card battles that I either played or saw videos of it this year... probably Commander Quest is the the one I had most fun and it all points out that the release version will be a success.



(posting again... the demo has a LOT of content, I recommend)

 

[Desman]

...

Have you played Monster Train? It is very good and much different from Slay the Spire. The basis is simpler than Vault of the Void but you can build crazy combos.

I have played STS a lot more (i'm not good tho) but my problem with Monster Train is that every fight is super easy and boring then you get a HUGE difficulty spike for the run boss. Don't know how it is when you raise the difficulty but honestly i don't have the patience to play more. STS has a lot more replayability imo and all the fights are challenging once you get to higher ascension levels.

 

[Kruyurk]

I have played STS a lot more (i'm not good tho) but my problem with Monster Train is that every fight is super easy and boring then you get a HUGE difficulty spike for the run boss. Don't know how it is when you raise the difficulty but honestly i don't have the patience to play more. STS has a lot more replayability imo and all the fights are challenging once you get to higher ascension levels.

At higher difficulty you can lose runs earlier, but the final boss remains a much harder fight.

But I agree that StS is more interesting long term, I have 10 times more hours played on StS than Monster Train. I won ascension 20 with the Defect and it looks like he won't be in the second game

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Monster Train definitely features more frequent and much steeper difficulty spikes than StS, although they taper down a lot once you progress into the Ascension system (or whatever they call it in MT) and have the meta-knowledge to anticipate and build for certain encounters.

It's still the best deckbuilder outside of StS that I've played, even with the goofy premise and Zynga artstyle. Reminds me I never really tinkered with the DLC much after a run or two on it. Found the new clan pretty clunky, but definitely didn't give them much of a fair shot.

 

[pakoito]

It's a sad state of affairs if those two are the best deckbuilders. I'd expected MTG levels of depth with Instant spells and such, rather than using Block and HP as the main means of interacting outside your turn.

And I believe I've already said in this thread that the worst offender is the pattern-based enemy AI.

 

[AnKor]

As I understand deckbuilders are supposed to be different from card-collecting games like MTG, though I'm not really a fan of either genre.
There's one I've played recently:



Was curious enough to spend 50h, though the game is a bit slow in my opinion.
People say it is quite "inspired" by StS, but I can't really compare as I haven't played the latter.

 

[covr]

Tainted Grail: Conquest is IMO best StS clone out in the market.