Slay The Spire is now on Android, so RIP me
There go another 300 hours...
In approximately three weeks, I will be found sitting dead in my flat. Perhaps the sofa if I'm lucky, perhaps the toilet if not. Either way, I'll be dead with a phone in my hand and on my face an expression of pure bliss (assuming I don't expire by a radiator then melt like a deep-sea fish raised to the surface). Slay The Spire came out on Android last night, see, and at some point in the next few days I will sit down with it and just forget to stop playing.
Slay The Spire, you really should know from the PC version, is a deck-building roguelike challenging weird heroes to ascend a strange vertical city and slay whatever horror at its heart keeps as trapped in a cycle of death and rebirth. Honestly, it's one of the few fantasy settings I've enjoyed in a video game, fun and surreal. The cards are a joy and all.
Spire's maths has clear and dramatic consequences, as Tom Francis explained, and you can get some ridiculous combos going as you collect cards and items. One character might end up a lightning-fast rogue, rolling around flinging daggers and poison. Another might charge up unholy strength until they can crush everything, or make dark pacts which burn through cards and health. And god, I adore the robot who might hone their claws and violently shred everyone with cheap attacks, or upgrade software and hardware until they're playing 30 cards in a single turn. Ah, good murders. Monster Train has scratched some of that itch since, but Slay The Spire still has my heart.
We declared it one of the best games of the last decade and, a year later, I definitely still stand behind that. I've already played 300 hours on PC, and being able to carry it in my pocket will surely lead to my early death. Maybe in my dying days I'll finally get a handle on its newest character.
Slay The Spire is available now on Android from Google Play for £8.99. PC version's on Steam and GOG. It came out on iOS last June but what am I, some sort of millionaire?