Chaos and comedy. Death and rebirth. Luck and, uh, running out of luck. A good roguelike doesn't treat the player like other games do. Roguelikes won't guide you helpfully along a path, or let you cinematically snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. They're more likely to dangle you deep between the jaws of defeat and fumble the rope until you go sliding down defeat's hungry gullet. This is their beauty, and it's a part of why we keep coming back for another go. Next time everything will go right. Next time you'll find the right pair of poison-proof loafers, the perfect co-pilot for your spaceship, a stash of stronger, better ropes. Next time.
Here's our list of the 19 best roguelikes on PC you can play in 2024.
]]>No one can see the future, but I've a fairly good sense of where at least 300 hours of my life will go next year. Slay The Spire II was announced during today's Triple-i Initiative stream, returning to the towering fantasy city where Steam says I've spent more than 300 hours building decks and battling monsters. While the announcement doesn't reveal much about the sequel, Slay The Spire is still my favourite roguelikelike deck-builder, so that's just grand.
]]>Slay The Spire mod Downfall suffered a "security breach" on Christmas day which allowed hackers to distribute malware through Steam, the developers of the mod say. The malware attempts to steal users' passwords from their internet browser, as well as passwords for messaging services Telegram and Discord.
]]>Humble Games, the Humble Bundle-owned label responsible for publishing indie hits including Slay the Spire, Signalis, Unpacking, Temtem and this year’s recently Grammy-nominated RPG musical Stray Gods, have confirmed a number of layoffs.
]]>“To be a good designer, you have to have very, very strong opinions,” says Slay The Spire design lead Anthony Giovannetti. “Show me a game designer who gives a thumbs-up to most things, and I suspect that’s probably someone who doesn’t have a very good game design sense. I want someone who really, really loves and hates things, and gives you reasons why.”
It’s a trait which Giovannetti has in common with his Megacrit co-founder, Casey Yano, and has possessed ever since he was a kid growing up in Woodinville, 30 minutes outside Seattle. It’s matched by a competitiveness that first emerged in Warhammer 40,000 tournaments as a teen. Before he was old enough to drive, Giovannetti would ride his bike to the local game store and play until the early hours of the morning.
]]>We already knew the folks behind Slay the Spire mod Downfall were making their own standalone game, Tales & Tactics, and now we know when we’ll be able to play it. Tales & Tactics, in case you’ve forgotten, is best pitched as a mixture of Slay the Spire and Dota Auto Chess; in other words, it’s a fantasy roguelike (like StS), where you can pick up abilities, gear and whatnot during each run, with auto-battling combat (like Auto Chess) - except here it’s on a hex board.
]]>As is fast becoming a thing on RPS this week, Alice Bee and James are both away this week, so I'm filling in writing this post and doing my best Alice impression in the process. In this week's episode, The Electronic Wireless Show podcast talks all things mods - specifically, the ones that got real big and broke out from their respective source games. It's a chat that's been prompted by the developers behind Slay The Spire mod Downfall announcing their own brand-new game, Tales & Tactics.
There's also a lot of undead fish chat, and Alice's plans for entertaining herself on an upcoming long-haul flight. And in James' hardware corner, the gang chat about Nvidia's comments on AI and crypto, as well as Ubisoft's AI writing software tool thinger.
]]>Slay The Spire has remained an incredibly popular deckbuilding roguelike, so it naturally invited a healthy modding community that added fun stuff to the game - goofy googley eyes included. One of Slay The Spire’s most popular mods was called Downfall, a huge fan-made expansion that added tons of playable characters, a new mode, and more. Those developers - Table 9 Studio - are now back with their own not-modded game: an auto-battling, fantasy Chess roguelike called Tales & Tactics.
]]>Fantasy roguelike Dead Cells is being invaded by indies again. Weapons and outfits from six games are making their way into the game with today's free Everone Is Here 2 update: Terraria, Hotline Miami, Shovel Knight, Slay The Spire, Risk Of Rain 2, and Katana Zero. There’s also new lore rooms based on locations from these games, which is where you’ll find the weapons stored. You can watch some of the costumes and weapons in action in the trailer below.
]]>Combine the peg-pinging action of Peggle with the roguelikelike dungeon crawling of Slay The Spire and you get Peglin, a delightful game which launched into early access on Monday. Off your cute wee peglin goes on an adventure, battling baddies and claiming treasures, but damage is dealt by pling-plonging orbs down Peggle/pachinko boards and you have a bag of different orbs instead of cards. I like it, and it has a demo you can try for yourself.
]]>There's a good chance that if you're aware of Roguebook, the roguelike deckbuilder designed by Richard Garfield of Magic: The Gathering fame, it'll be because it launched under a bit of a cloud. The launch build was a buggy business, and it was accompanied by premium DLC on day one, which got people good and riled up. Honourably enough, developers Abrakam almost immediately folded the DLC into the base game and started spamming refunds. But by then, a lot of folks had already moved on.
That's a real shame, in my opinion. Because Roguebook is great. I know this, because in the three days I have spent with it, I have not touched Hearthstone once. I have had neither the desire, nor the compulsion which usually subs in for it, to even get so far as opening the launcher. And when a card game gets me to the extent where I'll tear that IV drop of poisoned ambrosia from my veins, I know it's the real deal.
]]>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.
]]>Here it is, the best news of 2021 so far: Slay The Spire is being adapted into a board game. The tabletop treatment will turn Mega Crit Games' fab little deck-building roguelike into a four-player cooperative adventure. Much like the video game, you'll have to craft a deck and collect relics to beat up the baddies, and ultimately Slay that Spire.
This is exactly the sort of pick-me-up I needed at the start of a pretty dreary new year.
]]>Gather 'round and take a seat, Steam have now kicked off their first Digital Tabletop Fest, an event of panels, announcements, and demos for games that "run across the lines between digital and physical games". From now until next Monday you can catch panels from the likes of developers adapting tabletop RPGs, building digital deck-builders, and other such table to screen fare.
]]>Oh iPhone users, you're in for an absolute treat. Slay The Spire has done one of those sneaky surprise launches, making the excellent deck-building roguelike available to download and play on iOS right now. Created by Mega Crit, the game challenges you to battle your way up the Spire - a tower filled with all kinds of monsters that you can defeat using your carefully crafted deck of cards. It really is great, and incredibly addictive.
]]>Ah, religion. I know this is a topic we all have trouble agreeing on. But fear not, humble practitioner of a good pray, I am not here to squint angrily at your favourite book of life advice. I’m only here for the videogame religions. The ones that are very, very, very, very bad. You know, the gun-loving cults and the xenophobic people-burners. The (mostly) fictional religions that involve an uncommon volume of murder. Step this way, sprinkle yourself with some of my 100% genuine oil of the almighty, and peruse the 9 most dodgy religions in games.
]]>A few months into 2024 and we've got some stonking new games out already, all the better to add to our list of the best PC games to play right now. The trends right now are towards bombastic action adventures and puzzle games, but as we look to the future of 2024 we can see some roguelikes, deckbuilders and more strategy on the horizon. Still, whatever you're looking forwards to, you'll find something to enjoy on this list of the top of the top, the best of the best PC games out now..
]]>Run! The rest of this news post is a trap. If you keep reading I've little doubt you will wind up Slay The Spire's spire once more, and your evenings will congeal into glorious ascent. The latest character has escaped the beta branch, and is ready to tackle the spire proper. The Watcher is a blind monk who weaves between rampant aggression and calm repose. I like her a lot.
Patch 2.0 also throws in some new potions and relics, so it's worth revisiting even if she isn't your cup of tea.
]]>The Independent Games Festival Awards have announced their finalists, once more reflecting the esteemed opinions of RPS writers. Sad mutant blueberry simulator Mutazione is the favourite for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize, and is also in the running for the Art, Audio and Narrative awards. Two thirds of Alices agree that it is well good.
Other grand prize contenders include AI and sadness visual novel Eliza, uplifting flap-about A Short Hike, irresistible card-pusher Slay The Spire, and irritable waterfowl punter Untitled Goose Game. Also in the running is Anodyne 2: Return To Dust, the only game on the list that someone at RPS hasn't thrown lavish praise at. Soz, Anodyne.
]]>It's been an eventful decade for PC games, and it would be hard for you to summarise everything that's happened in the medium across the past ten years. Hard for you, but a day's work for us. Below you'll find our picks for the 50 greatest games released on PC across the past decade.
]]>Winter brings out a part of me that immediately seeks a mountain of blankets in which to burrow. Even in my seasonally confused state of Texas, the weather has tended towards the chilly and left me with little excuse not to have a kettle boiling interminably as I layer on socks and pull the biggest comforter from the top of the closet. But this presents a problem likely familiar to other cozy connoisseurs: how does one game while properly bundled?
I will admit it does limit possibilities considerably. That's why I've curated a small selection of games perfectly playable while your other hand keeps coffee or tea always within sipping range.
]]>The Watcher is the best thing to hit Slay The Spire since sliced fungi beast. She's the new character currently lurking on the beta branch: a monk for whom deck balance is unprecedentedly essential. She's all about flowing in and out of different stances, dishing out unseemly damage, but then taking unseemly damage if you can't play a card that stops her being so angry. In the late game, a single turn will see you pivot between stances more often than two coked-up adolescents on a see-saw.
That looks a little bit like this, if you're curious.
]]>Oh no. It's happening again. Slay The Spire has released a new character on the beta branch, and I'm once more betwixt its jaws. She's still being tested and won't appear in the main game for a while, but let me introduce you to the Watcher. She's a monk who flows between "stances". Calm, one moment, a hurricane of double damage the next - albeit a hurricane that takes double damage themselves. They're the most elegant and simultaneously fiddly character to date. I was up till 2am. I should know.
]]>A fourth playable character is coming to Slay The Spire for free, developers MegaCrit Games announced today. They've muttered before about the possibility of adding more dungeoneers, and confirmed it today while also blasting the first update since their delightful deck-building dungeon-crawler left early access in January. My favourite Spireslayer is the Defect, the character which Mega Crit added long after the first two - and which seemed to really benefit from them getting a better idea of the shape, flow, and possibilities of Spire. I am mighty keen to see what new cards and systems they'll throw in now.
]]>While I can't claim to have sunk hundreds of hours into it like Alec, I've still lost entire evenings to Slay The Spire's deck-building. If you're one of those people who regularly finishes it, it might be time to change things up a little. The game already has an active modding scene, and while it's just a small collection, here's a bundle of minor mods to lightly spice up the game, some all-new characters to play as, and a pair of fan-made expansions to fill out your decks.
]]>The newly v1.0 Slay The Spire, wot I called "a miracle of design" in our Slay The Spire review earlier this week, is just the start of the story. The mod scene hit the ground running when support launched last month, with the highlights being an impressive selection of new playable characters and the truly joyful Marty Feldman mode. Now we can add a whole new act to this menagerie of player-made delights.
'The Jungle' replaces the second act of Spire, dragging you out of The City and into the bestial wildlands. One of the folk behind it is the chap responsible for the brilliant Slimebound and Snecko character mods, which immediately won my attention. Also, it's got angry lions and fat rats and friendly foxes and a really very large spider. With spider-babies.
]]>Yes, I'm trying to retroactively validate playing Slay The Spire for almost 200 hours - and all too often while I was supposed to be working on other games - by continually posting about it now. Here's my Slay The Spire review, here are some delightful Slay The Spire character mods and here is the best mod of all time, for anything ever. And this post, right here, is the one-day-belated news that Spire hit version 1.0 yesterday.
If you're an early access-averse sort, you need no longer get this particular Satan behind thee: this jim-dandy deck-builder/roguelite is now wearing its big boy shoes. Unfortunately, that also means it's a fair whack pricier.
]]>It’s not often I get to play a game for 187 hours before reviewing it. Hell, it's not often I play a game for 187 hours. Deck-building, singleplayer roguelite Slay The Spire, which gets a full release today after just over a year in early access, has me on its hook.
Traditionally, I look at a number like that and hate myself – so much time wasted pursuing incremental item upgrades in an MMO or Diablolike, or, God help me, watching pretend numbers go eternally up in a clicker game. A number like that generally means I lost myself to something unhealthy, like a toddler set loose in a ball-pit full of popping candy. And so I snarl at myself in the mirror, and swear myself off such practices for life. Until the next time.
I look at those 187 hours in Slay The Spire and I don’t feel that way. I feel... pride? I think “all that time, and I’m still not tired of this wonderful toy. Do it again, do it again!”
]]>"With more planned." For months, that's all we've had to go on, when it comes to the nagging question of whether or not the wonderful Slay The Spire will ever stretch beyond its three playable characters. Third character The Defect's relatively new, and the focus is currently on spit'n'polish for this week's escape from early access, so I'm not holding my breath for an official newbie any time soon.
I don't have to, because the community's taken advantage of Spire's newly officially-enabled mod support to add a weird and wonderful assortment of new card-clobberers to the game. Given the almighty balancing act inherent to a numbers game like this, what I'm truly surprised by is how good some of these are. Inventive concepts, not too much of a power-trip or too much of a kick in the squishies, and only a little bit of brazenly stolen art. So, here are five of the Slay The Spire character mods I dig the most (so far).
]]>Wednesday, January 23 2019 will be a day remembered in infamy. The day that the human race committed, inexorably, to self-destruction. The day that cardsy-roguey titan Slay The Spire left early access and got itself a full release. Such a lovely game, such a lovely game. You can check it out any time you like, but you can never Save & Quit.
And so I bring you these words as a dual warning: 1) BEWARE OF THE INCREDIBLE VIDEOGAME AND THE TERRIBLE THINGS IT WILL DO TO YOU 2) the price is due to be raised at any point between now and the 23rd, so get in quick. (Except don't, because it will destroy you).
]]>A couple of weeks back, Slay The Spire introduced official mod support. I knew this would mean amazing new things for the amazing roguey-cardsy game, but I did not appreciate quite how amazing until today.
The Googly Eyes mod is the mod of forever.
]]>Oh, great. The very last thing I needed was another reason to play Slay The Spire every day for the rest of my life, forever and ever and ever and ever. On the other hand, perhaps I can finally fulfil my dream of replacing The Time Eater with a GIF of Jareth the Goblin King, which I've just decided I've wanted since the day I was born.
Yep, Spire mods - via the doughty Steam Workshop - are very much go. Let's all look forwards to this perfectly-honed machine becoming a big ol'Katamari of madly conflicting ideas.
]]>The doors have been opened, the games inside have been devoured, and now it's time to recycle the cardboard. Below you'll find all of our favourite games from 2018, gathered together in a single post for easy reading.
]]>We ask the tough questions here at RPS. We’re like Jeremy Paxman but in a very long bear costume. We once asked 15 developers what they’d do if they were stuck in a room with a clone of themselves. This is important stuff.
Today, we ask another question: What would you gift the games industry for the holidays? We put this query to a bunch of game artists, writers and designers to see how charitable they were feeling. Today, you get to open these presents. Happy holidays!
]]>Splendid deck-building roguelikelike dungeon-crawler Slay The Spire will leave early access and launch in full on January 23rd, 2019, developers Mega Crit Games have announced. If you've foolishly been waiting for the full launch--it's been one of my favourite games of the year for months so holding off is daft okay--there you go. Mega Crit also note that they'll bump the price up a touch before launch so look, get it now and start scaling that tower of oddities.
]]>Delightful deck-building dungeon-crawler Slay The Spire has added a semi-secret fourth and final act in this week's early access update. At long last, we'll get to give that dastardly dungeon heart a proper kicking. You'll need to make an extra effort to face the final boss, let alone defeat it, but I believe in you.
]]>Delightful deck-building dungeoncrawler Slay The Spire's daily challenge has become part of my gaming routine, always an interesting climb up the roguelikelike tower with different modifiers, and I'm happy to see today's early access patch revamps it a little. Along with removing the vexatious 'Brewmaster' mod, which stacked our decks with potion-conjuring cards, it adds eight new mods to the daily pool while changing how mods are selected. On paper, it sounds like developer Mega Crit Games got together and decided to make 45 minutes of my day better every day? Ta!
]]>We're just about halfway through 2018 (which has somehow taken both too long and no time at all). As is tradition, we've shaken our our brains around to see which games from the last six months still make our neurons fizzle with delight. Then we wrote about them here, in this big list feature that you're reading right now this second.
And what games they are! 2018 has been a great year so far, and our top picks run the whole range, from hand drawn oddities made by one person, to big mega-studio blockbusters that took the work of hundreds. And each of them is special to us in some way. Just like you are too. Click through the arrows to see the full spread of our faves so far. Better luck next year to the games that didn't make the cut this time.
]]>We've just passed the half-way point of 2018, so Ian Gatekeeper and all his fabulously wealthy chums over at Valve have revealed which hundred games have sold best on Steam over the past six months. It's a list dominated by pre-2018 names, to be frank, a great many of which you'll be expected, but there are a few surprises in there.
2018 releases Jurassic World Evolution, Far Cry 5 Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Warhammer: Vermintide II are wearing some spectacular money-hats, for example, while the relatively lesser-known likes of Raft, Eco and Deep Rock Galactic have made themselves heard above the din of triple-A marketing budgets.
]]>Nearly every night, I do the 'should I play more Slay The Spire' dance. The cons: I wind up feeling guilty about not spending my free time trying something new, such as any of the half-dozen games I bought in the Steam Sale. The pros: it's always satisfying, and there's nearly always something that makes each run uniquely interesting.
That's largely thanks to the devs adding something new to their roguelike deckbuilder nearly every Friday. Today's early access update is a little beefier than usual, chucking in ten new relics and a special event where a six-armed entity offers you a new face.
]]>What Works And Why is a monthly column where Gunpoint and Heat Signature designer Tom Francis digs into the design of a game or mechanic and analyses what makes it good.
When games offer you abilities and perks that boost your stats, they often do it in a meager, fiddly way:
5% chance to deal 10% extra damage for 5 seconds. Does not stack.
This is dry, fussy and boring to me. A 5% chance is so low I can never bank on it happening, 10% extra damage is so small I won't notice it, and lasting 5 seconds means there's this extra state I now need to know about and track. And 'does not stack' might be the saddest phrase in game design.
]]>Delightful deck-building dungeon-crawler Slay The Spire has officially launched its third character, a robot wizard named The Defect, and they're a wild one. The Defect can conjure and consume a series of Orbs with passive and active effects, can pull off wild tricks with huge numbers of Power cards, and can also go full-on murderbot and tear enemies apart with their bare hands. I had thought The Defect was underpowered when they first arrived in the public beta build last month but, after more time with 'em, they might be my favourite spire-slayer.
]]>Deck-building dungeon-crawler Slay The Spire has become even more delightful with today's early access update, which added loads more potions. Before, potions were bland, not requiring much thought or planning, and largely skippable. Now you'll find potions giving ghostly intangibility, fleeting bursts of strength, discard decisions, free cards, and other effects worth considering.
To see so very, very many of the new potions and try 'em up, do check out today's daily run; its starting deck includes 15 copies of the potion-brewing Alchemize.
]]>Welcome to Spawn Point, where we take something wonderful from the world of gaming and explain what it is, why it’s worth your time and how to get involved. This time: collectible card games (or at least, the videogame kind).
Hello, I would like to collect some cards please. Of course, friend. We have a wide variety of fantasy themed cards, ranging from hostile dragon to raving ghoul to –
Hang on, what are these numbers? Oh, ignore those, they’re nothing to worry about. Look at this wizard!
]]>The third Slay The Spire character is a robot wizard who manipulates orbs, named The Defect, and you can check it out today. The Defect has arrived in the latest beta build for the early access deck-building roguelikelike, and though they're not quite finished ooh they are an interesting one. The Defect is the trickiest character so far, focused on building, managing, and exhausting a queue of different passive and active effects in the orbs - with actual attack cards almost a secondary concern. I've pulled off clutch wins with orbs and suffered dismal defeats, and I'm keen to learn more.
]]>It's not news that Slay The Spire is great--we've written about that oh so very much--but you might have missed how great its 'Daily Climb' daily run mode has become. On the deck-building roguelikelike's journey through early access, developers Mega Crit Games have kept adding daily modifiers that change the game in strange ways, and it's become my favourite way to play. I'm not even in it for competing on the leaderboards, I just like these strange variants - especially after Friday's patch added a Draft modifier that makes spire-climbers build their own starting deck.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
Still very much a going concern around these parts, but screw it, I've not yet written about Slay The Spire, a game that has consumed most of my waking thoughts these past couple of months, so here we go.
]]>Slay the Spire is brill, if you haven't heard, and with each early access update it only gets briller. The most recent one spruced up the daily challenge mode, making it even harder for me to resist playing it every day until the third character comes out. Before the daily modifiers mainly just made your life miserable - introducing tougher enemies, lowering your health and so on - but they now tend to come with benefits as well as drawbacks.
Alec has already sung the praises of the mode's earlier form, and now I get to do the same with this better version.
]]>This is Brendan, broadcasting live from rumour world, where everything is made of a nebulous candy floss-like substance. The locals call it “hope.” Amid this sticky cloud, a figure has formed. It’s Geralt of Rivia, hero of popular Gwent spin-off, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. The monster-hunting swordsman will “make an appearance” in another game later this year, according to CD Projekt Red community lead Marcin Momot. Some have asserted that he'll be a guest character in upcoming fighting game Soul Calibur VI. Which makes sense given the close business ties between the Polish studio and Japanese publisher Namco Bandai.
It isn't confirmed. But it does raise the question: who else deserves a place on the stage of history? I asked the RPS treehouse who they’d like to see. Here’s the list we all settled on.
]]>Casually fulfilling its destiny to become the videogame that consumes the rest of my life, ultro-superb CCG/roguelike combo Slay The Spire just introduced its third mode, the Daily Climb. It's about the most logical move Spire could have made, adding a daily challenge mode of the type popularised by Spelunky and The Binding Of Isaac (even big ol'XCOM 2 was inspired to do it, though the sadly the take-up hasn't been great).
Just as my Spire obsession was starting to waver - I've unlocked everything, and the difficulty gonkery for the sake of difficulty gonkery of Ascension mode isn't quite for me - this solid gold reason to play every day turns up.
]]>This is The Mechanic, where Alex Wiltshire invites developers to discuss the difficult journeys they underwent to make the best bits of their games. This time, Slay the Spire [official site].
Slay the Spire is a deck-building card game about careful attack and defence. And poisoning. And letting your own blood to amplify your damage, and hitting each enemy every time you lose a card, and gaining energy by hovering close to death. It’s a bit like Hearthstone, but it’s also a Rogue-like in which you ascend floors and find new cards and relics which power up your character in transformational ways.
It’s really good! And the secret behind it is a detail that seems minor, but without it your card-playing strategising would be for nothing. It’s the fact you get to see what your enemies will do on their next turn.
]]>As the charting games on Steam once more congeal into a single amorphous lump, quickly dive in to catch the last appearance of Subnautica, and probably Slay The Spire too. Next week it'll just be GTA: Counter-Strike - Witcher Battlegrounds.
]]>Some websites will fob you off with scant details about your favourite best-selling games, but not RPS. Here you will find gaming's most insightful commentary on the leading games of the modern age.
]]>They lurk, they creep, they skulk and weep. Monsters in videogames can be as simple as a big spiky cyclops ball, or as unsettling as a sobbing woman in a rainy alleyway. This week on the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, the team is talking about their favourites, from flaming skulls to digitally possessed diving suits, and the clever ways in which game monsters inspire heebies, jeebies, creeps and sometimes even willies.
]]>Where oh where is #9 this week, you ask, uncertain that it is possible to have a top ten without it. A mystery! Of course there are the usual suspects, the increasingly usual new suspects, and even a couple of new entries, but when it comes to slot nine, there's a gap. The URL for the entry is this, the number seemingly unattached to anything on the store, and not the since deleted entry for the idiotic CS:GO championship sticker collection, as I'd first assumed. Go solve the mystery, mystery solvers!
]]>As you might have noticed, we're playing a lot of Slay The Spire round these parts. With a few wins under my belt, I've learned about the power of building lean decks in the roguelikelike dungeon-crawling card game, but I'm still blown away watching a video of an infinite combo winning battles on the very first turn - with only two cards in the entire deck. It has caused several blasphemous exclamations in the RPS treehouse.
]]>Roguelike card game Slay the Spire has swept through the RPS dungeons like a powerful disease, covering us in tiny, number-shaped pustules. In search of a cure, we spoke to its designers, Anthony Giovannetti and Casey Yano of Mega Crit Games. Read on to learn some of their methods and future plans. We've already told you they'll “almost certainly” be adding more characters. But did you know they tested the game on expert Netrunner players?
]]>The roguelike card game Slay the Spire has marched into RPS and conducted a coup. Now a slug with a pocketwatch is forcing us all to write articles about how great it is. For example, I’ve just done an interview with the game’s creators, which you can read later. For now, let me sneak out this bit of info, while the slug isn’t looking: They plan to add new playable characters after the game’s full release. “We will almost certainly have more than three characters,” said Anthony Giovannetti of Mega Crit Games. OK, it’s no huge surprise, but at least you know they don’t plan to dust it off when it drops out of early access in the summer.
]]>Aw MAN! Just when I'd started up a great new running gag for the appearance of GTA V in the charts, this week it's fallen out! And Divinity: Original Sin 2 has finally failed to make the grade for the first time this year. However, you'll be relieved to learn CS:GO and Plunkles don't let us down and wearily continue their infinite reigns.
Meantime, there's quite a nice mixture of fresh and more recently popular scattered within.
]]>No. Let's not be ridiculous. But there are so many examples of bad survival games that it’s important to remember the good ones. So that’s what we are doing on the latest RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show. We're breaking stones over the heads of rubbish survival games, but cooking, salting and eating the delicious ones. Adam wraps himself up in The Long Dark but reluctantly sets Project Zomboid on fire to stay warm. Matt gets sea sickness from Subnautica but wants to swim again anyway. And Brendan freedives into Subnautica too, in an attempt to escape from all the mediocre survival games set on red planets.
]]>Well sound the klaxons, unfurl the flags, hoist your main-braces and petards whatever they may be, 2018 is proving far more interesting for charting Steam games. Of course we can't escape the three usual suspects, but beyond those this is quite the collection of interesting, independent, and novel games.
]]>Slay the Spire is a juicy, bloody fillet of a card game rolled around in the random oils and spices of a roguelike. I’d further this culinary analogy by cooking it in an RPG oven but let’s just go ahead and eat it raw. Because it's delicious. Also, I’m a vampire now. I had an altercation in a glowing city and the game took all my normal attack cards and replaced them with “bite” cards, transforming me into a frail but dangerous demon of the night. I'm fine with this.
]]>Sorry to frighten the more sensitive reader, but, goodness me, among the miserably common entries, this week's chart welcomes a fair few newbies and indies! Are customers about to get better at buying? Or will we just see these games in the charts every week for the rest of the year? STAY TUNED!
]]>A ghost set me on fire. Earlier, I was beating on a parasite that was hiding inside a metal shell. I found a gelatinous cube that had absorbed so much junk it had become sluggish and bloated. I reached inside it, lost a layer of skin on my hand, but retrieved an ice cream. Don't laugh. It's a very useful ice cream.
I'm playing roguelike card game Slay The Spire, and I've fought through packs of cultists, slavers and thieves, but now I'm on fire and I can't do a great deal about it. I burn whenever I breathe. It seems unfair but this is partly a hell of my own making.
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