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24 hour exclusive - Why Synergies are the Secret to Slay the Spire’s Fun (Patreon)

Published:
2019-03-03 11:20:41
Edited:
2019-06-28 04:35:00
Imported:
2020-03

Content

I recently got super obsessed with Slay the Spire, and I wanted to delve into the thing that made this game so addictive: synergies. The video will be live for everyone tomorrow. 

Slay the Spire was actually our Game Club game on Discord. Every month we pick a game, play it, and talk about it. Come join in! Just hook up your Discord account to your Patreon account to get access.

Cheers!

Mark

Files

Why Synergies are the Secret to Slay the Spire’s Fun | Game Maker’s Toolkit

I have been obsessed with a card battling roguelike called Slay the Spire. And a big reason for that is how the game uses synergies. What are they, and why are they so cool? Let’s find out. Support Game Maker's Toolkit on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/GameMakersToolkit Have Mark talk at your studio, university, or event - https://gamemakerstoolkit.tumblr.com Sources Lenticular Design | Magic the Gathering https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/lenticular-design-2014-12-15 Games shown in this episode (in order of appearance) Slay the Spire (Mega Crit Games, 2019) Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 (Stainless Games, 2011) Enter the Gungeon (Dodge Roll, 2016) The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth (Nicalis / Edmund McMillen, 2014) Dead Cells (Motion Twin, 2018) Into the Breach (Subset Games, 2018) Team Fortress 2 (Valve Corporation, 2007) Hearthstone (Blizzard Entertainment, 2014) Artifact (Valve Corporation, 2018) Music used in this episode Slay the Spire soundtrack - Clark Aboud (https://clarkaboudmusic.bandcamp.com/album/slay-the-spire-original-soundtrack) Into the Breach soundtrack - Ben Prunty (https://benprunty.bandcamp.com/album/into-the-breach-soundtrack)

Comments

Anonymous

The game that resembled this closest for me personally was Suikoden V. One of Suikoden's main charms is the ability to recruit 108 members to your army, with nearly all of them being available to place in your party to make a team of up to 8. How you synergise this team is really where the intricacies start coming in but in V specifically they add in formations as well, so it isn't just who you put in your party with what magic but also where. When you get a great combination or discover a new formation it really just clicks and the magic of combat design really starts to shine through.

Anonymous

Oh man, I had the same experience where I picked up StS and was totally addicted for a couple of weeks. I'm glad you found it too and made a video, because it's just so well done. Excellent analysis, as always! One of the things that stood out to me that you didn't mention: Card games tend to have a 'ramp-up' where you get more energy as the match progresses. This adds a cool escalation, but it also means that your decision space gets more complex over time, and I feel like the number of decisions can be overwhelming. In Hearthstone, I often felt like I might have an amazing combo in my hand, but just had too many cards and too much mana to figure it out in time. You also feel an 'unlucky' hand much more viscerally, because you're likely stuck with it. StS keeps energy levels low and card costs high (for the most part), which helps narrow down the number of possible plays in each given hand. The result is that I can quickly see a few differnt combos on each given turn and decide which feels best. This is an extension of that 'pick one choice from a few good choices' process that is so satisfying. Drawing a new hand each turn feeds into this too. When you hold onto your hand like in a more traditional game, you're often praying for that one draw to finish your combo, or trying to hold out until you have enough mana to pull it off. In StS, each turn is a fresh little bite sized puzzle and because of all the great synergy, the odds that you'll either have a decent play each hand or a setup for one next hand are pretty high. And you feel like you have a solid amount of agency over those odds, because you have a level of control over which cards you add or remove. It's brilliant. Another piece of that is that your opponents are very simple compared to most card games where your enemy has their own entire deck of possibilities. I stopped playing Hearthstone because it felt like the correct way to play was by "counting cards", where you study the meta decks, figure out which your opponent is playing, and then play around the cards you expect them to have. This is a fun dynamic too, but it throws a bunch of unknowns into your decision making process. StS gives you almost perfect information about your opponents and they are relatively simple, so you get to focus your decisions on the core fun of the game: executing those awesome synergies.