Funnily enough, in board game circles "deck building game" no longer refers to something like Magic, but has come to mean a game where you start each game with a very simple deck and add cards to it during play - in other words, the games that Slay The Spire was influenced by. You might enjoy something like Dominion, Ascension, Star Realms or Legendary.
I instantly though of these games and how well the deck building genre fits with a roguelike style game. The creators of slay the spire did a good job of noticing that and creating a good game from it.
Yeah, I couldn't help but think of deckbuilders when I was watching this video as well. Trains is my own personal favourite, but all of those are great suggestions as well.
One think Mark didn’t mention that I think is very important with the per run setup that makes them engaging is the fact that some cards are bad without your synergy. He mentioned Barricade and Entrench but in most circumstances Entrench is not really useful without Barricade or Body Slam and Barricade is rare. So if you lose because you had an expensive Entrench you never used it keeps you engaged because you just wanna try again to try to get the synergy you missed out on last time. And then when you have a card you never use like Rupture but halfway through the game you get Combustion then it feels so much more satisfying than getting them both right away.
That depends on what kind of player you are. Some might have a bad experience with one card and so henceforth they ban that card from daring graze their deck like some kind of egg head.
I personally just got annoyed that my build was scuppered due to random luck, and wasted the last half hour of my life. After that happened a couple times, and after I realized that your deck was going to be bloated with a load of chaff throughout the whole game, I basically lost all interest in the game.
@@Healermain15 That's not necessarily true, though. I just finished a run yesterday with The Defect which relied on a small deck with lots of claw attacks and ways to fish those claw attacks out of my discard pile, or to replicate them. As soon as I realized that was where my deck was going, I immediately plotted courses that had large amounts of events, shops, and bonfires in them. Avoiding monster combat meant that very few cards were added to my deck, the item shop allowed me to remove chaff when I had the money, and a fair amount of events allow you to remove or transform cards. By the end my deck only had 26 cards, and most of the ones that weren't synergistic allowed me to draw more cards, thus ignoring them. It was really fun to play.
One interesting idea that I'm surprised wasn't mentioned was the idea of anti-synergies, things which combine together in ways that are worse than the sum of their parts, and how they can occur from a number of different reasons, from pieces of two different strategies which don't mesh together, to developer oversight, to an intentional addition to balance powerful effects.
@@crimsoncat8244 I can think of a few anti-synergies within Slay the Spire. In this video, Mark showed a card called "Anger", which was a 0 cost attack card that's fairly low damage, but when you play it, two copies of it go into your discard pile. The idea being that when your deck is reshuffled you'll have more copies of the card with which to deal more damage for no energy cost with. Snecko Eye is a relic that causes you to draw two more cards per turn, but also randomizes the cost of cards when they are drawn to between 0 and 3. The randomized cost and extra card draw is very good for drawing and playing high-impact cards that often will cost less energy than normal, but in the case of Anger, not only does it lose its main advantage of costing no energy, but it also multiplies whenever you play it, making you draw it more often instead of something that works better with Snecko Eye.
@@crimsoncat8244 counter synergy is where one effect dampens another is how I like to think of it. For example rampage is a card that increases it's own damage when it is played for the rest of combat. So rampage may not directly be affected by the twin strike you are adding to your deck but, the thicker you make your deck the less often rampage will come up making it worse then it otherwise would have been.
@@crimsoncat8244 ironically one of the very few countersynergistic relic combinations in slay the spire was mentioned in this video: runic pyramid and dead branch. the dead branch fills up your hand with crap and pyramid prevents you from discarding it
And that's also great design - the game typically tries to give you a final boss that coutners your deck a bit, so you have Act 3 to redesign to fight them.
My thinking exactly. I became obsessive about Hearthstone in its first couple of years (dumping a couple hundred dollars into the game in the process), but I now realize the only part of the game I really enjoyed were the synergies. I didn't care about the ladder or the competitive aspect, I didn't care about having a "complete collection", I didn't care about lore, and to be perfectly honest I didn't even really care that much about winning. I just wanted to pull off satisfying combos. In the end I became super burnt out with Hearthstone because it's a very expensive Sisyphus quest. I'm burnt out with rogue likes as well, but I'm curious about Slay The Spire because it might scratch that Hearthstone itch in a much healthier way.
The genious simplty and ease of access is what makes Slay the Spire so good. It has proper depth to be studied, but unlike many card games, it does not overwhelm you at the beginning. And the replayability is well crafted. Random generated path to glory combined with deck building where you are not given many options at a time. As the video said, there is something addictive in trying to chase the best deck.
Man this takes me back to my old Magic The Gathering days. Just the endless possibilities of *how* you can pair certain cards is almost more thrilling than actually playing a game. It's so fun to see just exactly how you can "exploit" the cards available to your advantage, but boy, I can't imagine being a developer trying to keep any cards/card combos from being "broken" or wayyyy to powerful to keep things interesting. Never played slay the spire, but I can't help but wonder what cards *didn't* make it into the game for that exact reason.
Yeah it was in early access for a while for that exact reason. They did an excellent job with the balance. There certainly are broken combos but there's basically no "guaranteed wins". Card Corruption (skills cost 0 and exhaust) and the relic Dead Branch (exhausted cards are replaced with a random card) is the easiest of the broken combos but it still takes some thought in deck construction to make it work (at higher difficulties at least)
Totally agree with the first point. To be honest I usually don't play MTG and other similar games hoping to win. For me, the objective is just to experience unique things.
Coolest combo I ever assembled was necronomicon, blue candle, rupture, and reaper. Letting me play the necronomicurse for 1 life until I’ve gained enough strength to play my reaper for lethal and regain all my spent life back.
Awesome video again, they're just so interesting and fill my head with game ideas every time :) ! And yeah, Slay the Spire gave me the same joyful thrills, I've also poured 50 hours of my time into this amazing game. Hearthstone too a few years back ^^
I've played over 250 hours of slay the spire and I still stumble into strategies I've never had before. For instance, nightmare + ritual dagger is insanity. Basically, the game buffs the ritual dagger in your deck whenever one of the copies is used as well. So you end up scaling it 4x faster then normal. I think it ended up being like 130ish damage for 1mana. And I could clone it with nightmare still. Tons of fun even if I've finally stopped playing it frequently.
I think the real strength of Slay the Spire is "play with the cards you are dealt". Even if you make a strategy you will likely have to change it slightly later or go into another direction because of the cards that are presented to you. The beauty is about adapting your deck to the new cards you slowly get.
I've been a fan of Slay the Spire for almost a year now and was kinda bummed out that you didn't talk about it in your roguelike video. But now I see that it's gotten an 89 on metacritic and you are dedicating a video to it as well. It's such a good game. And I lost so much time in it.
It takes the roguelike idea of permadeath and turns it into a strength. With most decks you simply don't want to be playing them for more than one run, so in a sense the permadeath isn't a drawback it's a feature. And reloading bad saves just doesn't make much sense when you can't predict what the next enemies will be in the next encounter. It's actually one of the few instances where it's combining different genres and patching them together really well.
Seems like you would enjoy deck building games, as in, games where building a deck is done through play. Shadowrun Crossfire, Eminent Domain and Dominion, the granddaddy of them all. The mechanics are mostly like Slay the Spire but usually there's an open market for cards that players dispute over, becoming partly about blocking synergies and partly about though on the spot decisions for your deck. Boardgames need to be super transparent with their mechanics, so i think that leads to a super interesting school of design.
Just what I was thinking. Coming from the board game scene, I'll confess a lot of the points in this video felt a little trivial. Love Mark's deliberate writing and production, but I couldn't help but feel like he failed to see a whole world of analogue games out there that have been doing this for years.
I've been playing Hades and I love getting a good synergy going. Aspect of Hera combined with Zeus' chain lightning can effectively turn a single arrow into a screen nuke.
4:40 That's not a 10x10 calculation... It's 45 options for different pairs (90 if the order within the pair matters), and if you decide to count all possible combinations (triplets etc.) then it goes over 100
@@ckannan90 I'm sorry pal, but that's COMPLETELY wrong. Of course you can follow-up with the same card, but if you have a set of 10 cards that aren't all unique but some repeat themselves, then it decreases the amount of combinations, because some of these combinations are the same so there's no point in counting them as "another strategy". For example a set of 10 cards that has 2 same-cards can produce only 37 unique pair-combinations. In short, your idea can only ever decrease the amount of combinations, and has no mathematical connection to "10x10" formula as you suggest.
It's really is 45. I had to think about it for a while but let me try to explain it. Let's say we have cards A-J. The first card, A, can be used with the others to create 9 unique pairs. AB, AC, AD, AE, AF, AG, AH, AI, and AJ. Moving on to the second card, it can now be used to create 8 unique pairs. It isn't 9 again because the AB combination has already been used, so B can be combined with the other cards to form the unique pairs: BC, BD, BE, BF, BG, BH, BI, and BJ. Now moving on the the third card: C. It can be used to make 7 unique pairs, again, not 9 or 8 because the pairs AC and BC have already been created. With C we can create CD, CE, CF, CG, CH, CI, CJ. This continues down the chain with each new card able to make 1 less unique pair than the card before it until the only pair not yet created is IJ. 9+8+7+6+5+4+3+2+1 = 45.
There’s a board game called Dominion that’s based on something similar to the card system you showed in Slay the Spire. You start out with a small and ineffective deck and a shop with money, victory points, and 10 action cards that rotate out each game. In order to get the most victory points before the end of the game, you’ve got to build a deck that exploits synergies from the action cards most effectively. Because you choose which action cards are in the shop before you start, each game feels different. But the synergies can still be really powerful if you pick up the right cards at the right time. There have been games where I have used every single card in my deck in a single turn thanks to synergies.
Slay The Spire is like if Dominion or Ascension had a baby with a Rogue Like video game. All the same type of strategies and knowledge applies. There's even abilities that enemies use that are essentially curses. If you have any love for Dominion Slay The Spire is worth buying.
Listening to your description of synergies has reminded me of another wonderful rogue-lite game called Heat Signature. This game has a lot of intricate links between its mechanics and I love it for it. The game presents you with a set of tools that could be combined in a creative way and it doesn't tell you how to combine those. You can play for a long time without discovering those, but part of the game experience is the joy of discovery - finding those mechanics that connect and work together perfectly, like swapper teleporter and bouncing your melee weapon off the wall towards yourself before the act of teleportation. I love this game a lot and could describe more, but discovering those synergies is part of the joy I wish for everyone to experience for themselves.
When I discovered Magic's 20 thousand deep card pool, my young mind exploded into a billion pieces each of which started trying to find cool synergies to build decks around
Mark, I think you will really enjoy the "limited" mode of card games. You're not faced with making a deck from a selection of literally thousands of cards. Instead, depending on the game, you're given a much smaller collection of cards to choose from. In hearthstone, this is from a choice of 3 cards thirty times. In Magic, you whittle down your choices from an original pool of 15 cards, that is, the next pick will give you a selection of 14 cards, and the next will give you a selection of 13 cards and so on until you have made 45 picks to craft your deck from (you go through three 15-card booster packs to make your deck). If you found slay the spire enjoyable, I think trying out some of these limited modes will be right up your alley.
Yeah, definitely worth checking out arena mode on hearthstone or draft on MtGA. The newest Ravnica Mtg expansions are a masterclass on synergies, each being about five guilds that have their own strategies, but each combination of "friend" guilds (guilds that share colors) having their own in-between synergies.
@@Hamhamsnoozer how does limited have the same problem? You only have a very small amount of cards to choose from every time. Obviously knowing what cards you can get later is important but if you think that's overwhelming, same can be said about slay the spire. Amount of cards, relics and events is massive in this game and having knowledge of what you could possible encounter helps greatly
The addition of roguelike permadeath to card games has made me finally love them. Inscryption and Slay the Spire were so much fun because building a deck just kind of happened as you played.
I have played a game before called "night of the full moon", a free-to-play roguelike deck-builder. In it I once found a synergy so powerful that it lagged my phone. Yes, a deckbuilder lagged my phone. Here's how the synergy was: In the game, the most common type of card (attack) costs no action (energy) so you can play your entire hand (usually) every turn. However, you can keep some amount of cards to next turn so that's not always the best idea. Card 1: Support Attack card that deals 1 damage and draws a card. Auto-drawn when you play an attack card. Card 2: Shaky a 1-action exhaust card that adds 4 exhausting copies of a card to your draw pile. So this meant that with enough shaky cards, I could basically draw 12 cards for free; making me draw my entire hand in a single turn. There's also no hand limit so
@@Nuclearburrit0 Nah it would work. You don't have to be a rogue like to have deck buildings mechanic you just need to put restrictions on how "cards" are obtained and how they are used. (for example having them to be only one time use (wich is already the case in sticker star) and giving you only very specific ways of getting them instead of letting you farm them) I don't know if it would have made Sticker star or the new format of paper mario games better but the bar is already so low that i wouldn't mind it. Plus it would make a way better puzzle feel (which is what those game aim to be rather than traditionnal RPGs like previous ones) than "use this specific item on this boss or overpower him with rare items (which aren't that rare and can be farmed easily)".
@@Izhuark well yeah but at that point it's just magic the gathering. Slay the spire in particular wouldn't work as is outside of its genre without very huge changes in both how cards are collected, how the deck is edited, what relics exist and what they do ect ect ect
@@Nuclearburrit0 Well that specifically what game design is for. Of course you wouldn't put the system as it is but it doesn't mean a tweaked version geared toward a more puzzle-rpg experience would not work. (And it would still be pretty different from mtg or even the Shandalar mtg game.)
Since you mentioned Magic: I remember playing a tournament format called "booster draft" as a kid, where essentially everyone would open a bunch of booster packs with random cards and had to build their decks on the spot using those. Fun stuff.
Me: Just bought slay the spire and won my first few runs Mark: Miraculously knows exactly what games I'm playing and makes a beautiful video talking about everything I love in them Me: Not even mad about the possible invasion of privacy just happy for more content
@@rowanunderwood Indeed! I'm trying mostly with the defect (love the deck synergies) and I' struggling just a bit to get past the second floor. Still fun though haha
Hey Mark, if you’re on the topic of synergies, I think that The Binding of Issac: Afterbirth+ would be a great game to analyze, just for its alternative method of presenting synergies to the player. There are some synergies that allow you to power up, (Guppy, Leviathan, Mom, etc.) but there are also undeclared synergies, things that just...work for whatever reason, whether it be good or bad. I think it would be a super interesting video for everyone.
Thank you , thats all i could thunk about this entire video, and isaac really adds to the whole not every synergy is good, there are a ton “GFYS” moments in that game that make it all the better when you get stuff that works
Huge props for mentioning Mark Rosewater in your video, I have learned so much on game design from his podcast. He is a wealth of knowledge on the subject and not just focused on CCGs and other card games.
Some other games that really can have some awesome combos like that are the handheld Mega Man RPGs. There are some disgusting combos that you can do, but with how fast combat is, and how few tools you have (you can only have 30 chips/cards) you legitimately have to decide if you have the speed, reaction time, and health to survive another round with the opponent to get to the combo pieces your missing. Some combos are so insane they can basically destroy super bosses in one round, but they require such perfect setups, that unless your either a master player, or incredibly lucky, you are almost guaranteed to have an insane dance of death on your hands.
The Megaman Battle Network games gave me this sense of synergy. I remember playing the first few games just trying to get chips with the most powerful damage outputs, before finally realizing that I can create epic combos based on the types of chips I put into my folder.
Please give this one a go! I never thought I'd care about a card game, either - but it's very approachable. It does to card games what Into the Breach does to turn-based tactics.
May I give a recommendation of keyforge. It is a card game with no deck building because each deck is bought in a pack and randomly generated. Note that it's not totally random to make sure some synergies don't spiral out of control and there are chains to limit the strength of powerful decks. I can't explain all the about how they make all decks equal and you may have to look some of this up, but I can tell you that when I look at a deck, I always find a strategy. Sometimes I find this strategy mid-game and that realization make me feel overwhelmingly smart and powerful.
On the Synergistic aspect, thats what makes Job Systems in Final Fantasy so engaging, its not just the sheer potency of a single skillset(though those can be quite powerful) but also the ways you can combine and synergize those with previously trained Job's abilities, and the Jobs and Abilities of the rest of the party
This is an interesting theme, but I'd say we should just keep it in our radar as things go on. Mark did focus them on particular game associated episodes, but there might be other down the road with more spice, interesting and trickier themes.
Magicmaker is a game built around you constructing particularly overpowered spells out of various materials, and some materials happen to have extremely powerful synergies. For example, you can combine the material that adds a trail of stationary bullets to your spells with the material that adds homing to make a spell that generates a constant trail of homing projectiles, while it itself homes in on enemies. I also constructed a huge bomb that combines the material that adds power at the cost of making the projectile start slow and ramp up in speed, with the material that makes your projectile split after it travels for a set period of time. I saw a thread on the forums with people posting their game-breaking combinations, and maybe even expressed some concerns that the dev just threw stuff together and their were a ton of balance issues. After a while, the developer came on and said that virtually everything was intentional, and these synergies are the entire point of the game. It's basically a more balanced game elevated to an illogical extreme, and it's loads of fun. This video reminded me of that thread!
The idea of wanting to remove or pass on cards is actually pretty much a no brainier if you have any card game experience; in pretty much every card game you want to have as small a deck as possible (this is why most card games have relatively high minimum deck size requirements) so you are as consistently as possible drawing not just synergistic cards but simply the strongest cards from your deck. I actually think it's much more interesting when a card games gives you a reason to break this trend. For example I believe in Valve's artifact there are some decks that are built around very high mana cost cards so some people will add a few extra cheaper cards to smooth out the mana curve and avoid ending up with an early game hand that's full of cards they can't use.
There's a yugioh format called Trinity which plays with 30 card highlander decks (every card at 1), but in which you can add additional copies of one card by adding four more unique cards alongside it. So by making your deck bigger you actually become more likely to draw that one card.
While this is true, in Slay the Spire having a small deck means having less options and being more vulnerable to aiments cards being added to your deck by your opponents. Also, having a big deck mean you can put in more powers card to eventually buff you out for the rest of the fight while still having a low risk of drawing them all at the same time. But to make a bigger deck work, you need to make sure to have enough draw power and cards that do several things at once.
@@Mewseeker That's specifically why I gravitate towards Power decks when possible. You have the advantage of having a decently large deck, but the cards you play won't be drawn again, and they give you their benefit each turn, so you're likely to draw the skill or attack cards that synergize with your Powers later in the combat.
Mark, if you ever want to get in popular card games (in this example: Magic), try draft. You open a brand new booster packs, take one card, pass on the rest and take another card from the pile you just got. You do this process for 3 boosters until all cards are gone. This format hits on most of the things you mentioned in this video. You always start with a different card pool each time you draft, you slowly build synergistic decks as new cards come into your posession and you dont get overwhelmed by the amount of cards. I would describe limited formats as the rougelikes of paper card games
You should check out the game Dominion. It's pretty much the progenitor of deckbuilding games like Slay the Spire - that is, games where you build a deck during the course of gameplay. In fact Slay the Spire is one of the closest deckbuilders to Dominion in terms of pacing, card power, and how it uses action points. In Dominion it might even be more necessary to remove cards from your deck than in StS. Jumping back to Mark Rosewater, his/Wizards of the Coat's player psychographics note a player archetype, Jenny/Johnny, who are described as treating games like a puzzle to be solved. They like finding new rules or game piece interactions and like the mad-scienctist feeling when they work out. Slay the Spire definitely caters to that psychographic well. I think part of why this concept is so prevalent in tabletop games is because it's typically harder to hide content to keep as a surprise later in the game (except for the modern concept of Legacy games and tabletop rpg), so most surprises are baked into emergent gameplay experiences.One example is finding synergies.
@@duffman18 Yeah when I first played Slay the Spire it immediately caught me. Dominion's one of my favorite games and I kinda dislike how many deckbuilders intentionally push away from some of Dominion's ideas.
As the Defect chaining Storm(s) and any number of other powers together is so hilariously ridiculous that if I get the chance I try to go with it pretty much every time.
I can recommend that game as well. The story might seem a bit awkward to some but the gameplay is great. The developers openly admit that they were heavily inspired by Slay the Spire and it shows, with ridiculous synergies and some bosses that can still lead to a sudden death if you start playing too sloppy. I had a lot of fun with it when I was hospitalised for a week, time really flew.
About synergies.. there's a build in Dungeon Defenders II called Frostfire Combo, which consists of 2 effects that trigger each other, as well as a few other effects that you can add into it. With constant flow of enemies, this can completely stop and, with time, annihilate huge groups of enemies as long as new ones keep coming. My favourite addition to that is 3 effects: drenching enemies, freezing drenched enemies and flinging them into air; when crushing into the ground the ice is broken dealing a lot of damage.
9:39 hearthstone has “dungeon runs” that work almost exactly like slay the spire, you should really try those if you find the deck building part daunting!
I think it's also worth pointing out that even though this is a rouguelike, it does progression very well. When you die, you don't unlock anything new (except for possibly more relics that can randomly drop), but when you win, you unlock a harder level. And importantly, there's a finite number of these difficulty levels (20) so when you win you feel like you're progressing towards the end of the game.
Reminds me a lot of a board game my family and I used to play called Small World. You have synergy between race and power such as Amazons + Commando which can be really good. A synergy between race and terrain such as humans getting more points on farmland. And synergy between current race and prior race as you discard races and pick new ones through the game, so you can, for example, have humans tucked away in a farmland heavy region of the map barricaded by your discarded troll race around it and just amass a lot of points. Races are "randomly" paired with powers and there are many races cycling through, that and the fact that you go through 2-3 races a game (and so does everyone else) means you never have the same setup so you can't bank on optimal strategies, you have to think about it every time. There's also the fact that Races can be better or worse depending on the current state of the map, for example, sorcerers can completely decimate an amazon population as they are typically very spread out and relatively unguarded, but can be completely useless in other playthroughs. Through playing it a lot there have been a lot of combinations that sounded not so good but turned out really good. And all around a lot of interesting strategies that came out just by playing with the same ppl every time. It's a cool game.
This brings me back to you mentioning roguelikes - for me, the most crucial aspect of those is the controlled randomness - you are offered a random selection of choices but you can't take them all due to limited resources, so you need to spot those synergies.
This video touched on something that I’ve been trying to be able to explain for awhile to my friends every time I’ve talked about Borderlands 2. I’ve been trying to explain why I played that game for as long as I did because of the different builds you could make but I can’t believe I didn’t think to also mention the “synergies” between the gear you obtained the abilities of each character in Borderlands 2. I LOVED that game. I suppose I could say the combinations and synergies between gear and abilities did make me feel smart though sometimes the builds weren’t always optimal or the meta. They were just fun to play with as well as fun to have noticed the connection between. For example, Krieg is a badass psycho who’s ability is to wield a “buzz saw axe” as a weapon and his blue middle tree has a plethora of abilities to suit that. But one build I particularly recall using is one that involved the rough rider shield that you get in hammerlocks dlc(not a dlc every player liked but still) the shield wasn’t legendary but it was a blue quality shield with flavor text. Meaning it was special. It’s shtick was that it had no shield. It was always depleted but gave health and some damage resistance. This was otherwise not a very useful shield if you didn’t build around it. But with krieg it worked. He has an ability where when his shield is depleted he does more melee damage and with all his other abilities that you could spec into made him fun as hell. It’s already crazy enough to wear a shield that lacked any shield but kreig is a crazy character with crazy abilities(in different senses of the word). I can only hope borderlands 3 has the same forethought as Borderlands 2. As the Pre-sequel lacked any new gear to play with even if you had new characters with different abilities so it got less play time from me because of that.
All throughout watching this video, i was assuming different aspects to the design and it felt great to finally get some things right. Thanks for making these videos to help me get better at game analysis
Would’ve loved to see some analysis of The Binding of Isaac here, beyond just some footage as an example of a roguelike! The synergies of the hundreds of items are always changing up in new interesting ways, and it’s what drives me to keep starting another run. Still though, I get that’s somewhat different from the deck building theme you were going with, and I loved the video as is!
This video is so well made it made me understand some of of the design choices in games like Divinity: Original Sin 2 and Borderlands 2, and especially their progression system. As you say, some of the benefits from Slay the Spire come from it's Rogue-like structure, which these two other games don't have, so they used other tricks to help the player getting into theorycraft, basically. To avoid overwhelming the player with a huge amount of skills, passives and other effects, they withdraw a lot of their potential to let you play with simple stuff. In Divinity, you only start with three spells that can somewhat synergize a little bit and you get teased other spells on your journey before you can get them. You get new spells with money, fights and exploration which basically all depend on your level and experience with and within the game. In Borderlands, you get your special ability at level 5 only and you get to spend skill points further down the line when you gain some levels and experience as a Vault Hunter but as a player too. You can still read the abilities you'll get in 5, 10 or 20 levels, but you don't have to make your decision yet and can continue with your life at level 5. The thing is, the game doesn't tell you you'll be able to reset your points until later in the game, after a few hours. So you're careful about the points you use, but of course as a first time player you'll make some mistakes. For the first few hours, you'll have to deal with your choices, which is an important lesson especially in Divinity. After a few hours though, you can reset your points and rebuild all you want for free (or almost). At this point you already know how the game's main mechanics works and you will probably stick with a build for some time instead of changing it at every small difficulty spike. Interestingly enough, you can change your a lot of your skills without changing your weapons and armor. In Divinity, a Monstruous Explosive Pyrokinetic Flame Bending Mage will probably use the same stuff as a Super Duper Electrical Pikachu Storm Master, or close enough anyway. Same thing in Borderlands really. If you don't go 180 degrees with your build, you only need to change (some of) your skills and you'll do good enough to continue your adventure, so there's little cost to it. You'll get better gear soon anyway and you only care about your weapons when you're min-maxing the game, which only happens when you already embraced all of the game's mechanics, so quite late that is. Anyway, in those two non-Rogue-like games, you can still get the same feeling of power coming from synergies without being overwhelmed as a new player, and I think this is quite neat and it's thanks to this video. Which is amazing. Again, another amazing video. Put a heart, Mark. I said it was a good video. Put it. Now. It's fine, you can put it later. Just after I hit "comment" because I still haven't.
I have tricks even better than those ones. You can do crazier stuff in a Double Battle, and you can safely pull off way crazy stuff in a Triple Battle (how would you like a Mega Rayquaza with +1 in Attack and Speed and whose current Ability is Contrary using Dragon Ascent from the corner of the field?).
MMO CRPG Guild Wars was doing this back in 2005. Each character has access to two classes and 300+ skills among 7-9 attributes, but you can only equip 8 skills at a time. This requires you to think about skill synergies not only within your own character, but with your teammates as well.
Speaking of synergies, one thing that comes to mind is the Megaman Battle Network series. The game is a deck builder, so certain chip combos can do massive damage, but there's also built-in synergies in the form of Program Advances. If the RNG puts three specific chips in your hand at the start of a turn and you play them all at once, they turn into a super move that deals massive damage and can have other esoteric effects. And I think that these built in synergies help point the player towards making their own synergies with unrelated chips as well. Sure, this combo has a flashy animation and whatnot, but other chip combos can have similar effects, if only the player notices how the system works and all the elements play into each other.
Great, another game I feel the need to get thanks to you. Thank god it still isn't out on the Switch cause I shouldn't be spending more money on games lmao.
There's another synergy (other than between cards) that makes StS amazing: the synergy between deckbuilding and roguelike genres, where both involve you building a kit and gain (temporary) power as you progress your playthrough, while also complementig each other's weaknesses(replacing monotonous gameplay loop with variative card battle, making overpowered synergies as 'disposable' as quick losses, etc)
I did find that thrill for synergy in another way: in Monster Hunter games, where you can either wear complete sets of armor or combine them for even stronger sets that suit your playstyle or are suited to your weapon or even to the monster you want to fight. It´s always a challenge to find and actually pick out the pieces of gear that would fit together perfectly and then also considering the decorations you can put in, given you have free choice of both, which is not always the case. You are forced to deal with what you have at hand at all times so you will do it again and again coming up with even better sets every time. This results in sweet satisfaction when you can come up with something that has (almost) all the skills you wanted/needed(and you look dumb because none of the pieces fit together in terms of style ).Of course you can look up builds on the internet but i see that as a source of inspiration and ideas for myself. I´d love to see you taking an insight in Monster Hunter: World too(specifically, but the whole series would be even better).How it handles loot, getting your gear, progressing the story and all the eventquests und straight up awesome collaborations like the one with CD Project Red´s The witcher 3 (just so fucking awesome). I love your videos man, keep it up.
I know this probably isn't anyone's favorite example, but it's the one I'm most familiar with: the "mini-games" in Cookie Clicker. A while back, Orteil started adding in an assortment of more user-driven progression systems into his endearing little skinner box, and the ways these play around with each other and appeal to different play styles is actually really interesting. Generally, he's found that there's two primary kinds of player - "idle" and "active" - and goes into designing these systems with pros and cons for both in mind. So, for example, the Temples' mini-game, the Pantheon, is simply a place where you can establish a trio of gods that people under your glorious cookie empire worship, with the strength of the effects varying based on how far up the chain you place any given deity. One deity boosts click power at the expense of your buildings' potency, while another will drastically increase your CPS but will deslot itself and spend all of your allotted energy for god-assigning if you ever click one of the buff-granting Golden Cookies that active players basically need to survive. The other two games presently implemented are the Spellbook - a recharging mana pool that lets you cast your own buffs periodically with the potential for spells backfiring that forces you to consider how you may be effected by a spell going wrong - and the Garden, a plot of land that has you trying to breed plants to create new species that have varying effects for the extent of their lifespan. Late-game players have taken to the Garden a lot, with varying synergies being the focus to start breaking through Cookie Clicker's inherent ceiling of meaningful progress that vary from playstyle to playstyle, and new styles have emerged from it, with some players finding it best to passively grow plants that can give stellar rewards with just the right combination of buffs, which in turn means plants that increase Golden Cookie frequency play very nicely but take up slots you could be using to grow more of the high-yield specimens in turn. Meanwhile, I'm over here trying to max out the value of individual clicks as much as possible, because I'm a filthy auto-clicker user anyway so I may as well lean into that nonsense, and there's things that very specifically seem to exist for my kind's benefit as well, because Orteil knows, clearly. The game is casual as hell and nothing overly complicated, but as the author keeps adding these strange little diversions and designing them to play with each other, more and more personalization is cropping up in what otherwise is a pretty passive experience, and I find it pretty interesting.
Another interesting application of this concept is in team based fighting games. With some exceptions (MvCI, KoF, etc) in those, you chose multiple characters to play on one team but only control one at a time unless you tag a character in with a raw tag (an attack that swtiches your controlled character), use a dhc (a mechanic where while using one characters super, you can call in another character to use their super too, and the character you call in is the one who stays in control) or when your current character dies. But, while a character is "on the bench," you can actually use them to perform an assist. They'll jump on screen, do an attack from their moveset, and then jump back out. Sometimes the attack is chosen before the fight like in UMvC3 and Skullgirls, sometimes it's one that's just assigned to the character like in DBFZ, sometimes it's decided by a directional input like in BBCTG. What these games all have in common though is that the character you control can still move and attack while their teammate does an assist. This let's you use assists to help your current character do something, whether it be getting in, locking the opponent down in a blockstring, or what have you. Where this differs from other examples is that that the assist is readily available and easy to use like a snap. You don't need other options in the same mechanic like in Slay the Spire, and you don't need to coordinate with autonomous teammates like in TF2, Overwatch, Apex Legends, whatever. It basically just gives your characters a neat little extra tool that is extremely powerful by it's nature. Where the system really gets interesting is when we look at what moves the assists actually do. You're limited to, at most, 2 assists at a time in the average team fighter because you can only have up to three characters on a team, so you have to make choices about what assists you want based on the synergy they have with each other when they're actually in the forefront. Some assists are great at locking down opponent's like Kid Buu's arm ball in DBFZ or Doctor Strange's Eye of Aggamato in UMvC3, but these assists tend to be useless at long ranges and are usually too slow to be used in combos that well. Some assists are intended to help you control fullscreen space out like Magneto's Electro Magnetic Disruptor or the many Beams in DBFZ, which are useful for getting in or keeping others out. Some have niche fringe uses like Goku Blue's Divekick (which is bad most of the time but on hit grants a sliding knockdown which can be really useful) or Morrigan's Harmonizer (which does no damage but gives you a bit of meter, which can be used on damaging supers attacks or game changing installs once you have enough.) I feel the system falls apart when assists become too useful. For example, Dr. Doom's hidden missles in UMvC3 are a great example. They anti air jumping opponents, they're one of the best combo extenders in the game, they hit people literally anywhere because they home in, and they also force your opponent to block for a while. Certain assists being too good can really overshadow weaker or utility assists. I think a good solution to this problem can be found in Pokken Tournament, in which assist Pokemon each have unique cooldowns for their assists based on their usefulness. Granted, Pokken's assists function nothing like an actual team game's (hence the cooldowns being a bit dramatic even for the "fast" assists) but it's easy to see how it's applicable, balancing out stronger assists by giving them longer periods of downtime, forcing you to use them more sparingly.
True enough, Isaac just has so many and really interesting ways of doing synergies. Tech 1 wrapping around brimstone and increasing it's damage was one of my favorites.
Great video as always Mark! I think one of the reasons that synergies work so well in Slay the Spire is that they're a great First-Order Optimal strategy - they give beginner/intermediate players a great heuristic for deck building. However they'll quickly learn (as I suspect you did with the Time Eater boss) that leaning too heavily on synergies won't give your deck a diverse enough set of tools to best optimise your chance of winning a run. High level players seem much more selective about when to go for synergies than a mere mortal like myself. Instead they focus on having enough block/damage and other tools needed to beat specific elites and bosses.
You should definitely try the old Magic: the Gathering game from Microprose. It has a campaign mode in which you start with a handful of cards and then explore the world, collecting new ones you can add to your deck, slowly crafting It. It Is a '97 game, but it pretty much is slay the spire... Just, not a roguelite.
The mobile game "gumballs and dungeons" is one of my favorite games of all time, it's a sort of roguelike RPG puzzle game which involves combining the powers of various gumballs(heroes if you will), one gumball that is particularly useless on it's own is the exploding pumpkin which explodes when it dies dealing tons of damage to all enemies after which you have the effects of permadeath and have to start the dungeon all over again, but pair the exploding pumpkin with the Reaper gumball which gathers energy from slain enemies to bring himself back from the dead if he dies and now what would be a death turns into a level clear. Plus there's the random items and spell scrolls you collect that keep you trying new things.
I like the video but it wasn't in depth enough for me. What make's synergies fail? How are they balanced? What synergies can enemies employ? How many synergies is too much, if that is such a thing? Perhaps you can come back to this subject in the future after you've delved deeper into it? I'd be very interested to know more. Some examples outside card games would be cool too.
Here's an example of a synergy that an enemy employs: The Gremlin Mob (an elite enemy on the first floor) starts his first turn by giving himself an ability. The ability gives him strength (bonus damage to attacks) every single time the player plays a "skill" card (ie blocks). On its third turn (2nd on higher ascensions, the game's "hardcore" mode of increasing difficulty via modifiers such as "tougher elites") it does a weak attack that also applies a debuff condition, vulnerable. The weak attack is easily blockable, but would increase its strength for the rest of the fight, so it would be advisable to instead tank the hit. The next turn, it does a big attack (~18 damage). However, this damage is multiplied by 1.5x thanks to the vulnerable debuff it applied on the player, so instead it deals 24 damage, roughly 1/3 of the player's starting health. Again, they could block, but remember it has an ability that makes it stronger for every block the player uses, so instead of just 2 more damage per block, it becomes 3 (thanks to vulnerable), and it persists for the rest of the fight (unlike vulnerability, which only lasts ~2 turns). So again, it may be advisable to simply tank the hits and rush it down with attacks instead, in hopes of killing it before it kills you. The player could make the synergy fail in a number of ways. For one, they could avoid playing skills on any turn that isn't the first (before it gains the ability). There is also a system for nullifying debuffs called "artifact", which is essentially debuff armor. There is a relic that makes the player start each combat with one artifact, there is a skill the player can buy in the shop that gives 1 artifact for free when played (2 artifact if upgraded), and there is a potion (one-time use item given as a reward to some combats) that grants 1 artifact. Note that the artifact must be used before the debuff is applied, as it is debuff armor, not debuff removal. There is also a relic that removes all debuffs if the player plays a power (a once/combat ability that persists for the entire combat, such as inflame), a skill (such as a defend), and an attack all in one turn, but note that playing the skill would come at the cost of the Mob gaining strength, likely a worthwhile trade to lose the 1.5x damage taken modifier. To answer your other questions, not all synergies are balanced. For example, dead branch is considered by the fanbase to be pretty broken and an almost guaranteed win, if you know how to take advantage of it. How many is too much? Well, he lost his dead branch run to the time keeper, a final boss that lets you play 12 cards (over as many turns as you'd like), forcibly ends your turn after the 12th card, then resets the counter. If you have too many powers or set up cards to play, he could one-shot you before you even get to block, even if you had energy remaining, due to the hard 12-card rule. For that boss, it's important to keep in mind how many cards you have left, and force-end on your own terms (plan ahead, block early, don't just spam 0-cost shivs that do little damage). Maybe save some powers for later instead of the first 12-card cycle. The game is very difficult, especially on higher ascensions (the max is 20, ie 20 modifiers are added to increase the difficulty over the base game) so every synergy is needed and I would never say there are points where you have "too much." If you have too much setup, you die before you can set it all up, and if you're still fine, runs don't tend to last long enough that you would be able to employ all possible synergies at once, you would simply win the game and the run would be over and thus your deck would be reset. Never at any point do you feel overwhelmed by the very synergies you set up, instead it is exciting and rewarding due to the rarity of such an occurrence.
One of the biggest weakness of synergy is putting up together. In card games, setting up synergy takes time. That's why there're Aggro archetypes to outpace combo/control archetypes. This would also gives the impression that going for the synergy isn't always the best, and they won't always win you the game. But one thing for sure, synergy is fun. ---- That's why going with that second squad in Into the Breach is challenging, but pulling off combos with them is very satisfying.
3:43 This is also a major point of player "fun" with world exploring and porgressing in rpgs. It feels incredibly cool to find a way to shorten your grind in rpgs or "cheese" specific boss. Its fun to "outsmart developer" , and play some parts more effectively, than a regular intended way suggests.
Nope. It's single player and complete. You just need to play for a little while to unlock all 3 characters and a few extra unlockable cards and relics. I highly recommend the game, one of my all time favorites!
This game is absolutely brilliant. I drafted a discard silent deck with a ton of cards that draw, cycle, discard my hand, and attack cards that do massive damage or cost nothing if I've discarded a lot or played a ton of cards in the same turn. Single most satisfying deckbuilding experience I've ever had.
I just finished Octopath Traveler, which has some great synergy within its jobs/combat system. There is a surprising amount of depth involved in mixing and matching skills from different jobs to find powerful combinations. One I’m rather fond of is mixing the warrior’s ability to block attacks against low-HP allies with the dancer’s counterattack ability; you get to keep your weakened teammates alive and you get to strike back at the same time.
I've never looked into this game because I usually don't care about card games, but I love combining effects to be more powerful. It's part of why I find Hollow Knight's charm system so appealing. I might have to try Slay the Spire now.
One synergy I found once, and haven't replicated since, is the Unceasing Top relic and a boatload of 0 cost cards. Absolutely devastating. Until Act III where I got the Time Eater, of course.
Huh, so what I’m hearing is Slay the Spire is to deck-building genre as Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle is to the turn-based combat genre. A simpler, more intuitive, and friendlier introduction to their respective genres.
I wouldn't really say so. Slay the Spire has lots of relics and encounters that make the game more complex than it seems. And also there are harder modes that require more game knowledge from the player. Maybe you thought about deck construction genre rather than deck-building?
Not really. StS is brutally hard and complex, specially when playing on ascencion levels (the game has 21 difficulty settings) and even the lowest one is a struggle to win on at first.
Pokemon does this both offensively and defensively especially in double battles and even in the main story. Everyone struggles with Whitney in gen 2 but you can get dig (which hides you from her rollout for one turn) which stops her rollout and does damage. And in double battles there are endless possibilities with weather, stat boosting, self swagger under misty terrain. Lovely.
"Even my awesome shiv deck was toppled by the time eater boss" That's very likely because you focused your deck too much around a desired synergy (and then came up against a boss that counters that synergy). Focusing on synergies might be fun to you, but its not how you should play slay the spire if you want to win. Anyway I disagree that synergies are the secret to slay the spires fun. If synergies are what you want then normal CCGs are a far better option because in them you have complete control over your deck and you can craft and execute synergies exactly to your likely. By contrast, in slay the spire you are always having to work around repeated rng, and that rng heavy design is very anti-synergy and will often punish players for being too synergy focused. I think it would have been nice if you talked more about the things that make slay the spire different from other CCGs, in addition to talking about the general appeal of synergies.
Almost all games that I have played for over 25+ hours have well thought of synergies.. Classes in Archeage, Builds in GW2 (An example: Necromancer has a trait that makes you stronger for every minion you have and necromancers have an ability that momentarily creates minions for every target you hit), League of Legends (Synergy between champions, not to mention the combinations are never the same every time you play the game), crafting decks in Clash Royale and builds in Spellbreak. IMO this is one of the key factors that can influence replayability when done right!
the heavy isnt actually a good target for pocket medic someone more squishy or medium level like high damage demoman or fast scout would be better though the scout can often handle himself with his own forms of invincibility the heavy already has a big pool of health and sandwich if needed so putting an obvious out in the open medic on such a big target is actually less effecient however cool it may seem
In Fallout 1 unaimed punch or attack with "short" melee weapon costs 3 AP (action points). With AG(agility)>8 character is able to perform max 2 such attacks per turn. Max AG (10) gives 10 AP so it's 3 attacks max. There is a trait called Fast Shot, it reduced cost of attacks by 1AP, at cost of not being able to use aimed attacks. Despite its name it works with melee too (this was sadly fixed in later isometric Fallouts). Now 10 AP character is capable of 5 attacks. Now for the perks:-Bonus HtH Attacks: -1AP cost of melee attacks, now at 1AP/attack we have 10 attacks.-Action Boy: each level gives one additional AP to character, up to 3 levels, so we can get to as high as 13 attacks per turn. In the end attacks/turn were over quadrupled.
@@Silverfirefly1 Good question, I realized I wasn't super specific. I believe at this time, I was interested in designing a turn based RPG where you could combine special attacks. Without the randomness, it's hard to disrupt the players strategies and make them think on the fly, so I was wondering how it would be possible to do this without that, how else you might be able to disrupt a perfect strategy
The first Thing I think of when I hear synergies is the 55HP-Monk from Guild Wars 1 where Players found a Synergy so powerful that the Developers banned the first Players doing it because they couldnt believe that works. Later on they found other, quite more creative, ways around it, but still a nice lesson to learn. Ahh, so much nostalgia :)
Hey Mark, You can get a roguelike deck-building experience out of some of Hearthstone's single player content as well. Several of their newer expansions came with "dungeon runs" where you pick a class with a simple deck, challenging more and more difficult enemies with a selection of random cards to add to your deck after each victory. Every other boss you beat lets you pick one of three powerful cards or passive effects for your deck. And if you lose, you start over and try again. You get new ideas and new combos to try next time. There is another card game (I want to say based on Fable) that has a competitive draft mode, where players build decks in opposition to one another and then their heroes duke it out for the grand finale after four-five turns. You pick the cards in your deck that will appear as random rewards or debuffs to mess with your opponent, but you do not pick the order they appear in. Defeating monsters, including those sent over by your opponent, gets you gold to buy your other cards. It was a novel idea and one I have not seen since then.
Solitarica for iOS does this beautifully. You pick a class, build up powers, plan synergies, and grow ever stronger - all while basically playing Solitaire. As simple as it gets, but boy, is it satisfying.
The problem with most games like this is simply the exploitative nature of the game. Getting the cards required for a cool synergy in Hearthstone, for example, is an amazingly tedious/expensive task, and in the meantime, you've just got brute force and luck to get your through your matches. This makes the game very boring after a short while.
That's true with CCG (collectible card games). Want to make the deck truly how you want it? Pay up. With deck buildings games, all the cards are available, but random or given based on risk/reward. StS does have some unlocking in it, but it's not magic/hearthstone.
Agreed, that's a danger. I'm always wary of such games. Although there are exceptions - the only card game I _actually_ play is Faeria, where the development team has managed to release multiple expansions that enrich the (already complicated) mechanics and offer alternative strategies that "shake the meta" _without_ introducing significant power-creep. Many of the cards in your (very large) starting deck are _still_ some of the strongest of the game, partly due to interactions with newer cards. The fact that it's also played on a "living board", where you _have_ to control both space and tempo, makes the interactions even more interesting. So, what entices the player to get the DLC is not power-creep, but simply unlocking new approaches to the game. Even though I haven't purchased the last two seasons, my carefully-crafted old decks are still competitive. Also it's very easy to unlock the entire deck after you purchase each expansion, only a couple of hours of gameplay. No "gacha" bullshit involved, you get them all. I like this very honest approach - but it might also be the reason the game has a small player base, sadly.
@@FlameHricane without synergistic choices, making the best out of what's given to you is a no-brainer. I imagine this is what smackerlacker meant about brute force and luck making the game boring
Synergy decks are the things that make card games fun for me. Nowadays, it's Slay the Spire and Eternal, which has a few synergies set up for itself. There used to be a game that did this magnificently and pushed it waaaaay further, called HEX: Shards of Fate. It's still up, but the devs haven't been seen in about eight months, so the game is pretty much a write-off at this point, but that game went so far in its synergies that it even designed playable characters with active and passive benefits tailored to a specific playstyle. For example, there was a mechanism called 'Momentum'. A troop with Momentum 1 would get +1/+1 for the rest of the turn if you played a resource, and then the Momentum would tick up, so the next resource would give it +2/+2 for the rest of the turn. There were troops that would trigger Momentum when attacking, other troops that increased the rate at which they accumulated Momentum, troops that could give Momentum to other troops… And then there was the mercenary, the playable character, dedicated to Momentum. Active benefit: For a few charges, you could give Momentum 2 to a target troop. Passive benefit: Whenever a troop with Momentum hit the enemy player, you would create and draw a Lucky Coin. The Lucky Coin was a resource that didn't give you a threshold (Needed to play cards) and it didn't give you an energy point immediately, but it did give you Fateweave, which allowed you to choose between moving a resource card to the top of your deck, or a non-resource card. The result was a playstyle that could very rapidly escalate and push into ridiculous momentum territories, entire fields of troops all getting +5/+5 or more whenever you played a resource, and you always had one on hand due to the passive constantly spawning Lucky Coins. It was fantastic, although only restricted to PvE, but I loved it to bits! Unfortunately, the dev team made some horrible decisions and tried to push too much on PvP which led to some consecutive flops and now the game is quietly awaiting server shutdown. RIP HEX. Best card-game I ever played.
It's interesting that you talk about the fact that the randomness make the game more interesting (and less overwhelming) than if you were able to create your perfect deck from a pool of all the cards, because it's pretty similar to the "draft mode" that most card game have. It show you a limited amound of card that you gotta pick to build your deck, which prevent you from building a too "perfect" deck, that you usually see in a competitive environnement. I'm pretty sure that these mode inspired in some way Slay the spire, given how the appeal of both seems so similar. After all, draft mode of "normal" cards game are pretty much rogue lite, were you start each run from scratch, and have to make the best out of whatever random card you get. It kinda make me want to try slay the spire, since draft mode have an entry fee in most other card game, while you'll be able to start a new run for free whenever you want in slay the spire.
One synergy I'm fond of is in Downwell, the roguelike shmup. Shotgun's a really powerful gun, but you only get two shots. But if you have the upgrade that refills you ammo when you collect gems, shotgun becomes something you can use constantly, *especially* if you pair "gems refills ammo" with the ability that sucks in nearby gems so you don't have to go out of your way to collect them. Runs in Downwell where you can manage to land those three things (or instead of shotgun, laser) end up being really fun-- but of course, you have to get lucky, first!
If you enjoy the synergistic element of Slay the Spire you might be interested that deckbuilding is an entire board game genre based around adapting to what cards are available for you in this particular game, and everyone is playing trying to find the optimal deck with this (usually) random selection of cards. The first of these is the hugely supported game Dominion with variants like Arctic Scavengers, Trains and many more.
Funnily enough, in board game circles "deck building game" no longer refers to something like Magic, but has come to mean a game where you start each game with a very simple deck and add cards to it during play - in other words, the games that Slay The Spire was influenced by. You might enjoy something like Dominion, Ascension, Star Realms or Legendary.
Came here to offer this same recommendation. As a fan of Deck-builders myself, Slay the Spire now has me intrigued.
Century Spice Road is another one. Start with the most simple starter cards and build as you go
I also wanted to mention Dominion, the board game epitome of deck-building.
To add more such board games, I'd mention Thunderstone as well.
I instantly though of these games and how well the deck building genre fits with a roguelike style game.
The creators of slay the spire did a good job of noticing that and creating a good game from it.
Yeah, I couldn't help but think of deckbuilders when I was watching this video as well. Trains is my own personal favourite, but all of those are great suggestions as well.
One think Mark didn’t mention that I think is very important with the per run setup that makes them engaging is the fact that some cards are bad without your synergy. He mentioned Barricade and Entrench but in most circumstances Entrench is not really useful without Barricade or Body Slam and Barricade is rare. So if you lose because you had an expensive Entrench you never used it keeps you engaged because you just wanna try again to try to get the synergy you missed out on last time. And then when you have a card you never use like Rupture but halfway through the game you get Combustion then it feels so much more satisfying than getting them both right away.
That depends on what kind of player you are. Some might have a bad experience with one card and so henceforth they ban that card from daring graze their deck like some kind of egg head.
I personally just got annoyed that my build was scuppered due to random luck, and wasted the last half hour of my life.
After that happened a couple times, and after I realized that your deck was going to be bloated with a load of chaff throughout the whole game, I basically lost all interest in the game.
@@Healermain15 That's not necessarily true, though. I just finished a run yesterday with The Defect which relied on a small deck with lots of claw attacks and ways to fish those claw attacks out of my discard pile, or to replicate them. As soon as I realized that was where my deck was going, I immediately plotted courses that had large amounts of events, shops, and bonfires in them. Avoiding monster combat meant that very few cards were added to my deck, the item shop allowed me to remove chaff when I had the money, and a fair amount of events allow you to remove or transform cards. By the end my deck only had 26 cards, and most of the ones that weren't synergistic allowed me to draw more cards, thus ignoring them. It was really fun to play.
@@PedricCuf one of the best cards on the card select screen is Skip
@@TheDominicProject ... I'm on Ascension level 7, and in all that time I never knew you could do that. That's incredibly helpful. Thank you!
One interesting idea that I'm surprised wasn't mentioned was the idea of anti-synergies, things which combine together in ways that are worse than the sum of their parts, and how they can occur from a number of different reasons, from pieces of two different strategies which don't mesh together, to developer oversight, to an intentional addition to balance powerful effects.
I've never played a game like that (unless it just went over my head), can you give an example? That sounds really interesting.
@@crimsoncat8244 I can think of a few anti-synergies within Slay the Spire. In this video, Mark showed a card called "Anger", which was a 0 cost attack card that's fairly low damage, but when you play it, two copies of it go into your discard pile. The idea being that when your deck is reshuffled you'll have more copies of the card with which to deal more damage for no energy cost with. Snecko Eye is a relic that causes you to draw two more cards per turn, but also randomizes the cost of cards when they are drawn to between 0 and 3. The randomized cost and extra card draw is very good for drawing and playing high-impact cards that often will cost less energy than normal, but in the case of Anger, not only does it lose its main advantage of costing no energy, but it also multiplies whenever you play it, making you draw it more often instead of something that works better with Snecko Eye.
@@crimsoncat8244 binding of isaac is one. There are certain items that just destroy everything like moms knife
@@crimsoncat8244 counter synergy is where one effect dampens another is how I like to think of it. For example rampage is a card that increases it's own damage when it is played for the rest of combat. So rampage may not directly be affected by the twin strike you are adding to your deck but, the thicker you make your deck the less often rampage will come up making it worse then it otherwise would have been.
@@crimsoncat8244 ironically one of the very few countersynergistic relic combinations in slay the spire was mentioned in this video: runic pyramid and dead branch. the dead branch fills up your hand with crap and pyramid prevents you from discarding it
That shiv deck seems amazing. The time keeper guy is the perfect final boss to defeat it too because of the twelve card thing. What a game…
And that's also great design - the game typically tries to give you a final boss that coutners your deck a bit, so you have Act 3 to redesign to fight them.
The game accounts for that??? Ugh so mean hahaha
@@tychoclavius4818 the real end boss is what's mean 😅
@@iamyoursaviour A quick google search says that the bosses are chosen at random, not based on your build.
@@georgiestuff And they also punish shiv spamming)
Glad to see you're as impressed with Slay the Spire's design as I am. Can't wait for this game to come to the Switch.
My thinking exactly. I became obsessive about Hearthstone in its first couple of years (dumping a couple hundred dollars into the game in the process), but I now realize the only part of the game I really enjoyed were the synergies. I didn't care about the ladder or the competitive aspect, I didn't care about having a "complete collection", I didn't care about lore, and to be perfectly honest I didn't even really care that much about winning. I just wanted to pull off satisfying combos. In the end I became super burnt out with Hearthstone because it's a very expensive Sisyphus quest. I'm burnt out with rogue likes as well, but I'm curious about Slay The Spire because it might scratch that Hearthstone itch in a much healthier way.
It came, and it is glorious.
That wait is over.
WISHLISTED!
@Rana Dungeon Tales is the closest so far, I guess?
The genious simplty and ease of access is what makes Slay the Spire so good. It has proper depth to be studied, but unlike many card games, it does not overwhelm you at the beginning. And the replayability is well crafted. Random generated path to glory combined with deck building where you are not given many options at a time. As the video said, there is something addictive in trying to chase the best deck.
Man this takes me back to my old Magic The Gathering days. Just the endless possibilities of *how* you can pair certain cards is almost more thrilling than actually playing a game. It's so fun to see just exactly how you can "exploit" the cards available to your advantage, but boy, I can't imagine being a developer trying to keep any cards/card combos from being "broken" or wayyyy to powerful to keep things interesting. Never played slay the spire, but I can't help but wonder what cards *didn't* make it into the game for that exact reason.
Another fun thing about Slay the Spire, is because its single player only, a OP strategy can't really break the game too badly :)
Yeah it was in early access for a while for that exact reason. They did an excellent job with the balance. There certainly are broken combos but there's basically no "guaranteed wins". Card Corruption (skills cost 0 and exhaust) and the relic Dead Branch (exhausted cards are replaced with a random card) is the easiest of the broken combos but it still takes some thought in deck construction to make it work (at higher difficulties at least)
@@stevebob240 Dead Branch is just kinda broken for a lot of builds :)
One of my favorite video game channels commenting on my other favourite video game channel? Yippee
Totally agree with the first point. To be honest I usually don't play MTG and other similar games hoping to win. For me, the objective is just to experience unique things.
Coolest combo I ever assembled was necronomicon, blue candle, rupture, and reaper. Letting me play the necronomicurse for 1 life until I’ve gained enough strength to play my reaper for lethal and regain all my spent life back.
Awesome video again, they're just so interesting and fill my head with game ideas every time :) ! And yeah, Slay the Spire gave me the same joyful thrills, I've also poured 50 hours of my time into this amazing game. Hearthstone too a few years back ^^
Blackthornprod card game tutorial
(just kidding)
@@acherowyo7555 I mean, he did Spelunky cave generator, so maybe StS map generator or card system? Lol
I've played over 250 hours of slay the spire and I still stumble into strategies I've never had before. For instance, nightmare + ritual dagger is insanity. Basically, the game buffs the ritual dagger in your deck whenever one of the copies is used as well. So you end up scaling it 4x faster then normal. I think it ended up being like 130ish damage for 1mana. And I could clone it with nightmare still. Tons of fun even if I've finally stopped playing it frequently.
I think the real strength of Slay the Spire is "play with the cards you are dealt". Even if you make a strategy you will likely have to change it slightly later or go into another direction because of the cards that are presented to you. The beauty is about adapting your deck to the new cards you slowly get.
Not really. That's how you end up with a mishmash.
I've been a fan of Slay the Spire for almost a year now and was kinda bummed out that you didn't talk about it in your roguelike video.
But now I see that it's gotten an 89 on metacritic and you are dedicating a video to it as well. It's such a good game. And I lost so much time in it.
It takes the roguelike idea of permadeath and turns it into a strength.
With most decks you simply don't want to be playing them for more than one run, so in a sense the permadeath isn't a drawback it's a feature.
And reloading bad saves just doesn't make much sense when you can't predict what the next enemies will be in the next encounter.
It's actually one of the few instances where it's combining different genres and patching them together really well.
Not "lost"! You have grown as a tactician, as a warrior and as a person in that time!
Seems like you would enjoy deck building games, as in, games where building a deck is done through play. Shadowrun Crossfire, Eminent Domain and Dominion, the granddaddy of them all.
The mechanics are mostly like Slay the Spire but usually there's an open market for cards that players dispute over, becoming partly about blocking synergies and partly about though on the spot decisions for your deck.
Boardgames need to be super transparent with their mechanics, so i think that leads to a super interesting school of design.
Ascension is also a great example.
@@Necroskull388 Love me some ascension. It's on my phone now so there's no where I can't deck build.
Star Realms is another fun one.
@@Necroskull388 I can't believe I forgot Ascension! Used to play it a lot on my phone, super great game.
Just what I was thinking. Coming from the board game scene, I'll confess a lot of the points in this video felt a little trivial. Love Mark's deliberate writing and production, but I couldn't help but feel like he failed to see a whole world of analogue games out there that have been doing this for years.
I've been playing Hades and I love getting a good synergy going. Aspect of Hera combined with Zeus' chain lightning can effectively turn a single arrow into a screen nuke.
Aspect of Hera with Zeus chain lightning sounds like terrible synergy
@@porpoise8160cheer up grumpy
4:40
That's not a 10x10 calculation...
It's 45 options for different pairs (90 if the order within the pair matters), and if you decide to count all possible combinations (triplets etc.) then it goes over 100
It is 100 if order within the pair matters
@@ZygfrydJelenieRogi No, it's 90...
No but it’s a card game. Cards are not unique. You can follow a card with another copy of the same card. So it is 10x10.
@@ckannan90 I'm sorry pal, but that's COMPLETELY wrong. Of course you can follow-up with the same card, but if you have a set of 10 cards that aren't all unique but some repeat themselves, then it decreases the amount of combinations, because some of these combinations are the same so there's no point in counting them as "another strategy". For example a set of 10 cards that has 2 same-cards can produce only 37 unique pair-combinations.
In short, your idea can only ever decrease the amount of combinations, and has no mathematical connection to "10x10" formula as you suggest.
It's really is 45. I had to think about it for a while but let me try to explain it.
Let's say we have cards A-J. The first card, A, can be used with the others to create 9 unique pairs. AB, AC, AD, AE, AF, AG, AH, AI, and AJ.
Moving on to the second card, it can now be used to create 8 unique pairs. It isn't 9 again because the AB combination has already been used, so B can be combined with the other cards to form the unique pairs: BC, BD, BE, BF, BG, BH, BI, and BJ.
Now moving on the the third card: C. It can be used to make 7 unique pairs, again, not 9 or 8 because the pairs AC and BC have already been created. With C we can create CD, CE, CF, CG, CH, CI, CJ.
This continues down the chain with each new card able to make 1 less unique pair than the card before it until the only pair not yet created is IJ.
9+8+7+6+5+4+3+2+1 = 45.
There’s a board game called Dominion that’s based on something similar to the card system you showed in Slay the Spire. You start out with a small and ineffective deck and a shop with money, victory points, and 10 action cards that rotate out each game. In order to get the most victory points before the end of the game, you’ve got to build a deck that exploits synergies from the action cards most effectively. Because you choose which action cards are in the shop before you start, each game feels different. But the synergies can still be really powerful if you pick up the right cards at the right time. There have been games where I have used every single card in my deck in a single turn thanks to synergies.
Dominion is actually one of the first deckbuilding games, and it became pretty popular among boardgamers.
Apparently the slay the spire devs deliberately wanted to make a game like Dominion. According to the Wikipedia
Slay The Spire is like if Dominion or Ascension had a baby with a Rogue Like video game. All the same type of strategies and knowledge applies. There's even abilities that enemies use that are essentially curses. If you have any love for Dominion Slay The Spire is worth buying.
Listening to your description of synergies has reminded me of another wonderful rogue-lite game called Heat Signature. This game has a lot of intricate links between its mechanics and I love it for it. The game presents you with a set of tools that could be combined in a creative way and it doesn't tell you how to combine those. You can play for a long time without discovering those, but part of the game experience is the joy of discovery - finding those mechanics that connect and work together perfectly, like swapper teleporter and bouncing your melee weapon off the wall towards yourself before the act of teleportation. I love this game a lot and could describe more, but discovering those synergies is part of the joy I wish for everyone to experience for themselves.
When I discovered Magic's 20 thousand deep card pool, my young mind exploded into a billion pieces each of which started trying to find cool synergies to build decks around
Mark, I think you will really enjoy the "limited" mode of card games. You're not faced with making a deck from a selection of literally thousands of cards. Instead, depending on the game, you're given a much smaller collection of cards to choose from. In hearthstone, this is from a choice of 3 cards thirty times. In Magic, you whittle down your choices from an original pool of 15 cards, that is, the next pick will give you a selection of 14 cards, and the next will give you a selection of 13 cards and so on until you have made 45 picks to craft your deck from (you go through three 15-card booster packs to make your deck). If you found slay the spire enjoyable, I think trying out some of these limited modes will be right up your alley.
Yeah, definitely worth checking out arena mode on hearthstone or draft on MtGA.
The newest Ravnica Mtg expansions are a masterclass on synergies, each being about five guilds that have their own strategies, but each combination of "friend" guilds (guilds that share colors) having their own in-between synergies.
Nah, I hate deckbuilding too, Limited has the same problem. Just netdeck c:
five guilds per set actually
@@naverdadendada
@@Hamhamsnoozer how does limited have the same problem? You only have a very small amount of cards to choose from every time. Obviously knowing what cards you can get later is important but if you think that's overwhelming, same can be said about slay the spire. Amount of cards, relics and events is massive in this game and having knowledge of what you could possible encounter helps greatly
@@JM-nothing-more Yeah, reading it again I have no idea why I wrote that. Edited it
The addition of roguelike permadeath to card games has made me finally love them. Inscryption and Slay the Spire were so much fun because building a deck just kind of happened as you played.
I have played a game before called "night of the full moon", a free-to-play roguelike deck-builder. In it I once found a synergy so powerful that it lagged my phone. Yes, a deckbuilder lagged my phone.
Here's how the synergy was:
In the game, the most common type of card (attack) costs no action (energy) so you can play your entire hand (usually) every turn. However, you can keep some amount of cards to next turn so that's not always the best idea.
Card 1: Support
Attack card that deals 1 damage and draws a card. Auto-drawn when you play an attack card.
Card 2: Shaky
a 1-action exhaust card that adds 4 exhausting copies of a card to your draw pile.
So this meant that with enough shaky cards, I could basically draw 12 cards for free; making me draw my entire hand in a single turn. There's also no hand limit so
Imagine if Paper Mario Sticker Star/Color Splash took the Slay the Spire approach to combat...
*It almost makes me wanna cry...*
Honestly I don't think it would work. Since paper Mario isn't a rogue like
@@Nuclearburrit0 Nah it would work. You don't have to be a rogue like to have deck buildings mechanic you just need to put restrictions on how "cards" are obtained and how they are used. (for example having them to be only one time use (wich is already the case in sticker star) and giving you only very specific ways of getting them instead of letting you farm them) I don't know if it would have made Sticker star or the new format of paper mario games better but the bar is already so low that i wouldn't mind it. Plus it would make a way better puzzle feel (which is what those game aim to be rather than traditionnal RPGs like previous ones) than "use this specific item on this boss or overpower him with rare items (which aren't that rare and can be farmed easily)".
@@Izhuark well yeah but at that point it's just magic the gathering.
Slay the spire in particular wouldn't work as is outside of its genre without very huge changes in both how cards are collected, how the deck is edited, what relics exist and what they do ect ect ect
@@Nuclearburrit0 Well that specifically what game design is for. Of course you wouldn't put the system as it is but it doesn't mean a tweaked version geared toward a more puzzle-rpg experience would not work. (And it would still be pretty different from mtg or even the Shandalar mtg game.)
@@Izhuark I think Baten Kaitos is a good example of how a long winded RPG with a deck system works, and works well.
NOW I got why this (and why some RPGs) are so addicting, because of when you figure out the "synergy".
Thanks Mark!
Since you mentioned Magic: I remember playing a tournament format called "booster draft" as a kid, where essentially everyone would open a bunch of booster packs with random cards and had to build their decks on the spot using those. Fun stuff.
Me: Just bought slay the spire and won my first few runs
Mark: Miraculously knows exactly what games I'm playing and makes a beautiful video talking about everything I love in them
Me: Not even mad about the possible invasion of privacy just happy for more content
The higher difficulties are much harder :)
@@rowanunderwood Indeed! I'm trying mostly with the defect (love the deck synergies) and I' struggling just a bit to get past the second floor. Still fun though haha
Hey Mark, if you’re on the topic of synergies, I think that The Binding of Issac: Afterbirth+ would be a great game to analyze, just for its alternative method of presenting synergies to the player. There are some synergies that allow you to power up, (Guppy, Leviathan, Mom, etc.) but there are also undeclared synergies, things that just...work for whatever reason, whether it be good or bad. I think it would be a super interesting video for everyone.
Thank you , thats all i could thunk about this entire video, and isaac really adds to the whole not every synergy is good, there are a ton “GFYS” moments in that game that make it all the better when you get stuff that works
Huge props for mentioning Mark Rosewater in your video, I have learned so much on game design from his podcast. He is a wealth of knowledge on the subject and not just focused on CCGs and other card games.
Some other games that really can have some awesome combos like that are the handheld Mega Man RPGs. There are some disgusting combos that you can do, but with how fast combat is, and how few tools you have (you can only have 30 chips/cards) you legitimately have to decide if you have the speed, reaction time, and health to survive another round with the opponent to get to the combo pieces your missing. Some combos are so insane they can basically destroy super bosses in one round, but they require such perfect setups, that unless your either a master player, or incredibly lucky, you are almost guaranteed to have an insane dance of death on your hands.
The Megaman Battle Network games gave me this sense of synergy. I remember playing the first few games just trying to get chips with the most powerful damage outputs, before finally realizing that I can create epic combos based on the types of chips I put into my folder.
Cool video as usual. Personally though, I just can't get into card/deck building games for some reason.
Please give this one a go! I never thought I'd care about a card game, either - but it's very approachable. It does to card games what Into the Breach does to turn-based tactics.
I also never really got into these kinda game (other better players!), but this is reeeeeeeeeally fun. Do what the thing Mark just said, like I did!
I couldn't stop playing Gwent, even though I'm not much of a deck building gamer. I guess this game really has potential!
May I give a recommendation of keyforge. It is a card game with no deck building because each deck is bought in a pack and randomly generated. Note that it's not totally random to make sure some synergies don't spiral out of control and there are chains to limit the strength of powerful decks. I can't explain all the about how they make all decks equal and you may have to look some of this up, but I can tell you that when I look at a deck, I always find a strategy. Sometimes I find this strategy mid-game and that realization make me feel overwhelmingly smart and powerful.
@@GMTK Thanks for replying Mark, I think I will give it a shot
On the Synergistic aspect, thats what makes Job Systems in Final Fantasy so engaging, its not just the sheer potency of a single skillset(though those can be quite powerful) but also the ways you can combine and synergize those with previously trained Job's abilities, and the Jobs and Abilities of the rest of the party
HMMMMMMMMMMM.... will this be the theme of the next jam? 🤔
Yooo that'd be sick!
@@kitthekat6844 I know, right? Last year he talked about Snake Pass, the year before, Downwell. I think this will be the theme!
This is an interesting theme, but I'd say we should just keep it in our radar as things go on.
Mark did focus them on particular game associated episodes, but there might be other down the road with more spice, interesting and trickier themes.
@@gustavowadaslopes2479 True. He probably doesn't want it to be too obvious
@@AntiqueGear Yeah.
The Snake pass theme last year probably surprised everyone. Very quirky.
Magicmaker is a game built around you constructing particularly overpowered spells out of various materials, and some materials happen to have extremely powerful synergies. For example, you can combine the material that adds a trail of stationary bullets to your spells with the material that adds homing to make a spell that generates a constant trail of homing projectiles, while it itself homes in on enemies. I also constructed a huge bomb that combines the material that adds power at the cost of making the projectile start slow and ramp up in speed, with the material that makes your projectile split after it travels for a set period of time.
I saw a thread on the forums with people posting their game-breaking combinations, and maybe even expressed some concerns that the dev just threw stuff together and their were a ton of balance issues. After a while, the developer came on and said that virtually everything was intentional, and these synergies are the entire point of the game. It's basically a more balanced game elevated to an illogical extreme, and it's loads of fun. This video reminded me of that thread!
The idea of wanting to remove or pass on cards is actually pretty much a no brainier if you have any card game experience; in pretty much every card game you want to have as small a deck as possible (this is why most card games have relatively high minimum deck size requirements) so you are as consistently as possible drawing not just synergistic cards but simply the strongest cards from your deck. I actually think it's much more interesting when a card games gives you a reason to break this trend. For example I believe in Valve's artifact there are some decks that are built around very high mana cost cards so some people will add a few extra cheaper cards to smooth out the mana curve and avoid ending up with an early game hand that's full of cards they can't use.
There's a yugioh format called Trinity which plays with 30 card highlander decks (every card at 1), but in which you can add additional copies of one card by adding four more unique cards alongside it. So by making your deck bigger you actually become more likely to draw that one card.
While this is true, in Slay the Spire having a small deck means having less options and being more vulnerable to aiments cards being added to your deck by your opponents.
Also, having a big deck mean you can put in more powers card to eventually buff you out for the rest of the fight while still having a low risk of drawing them all at the same time.
But to make a bigger deck work, you need to make sure to have enough draw power and cards that do several things at once.
Mewseeker This is exactly what Jamie was talking about, a reason to break the deckbuilding "rule!" Cool!
@@Mewseeker
That's specifically why I gravitate towards Power decks when possible. You have the advantage of having a decently large deck, but the cards you play won't be drawn again, and they give you their benefit each turn, so you're likely to draw the skill or attack cards that synergize with your Powers later in the combat.
Or maybe card games can set the rule that if you run out of cards you automatically lose, which could put endurance into play.
Mark, if you ever want to get in popular card games (in this example: Magic), try draft. You open a brand new booster packs, take one card, pass on the rest and take another card from the pile you just got. You do this process for 3 boosters until all cards are gone. This format hits on most of the things you mentioned in this video. You always start with a different card pool each time you draft, you slowly build synergistic decks as new cards come into your posession and you dont get overwhelmed by the amount of cards. I would describe limited formats as the rougelikes of paper card games
You should check out the game Dominion. It's pretty much the progenitor of deckbuilding games like Slay the Spire - that is, games where you build a deck during the course of gameplay. In fact Slay the Spire is one of the closest deckbuilders to Dominion in terms of pacing, card power, and how it uses action points. In Dominion it might even be more necessary to remove cards from your deck than in StS.
Jumping back to Mark Rosewater, his/Wizards of the Coat's player psychographics note a player archetype, Jenny/Johnny, who are described as treating games like a puzzle to be solved. They like finding new rules or game piece interactions and like the mad-scienctist feeling when they work out. Slay the Spire definitely caters to that psychographic well.
I think part of why this concept is so prevalent in tabletop games is because it's typically harder to hide content to keep as a surprise later in the game (except for the modern concept of Legacy games and tabletop rpg), so most surprises are baked into emergent gameplay experiences.One example is finding synergies.
Apparently the Slay The Spire devs deliberately wanted to make a game very much like Dominion, so you're completely right
@@duffman18 Yeah when I first played Slay the Spire it immediately caught me. Dominion's one of my favorite games and I kinda dislike how many deckbuilders intentionally push away from some of Dominion's ideas.
As the Defect chaining Storm(s) and any number of other powers together is so hilariously ridiculous that if I get the chance I try to go with it pretty much every time.
The phone game Night Of The Full Moon is absolutely chock full of this
I can recommend that game as well. The story might seem a bit awkward to some but the gameplay is great. The developers openly admit that they were heavily inspired by Slay the Spire and it shows, with ridiculous synergies and some bosses that can still lead to a sudden death if you start playing too sloppy. I had a lot of fun with it when I was hospitalised for a week, time really flew.
Somebody talking about this game! It's such a cool game!
About synergies.. there's a build in Dungeon Defenders II called Frostfire Combo, which consists of 2 effects that trigger each other, as well as a few other effects that you can add into it. With constant flow of enemies, this can completely stop and, with time, annihilate huge groups of enemies as long as new ones keep coming.
My favourite addition to that is 3 effects: drenching enemies, freezing drenched enemies and flinging them into air; when crushing into the ground the ice is broken dealing a lot of damage.
9:39 hearthstone has “dungeon runs” that work almost exactly like slay the spire, you should really try those if you find the deck building part daunting!
I think it's also worth pointing out that even though this is a rouguelike, it does progression very well. When you die, you don't unlock anything new (except for possibly more relics that can randomly drop), but when you win, you unlock a harder level. And importantly, there's a finite number of these difficulty levels (20) so when you win you feel like you're progressing towards the end of the game.
3 years late but synergies make any game more fun imo.
Reminds me a lot of a board game my family and I used to play called Small World. You have synergy between race and power such as Amazons + Commando which can be really good. A synergy between race and terrain such as humans getting more points on farmland. And synergy between current race and prior race as you discard races and pick new ones through the game, so you can, for example, have humans tucked away in a farmland heavy region of the map barricaded by your discarded troll race around it and just amass a lot of points.
Races are "randomly" paired with powers and there are many races cycling through, that and the fact that you go through 2-3 races a game (and so does everyone else) means you never have the same setup so you can't bank on optimal strategies, you have to think about it every time.
There's also the fact that Races can be better or worse depending on the current state of the map, for example, sorcerers can completely decimate an amazon population as they are typically very spread out and relatively unguarded, but can be completely useless in other playthroughs.
Through playing it a lot there have been a lot of combinations that sounded not so good but turned out really good. And all around a lot of interesting strategies that came out just by playing with the same ppl every time.
It's a cool game.
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Esports legend Northern?
missing tinted rocks as always.
LETS GO
This brings me back to you mentioning roguelikes - for me, the most crucial aspect of those is the controlled randomness - you are offered a random selection of choices but you can't take them all due to limited resources, so you need to spot those synergies.
This video touched on something that I’ve been trying to be able to explain for awhile to my friends every time I’ve talked about Borderlands 2.
I’ve been trying to explain why I played that game for as long as I did because of the different builds you could make but I can’t believe I didn’t think to also mention the “synergies” between the gear you obtained the abilities of each character in Borderlands 2.
I LOVED that game. I suppose I could say the combinations and synergies between gear and abilities did make me feel smart though sometimes the builds weren’t always optimal or the meta. They were just fun to play with as well as fun to have noticed the connection between.
For example, Krieg is a badass psycho who’s ability is to wield a “buzz saw axe” as a weapon and his blue middle tree has a plethora of abilities to suit that. But one build I particularly recall using is one that involved the rough rider shield that you get in hammerlocks dlc(not a dlc every player liked but still) the shield wasn’t legendary but it was a blue quality shield with flavor text. Meaning it was special. It’s shtick was that it had no shield. It was always depleted but gave health and some damage resistance. This was otherwise not a very useful shield if you didn’t build around it. But with krieg it worked. He has an ability where when his shield is depleted he does more melee damage and with all his other abilities that you could spec into made him fun as hell. It’s already crazy enough to wear a shield that lacked any shield but kreig is a crazy character with crazy abilities(in different senses of the word).
I can only hope borderlands 3 has the same forethought as Borderlands 2. As the Pre-sequel lacked any new gear to play with even if you had new characters with different abilities so it got less play time from me because of that.
His name is Krieg not Kreig
froschkoenig4 really? After all that your focus was on a misspelling of a name?
@@philsoldierX78 yep, because i don't really have anything else to say on your comment.
This is one of the most beautifully edited videos I’ve seen in a long time, great work!
I appreciate the alliteration in that title.
reminds me of my English finals
All throughout watching this video, i was assuming different aspects to the design and it felt great to finally get some things right. Thanks for making these videos to help me get better at game analysis
EY, I"m really happy to see this game get recognition left and right.
oh man, that old steam UI brings back the nostalgia.
Would’ve loved to see some analysis of The Binding of Isaac here, beyond just some footage as an example of a roguelike! The synergies of the hundreds of items are always changing up in new interesting ways, and it’s what drives me to keep starting another run.
Still though, I get that’s somewhat different from the deck building theme you were going with, and I loved the video as is!
This video is so well made it made me understand some of of the design choices in games like Divinity: Original Sin 2 and Borderlands 2, and especially their progression system. As you say, some of the benefits from Slay the Spire come from it's Rogue-like structure, which these two other games don't have, so they used other tricks to help the player getting into theorycraft, basically.
To avoid overwhelming the player with a huge amount of skills, passives and other effects, they withdraw a lot of their potential to let you play with simple stuff.
In Divinity, you only start with three spells that can somewhat synergize a little bit and you get teased other spells on your journey before you can get them. You get new spells with money, fights and exploration which basically all depend on your level and experience with and within the game.
In Borderlands, you get your special ability at level 5 only and you get to spend skill points further down the line when you gain some levels and experience as a Vault Hunter but as a player too. You can still read the abilities you'll get in 5, 10 or 20 levels, but you don't have to make your decision yet and can continue with your life at level 5.
The thing is, the game doesn't tell you you'll be able to reset your points until later in the game, after a few hours. So you're careful about the points you use, but of course as a first time player you'll make some mistakes. For the first few hours, you'll have to deal with your choices, which is an important lesson especially in Divinity.
After a few hours though, you can reset your points and rebuild all you want for free (or almost). At this point you already know how the game's main mechanics works and you will probably stick with a build for some time instead of changing it at every small difficulty spike.
Interestingly enough, you can change your a lot of your skills without changing your weapons and armor. In Divinity, a Monstruous Explosive Pyrokinetic Flame Bending Mage will probably use the same stuff as a Super Duper Electrical Pikachu Storm Master, or close enough anyway. Same thing in Borderlands really. If you don't go 180 degrees with your build, you only need to change (some of) your skills and you'll do good enough to continue your adventure, so there's little cost to it. You'll get better gear soon anyway and you only care about your weapons when you're min-maxing the game, which only happens when you already embraced all of the game's mechanics, so quite late that is.
Anyway, in those two non-Rogue-like games, you can still get the same feeling of power coming from synergies without being overwhelmed as a new player, and I think this is quite neat and it's thanks to this video.
Which is amazing.
Again, another amazing video.
Put a heart, Mark.
I said it was a good video.
Put it.
Now.
It's fine, you can put it later.
Just after I hit "comment" because I still haven't.
The per battle strategy sounded a lot like pokemon where we to set up traps and poison the enemies Pokemons to win in an effective way.
stealth rocks + volt switch + u-turn
@@BlueyMcPhluey a nightmare if it happens in you. Also a nice combination is toxic +hex.
Stealth Rocks + Roar/Whirlwind.
@@Mordalon Or just use your most powerful attack and pray they don't have EV/IV trained their mons like crazy.
I have tricks even better than those ones. You can do crazier stuff in a Double Battle, and you can safely pull off way crazy stuff in a Triple Battle (how would you like a Mega Rayquaza with +1 in Attack and Speed and whose current Ability is Contrary using Dragon Ascent from the corner of the field?).
MMO CRPG Guild Wars was doing this back in 2005. Each character has access to two classes and 300+ skills among 7-9 attributes, but you can only equip 8 skills at a time. This requires you to think about skill synergies not only within your own character, but with your teammates as well.
I think some good synergistic games are Invisible Inc. and Transistor!
Speaking of synergies, one thing that comes to mind is the Megaman Battle Network series. The game is a deck builder, so certain chip combos can do massive damage, but there's also built-in synergies in the form of Program Advances. If the RNG puts three specific chips in your hand at the start of a turn and you play them all at once, they turn into a super move that deals massive damage and can have other esoteric effects. And I think that these built in synergies help point the player towards making their own synergies with unrelated chips as well. Sure, this combo has a flashy animation and whatnot, but other chip combos can have similar effects, if only the player notices how the system works and all the elements play into each other.
Great, another game I feel the need to get thanks to you. Thank god it still isn't out on the Switch cause I shouldn't be spending more money on games lmao.
There's another synergy (other than between cards) that makes StS amazing: the synergy between deckbuilding and roguelike genres, where both involve you building a kit and gain (temporary) power as you progress your playthrough, while also complementig each other's weaknesses(replacing monotonous gameplay loop with variative card battle, making overpowered synergies as 'disposable' as quick losses, etc)
I was there when you were streaming the making of this video
I did find that thrill for synergy in another way: in Monster Hunter games, where you can either wear complete sets of armor or combine them for even stronger sets that suit your playstyle or are suited to your weapon or even to the monster you want to fight. It´s always a challenge to find and actually pick out the pieces of gear that would fit together perfectly and then also considering the decorations you can put in, given you have free choice of both, which is not always the case. You are forced to deal with what you have at hand at all times so you will do it again and again coming up with even better sets every time. This results in sweet satisfaction when you can come up with something that has (almost) all the skills you wanted/needed(and you look dumb because none of the pieces fit together in terms of style ).Of course you can look up builds on the internet but i see that as a source of inspiration and ideas for myself.
I´d love to see you taking an insight in Monster Hunter: World too(specifically, but the whole series would be even better).How it handles loot, getting your gear, progressing the story and all the eventquests und straight up awesome collaborations like the one with CD Project Red´s The witcher 3 (just so fucking awesome).
I love your videos man, keep it up.
Loving synergy based game design, this got me deeply interested in StS
I know this probably isn't anyone's favorite example, but it's the one I'm most familiar with: the "mini-games" in Cookie Clicker.
A while back, Orteil started adding in an assortment of more user-driven progression systems into his endearing little skinner box, and the ways these play around with each other and appeal to different play styles is actually really interesting.
Generally, he's found that there's two primary kinds of player - "idle" and "active" - and goes into designing these systems with pros and cons for both in mind. So, for example, the Temples' mini-game, the Pantheon, is simply a place where you can establish a trio of gods that people under your glorious cookie empire worship, with the strength of the effects varying based on how far up the chain you place any given deity. One deity boosts click power at the expense of your buildings' potency, while another will drastically increase your CPS but will deslot itself and spend all of your allotted energy for god-assigning if you ever click one of the buff-granting Golden Cookies that active players basically need to survive.
The other two games presently implemented are the Spellbook - a recharging mana pool that lets you cast your own buffs periodically with the potential for spells backfiring that forces you to consider how you may be effected by a spell going wrong - and the Garden, a plot of land that has you trying to breed plants to create new species that have varying effects for the extent of their lifespan. Late-game players have taken to the Garden a lot, with varying synergies being the focus to start breaking through Cookie Clicker's inherent ceiling of meaningful progress that vary from playstyle to playstyle, and new styles have emerged from it, with some players finding it best to passively grow plants that can give stellar rewards with just the right combination of buffs, which in turn means plants that increase Golden Cookie frequency play very nicely but take up slots you could be using to grow more of the high-yield specimens in turn. Meanwhile, I'm over here trying to max out the value of individual clicks as much as possible, because I'm a filthy auto-clicker user anyway so I may as well lean into that nonsense, and there's things that very specifically seem to exist for my kind's benefit as well, because Orteil knows, clearly.
The game is casual as hell and nothing overly complicated, but as the author keeps adding these strange little diversions and designing them to play with each other, more and more personalization is cropping up in what otherwise is a pretty passive experience, and I find it pretty interesting.
mfw i find a might be game breaking synergy only to end up seeing "Effect Does Not Stack" at the end of the description.
Another interesting application of this concept is in team based fighting games. With some exceptions (MvCI, KoF, etc) in those, you chose multiple characters to play on one team but only control one at a time unless you tag a character in with a raw tag (an attack that swtiches your controlled character), use a dhc (a mechanic where while using one characters super, you can call in another character to use their super too, and the character you call in is the one who stays in control) or when your current character dies.
But, while a character is "on the bench," you can actually use them to perform an assist. They'll jump on screen, do an attack from their moveset, and then jump back out. Sometimes the attack is chosen before the fight like in UMvC3 and Skullgirls, sometimes it's one that's just assigned to the character like in DBFZ, sometimes it's decided by a directional input like in BBCTG. What these games all have in common though is that the character you control can still move and attack while their teammate does an assist. This let's you use assists to help your current character do something, whether it be getting in, locking the opponent down in a blockstring, or what have you.
Where this differs from other examples is that that the assist is readily available and easy to use like a snap. You don't need other options in the same mechanic like in Slay the Spire, and you don't need to coordinate with autonomous teammates like in TF2, Overwatch, Apex Legends, whatever. It basically just gives your characters a neat little extra tool that is extremely powerful by it's nature.
Where the system really gets interesting is when we look at what moves the assists actually do. You're limited to, at most, 2 assists at a time in the average team fighter because you can only have up to three characters on a team, so you have to make choices about what assists you want based on the synergy they have with each other when they're actually in the forefront. Some assists are great at locking down opponent's like Kid Buu's arm ball in DBFZ or Doctor Strange's Eye of Aggamato in UMvC3, but these assists tend to be useless at long ranges and are usually too slow to be used in combos that well.
Some assists are intended to help you control fullscreen space out like Magneto's Electro Magnetic Disruptor or the many Beams in DBFZ, which are useful for getting in or keeping others out.
Some have niche fringe uses like Goku Blue's Divekick (which is bad most of the time but on hit grants a sliding knockdown which can be really useful) or Morrigan's Harmonizer (which does no damage but gives you a bit of meter, which can be used on damaging supers attacks or game changing installs once you have enough.)
I feel the system falls apart when assists become too useful. For example, Dr. Doom's hidden missles in UMvC3 are a great example. They anti air jumping opponents, they're one of the best combo extenders in the game, they hit people literally anywhere because they home in, and they also force your opponent to block for a while. Certain assists being too good can really overshadow weaker or utility assists.
I think a good solution to this problem can be found in Pokken Tournament, in which assist Pokemon each have unique cooldowns for their assists based on their usefulness. Granted, Pokken's assists function nothing like an actual team game's (hence the cooldowns being a bit dramatic even for the "fast" assists) but it's easy to see how it's applicable, balancing out stronger assists by giving them longer periods of downtime, forcing you to use them more sparingly.
Binding of Isaac is at it's best when you figure out the item synergies too.
It's the same for almost any game with builds involved
True enough, Isaac just has so many and really interesting ways of doing synergies. Tech 1 wrapping around brimstone and increasing it's damage was one of my favorites.
Great video as always Mark! I think one of the reasons that synergies work so well in Slay the Spire is that they're a great First-Order Optimal strategy - they give beginner/intermediate players a great heuristic for deck building. However they'll quickly learn (as I suspect you did with the Time Eater boss) that leaning too heavily on synergies won't give your deck a diverse enough set of tools to best optimise your chance of winning a run. High level players seem much more selective about when to go for synergies than a mere mortal like myself. Instead they focus on having enough block/damage and other tools needed to beat specific elites and bosses.
You should definitely try the old Magic: the Gathering game from Microprose.
It has a campaign mode in which you start with a handful of cards and then explore the world, collecting new ones you can add to your deck, slowly crafting It.
It Is a '97 game, but it pretty much is slay the spire... Just, not a roguelite.
The mobile game "gumballs and dungeons" is one of my favorite games of all time, it's a sort of roguelike RPG puzzle game which involves combining the powers of various gumballs(heroes if you will), one gumball that is particularly useless on it's own is the exploding pumpkin which explodes when it dies dealing tons of damage to all enemies after which you have the effects of permadeath and have to start the dungeon all over again, but pair the exploding pumpkin with the Reaper gumball which gathers energy from slain enemies to bring himself back from the dead if he dies and now what would be a death turns into a level clear. Plus there's the random items and spell scrolls you collect that keep you trying new things.
I like the video but it wasn't in depth enough for me.
What make's synergies fail?
How are they balanced?
What synergies can enemies employ?
How many synergies is too much, if that is such a thing?
Perhaps you can come back to this subject in the future after you've delved deeper into it? I'd be very interested to know more.
Some examples outside card games would be cool too.
Here's an example of a synergy that an enemy employs:
The Gremlin Mob (an elite enemy on the first floor) starts his first turn by giving himself an ability. The ability gives him strength (bonus damage to attacks) every single time the player plays a "skill" card (ie blocks). On its third turn (2nd on higher ascensions, the game's "hardcore" mode of increasing difficulty via modifiers such as "tougher elites") it does a weak attack that also applies a debuff condition, vulnerable. The weak attack is easily blockable, but would increase its strength for the rest of the fight, so it would be advisable to instead tank the hit. The next turn, it does a big attack (~18 damage). However, this damage is multiplied by 1.5x thanks to the vulnerable debuff it applied on the player, so instead it deals 24 damage, roughly 1/3 of the player's starting health. Again, they could block, but remember it has an ability that makes it stronger for every block the player uses, so instead of just 2 more damage per block, it becomes 3 (thanks to vulnerable), and it persists for the rest of the fight (unlike vulnerability, which only lasts ~2 turns). So again, it may be advisable to simply tank the hits and rush it down with attacks instead, in hopes of killing it before it kills you.
The player could make the synergy fail in a number of ways. For one, they could avoid playing skills on any turn that isn't the first (before it gains the ability). There is also a system for nullifying debuffs called "artifact", which is essentially debuff armor. There is a relic that makes the player start each combat with one artifact, there is a skill the player can buy in the shop that gives 1 artifact for free when played (2 artifact if upgraded), and there is a potion (one-time use item given as a reward to some combats) that grants 1 artifact. Note that the artifact must be used before the debuff is applied, as it is debuff armor, not debuff removal. There is also a relic that removes all debuffs if the player plays a power (a once/combat ability that persists for the entire combat, such as inflame), a skill (such as a defend), and an attack all in one turn, but note that playing the skill would come at the cost of the Mob gaining strength, likely a worthwhile trade to lose the 1.5x damage taken modifier.
To answer your other questions, not all synergies are balanced. For example, dead branch is considered by the fanbase to be pretty broken and an almost guaranteed win, if you know how to take advantage of it. How many is too much? Well, he lost his dead branch run to the time keeper, a final boss that lets you play 12 cards (over as many turns as you'd like), forcibly ends your turn after the 12th card, then resets the counter. If you have too many powers or set up cards to play, he could one-shot you before you even get to block, even if you had energy remaining, due to the hard 12-card rule. For that boss, it's important to keep in mind how many cards you have left, and force-end on your own terms (plan ahead, block early, don't just spam 0-cost shivs that do little damage). Maybe save some powers for later instead of the first 12-card cycle. The game is very difficult, especially on higher ascensions (the max is 20, ie 20 modifiers are added to increase the difficulty over the base game) so every synergy is needed and I would never say there are points where you have "too much." If you have too much setup, you die before you can set it all up, and if you're still fine, runs don't tend to last long enough that you would be able to employ all possible synergies at once, you would simply win the game and the run would be over and thus your deck would be reset. Never at any point do you feel overwhelmed by the very synergies you set up, instead it is exciting and rewarding due to the rarity of such an occurrence.
@@tyranitarzone I meant generally not this game specifically.
One of the biggest weakness of synergy is putting up together.
In card games, setting up synergy takes time. That's why there're Aggro archetypes to outpace combo/control archetypes. This would also gives the impression that going for the synergy isn't always the best, and they won't always win you the game.
But one thing for sure, synergy is fun.
----
That's why going with that second squad in Into the Breach is challenging, but pulling off combos with them is very satisfying.
3:43 This is also a major point of player "fun" with world exploring and porgressing in rpgs. It feels incredibly cool to find a way to shorten your grind in rpgs or "cheese" specific boss. Its fun to "outsmart developer" , and play some parts more effectively, than a regular intended way suggests.
So, Slay the Spire doesn't have any micro-transactions, right? You don't have to literally buy cards? If not, then I may just have to pick this up.
Nope. It's single player and complete. You just need to play for a little while to unlock all 3 characters and a few extra unlockable cards and relics. I highly recommend the game, one of my all time favorites!
This game is absolutely brilliant. I drafted a discard silent deck with a ton of cards that draw, cycle, discard my hand, and attack cards that do massive damage or cost nothing if I've discarded a lot or played a ton of cards in the same turn. Single most satisfying deckbuilding experience I've ever had.
The Binding of Isaac has a bunch of synergies as well
Never been into card games. Got his on Switch the other night - got addicted almost immediately.
Oh my god, Magic drafts are multiplayer rougelikes
I just finished Octopath Traveler, which has some great synergy within its jobs/combat system. There is a surprising amount of depth involved in mixing and matching skills from different jobs to find powerful combinations. One I’m rather fond of is mixing the warrior’s ability to block attacks against low-HP allies with the dancer’s counterattack ability; you get to keep your weakened teammates alive and you get to strike back at the same time.
I've never looked into this game because I usually don't care about card games, but I love combining effects to be more powerful. It's part of why I find Hollow Knight's charm system so appealing. I might have to try Slay the Spire now.
One synergy I found once, and haven't replicated since, is the Unceasing Top relic and a boatload of 0 cost cards. Absolutely devastating. Until Act III where I got the Time Eater, of course.
Huh, so what I’m hearing is Slay the Spire is to deck-building genre as Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle is to the turn-based combat genre. A simpler, more intuitive, and friendlier introduction to their respective genres.
I wouldn't really say so. Slay the Spire has lots of relics and encounters that make the game more complex than it seems. And also there are harder modes that require more game knowledge from the player. Maybe you thought about deck construction genre rather than deck-building?
Not really. StS is brutally hard and complex, specially when playing on ascencion levels (the game has 21 difficulty settings) and even the lowest one is a struggle to win on at first.
@@AzureTheSky Ah, I didn't know that. Thanks for the information!
@@lamossus9030 Thanks to you and @Arthur Vincio Bubans, I now know more about the game and its difficulty levels. Thanks for correcting me!
Pokemon does this both offensively and defensively especially in double battles and even in the main story. Everyone struggles with Whitney in gen 2 but you can get dig (which hides you from her rollout for one turn) which stops her rollout and does damage.
And in double battles there are endless possibilities with weather, stat boosting, self swagger under misty terrain. Lovely.
"Even my awesome shiv deck was toppled by the time eater boss"
That's very likely because you focused your deck too much around a desired synergy (and then came up against a boss that counters that synergy). Focusing on synergies might be fun to you, but its not how you should play slay the spire if you want to win.
Anyway I disagree that synergies are the secret to slay the spires fun. If synergies are what you want then normal CCGs are a far better option because in them you have complete control over your deck and you can craft and execute synergies exactly to your likely. By contrast, in slay the spire you are always having to work around repeated rng, and that rng heavy design is very anti-synergy and will often punish players for being too synergy focused.
I think it would have been nice if you talked more about the things that make slay the spire different from other CCGs, in addition to talking about the general appeal of synergies.
Almost all games that I have played for over 25+ hours have well thought of synergies.. Classes in Archeage, Builds in GW2 (An example: Necromancer has a trait that makes you stronger for every minion you have and necromancers have an ability that momentarily creates minions for every target you hit), League of Legends (Synergy between champions, not to mention the combinations are never the same every time you play the game), crafting decks in Clash Royale and builds in Spellbreak. IMO this is one of the key factors that can influence replayability when done right!
the heavy isnt actually a good target for pocket medic someone more squishy or medium level like high damage demoman or fast scout would be better though the scout can often handle himself with his own forms of invincibility the heavy already has a big pool of health and sandwich if needed so putting an obvious out in the open medic on such a big target is actually less effecient however cool it may seem
In Fallout 1 unaimed punch or attack with "short" melee weapon costs 3 AP (action points). With AG(agility)>8 character is able to perform max 2 such attacks per turn. Max AG (10) gives 10 AP so it's 3 attacks max.
There is a trait called Fast Shot, it reduced cost of attacks by 1AP, at cost of not being able to use aimed attacks. Despite its name it works with melee too (this was sadly fixed in later isometric Fallouts). Now 10 AP character is capable of 5 attacks.
Now for the perks:-Bonus HtH Attacks: -1AP cost of melee attacks, now at 1AP/attack we have 10 attacks.-Action Boy: each level gives one additional AP to character, up to 3 levels, so we can get to as high as 13 attacks per turn.
In the end attacks/turn were over quadrupled.
How would you recommend to include synergies in a non rogue like game? How can we prevent the player from creating an optimal strategy, if we even can
As a player, rather than an expert, 'non rogue like' is almost too broad to start to form an opinion, I'm curious what you have in mind.
@@Silverfirefly1 Good question, I realized I wasn't super specific. I believe at this time, I was interested in designing a turn based RPG where you could combine special attacks. Without the randomness, it's hard to disrupt the players strategies and make them think on the fly, so I was wondering how it would be possible to do this without that, how else you might be able to disrupt a perfect strategy
@@itsdabenji9518 I completely missed the age of the post so sorry for that!
@@Silverfirefly1 Don't worry about it! I had forgotten that I had commented on this video, so it surprised me when the notification came up lol
Looks like Mark would enjoy playing Magic in a Cube Draft.
Aren't synergies one of the core concepts of every CCG anyway?
(he only played this one)
The first Thing I think of when I hear synergies is the 55HP-Monk from Guild Wars 1 where Players found a Synergy so powerful that the Developers banned the first Players doing it because they couldnt believe that works. Later on they found other, quite more creative, ways around it, but still a nice lesson to learn. Ahh, so much nostalgia :)
45 hours? you've barely scratched the surface man...
I opened Steam just to check how many hours I got on it (almost 100 hrs) after he said that.
I'm 450, and there's still much I'm yet to learn.
I have around 400 hours too, did everything possible in the game (every achivements, ascension 20 + act 4 on every characters), still playing.
Hey Mark,
You can get a roguelike deck-building experience out of some of Hearthstone's single player content as well. Several of their newer expansions came with "dungeon runs" where you pick a class with a simple deck, challenging more and more difficult enemies with a selection of random cards to add to your deck after each victory. Every other boss you beat lets you pick one of three powerful cards or passive effects for your deck. And if you lose, you start over and try again. You get new ideas and new combos to try next time.
There is another card game (I want to say based on Fable) that has a competitive draft mode, where players build decks in opposition to one another and then their heroes duke it out for the grand finale after four-five turns. You pick the cards in your deck that will appear as random rewards or debuffs to mess with your opponent, but you do not pick the order they appear in. Defeating monsters, including those sent over by your opponent, gets you gold to buy your other cards. It was a novel idea and one I have not seen since then.
2:32 You're lucky you didn't end up at Time Eater with that deck. He's purpose built to make spammy decks useless.
8:08 Oh...
Solitarica for iOS does this beautifully. You pick a class, build up powers, plan synergies, and grow ever stronger - all while basically playing Solitaire. As simple as it gets, but boy, is it satisfying.
JoinRBS isn't going to be happy, don't talk about synergy.
At least he did mention archetypes.
You perfectly put into words why I fell in love with Slay the Spire. What a beautifully designed game
The problem with most games like this is simply the exploitative nature of the game. Getting the cards required for a cool synergy in Hearthstone, for example, is an amazingly tedious/expensive task, and in the meantime, you've just got brute force and luck to get your through your matches. This makes the game very boring after a short while.
That's true with CCG (collectible card games). Want to make the deck truly how you want it? Pay up. With deck buildings games, all the cards are available, but random or given based on risk/reward. StS does have some unlocking in it, but it's not magic/hearthstone.
>exploitative.
>one time payment with literally no microtransactions.
???!??!!?!?!?!?!?
Agreed, that's a danger. I'm always wary of such games.
Although there are exceptions - the only card game I _actually_ play is Faeria, where the development team has managed to release multiple expansions that enrich the (already complicated) mechanics and offer alternative strategies that "shake the meta" _without_ introducing significant power-creep. Many of the cards in your (very large) starting deck are _still_ some of the strongest of the game, partly due to interactions with newer cards. The fact that it's also played on a "living board", where you _have_ to control both space and tempo, makes the interactions even more interesting.
So, what entices the player to get the DLC is not power-creep, but simply unlocking new approaches to the game. Even though I haven't purchased the last two seasons, my carefully-crafted old decks are still competitive.
Also it's very easy to unlock the entire deck after you purchase each expansion, only a couple of hours of gameplay. No "gacha" bullshit involved, you get them all. I like this very honest approach - but it might also be the reason the game has a small player base, sadly.
@@FlameHricane without synergistic choices, making the best out of what's given to you is a no-brainer. I imagine this is what smackerlacker meant about brute force and luck making the game boring
Synergy decks are the things that make card games fun for me. Nowadays, it's Slay the Spire and Eternal, which has a few synergies set up for itself.
There used to be a game that did this magnificently and pushed it waaaaay further, called HEX: Shards of Fate. It's still up, but the devs haven't been seen in about eight months, so the game is pretty much a write-off at this point, but that game went so far in its synergies that it even designed playable characters with active and passive benefits tailored to a specific playstyle.
For example, there was a mechanism called 'Momentum'. A troop with Momentum 1 would get +1/+1 for the rest of the turn if you played a resource, and then the Momentum would tick up, so the next resource would give it +2/+2 for the rest of the turn. There were troops that would trigger Momentum when attacking, other troops that increased the rate at which they accumulated Momentum, troops that could give Momentum to other troops…
And then there was the mercenary, the playable character, dedicated to Momentum. Active benefit: For a few charges, you could give Momentum 2 to a target troop. Passive benefit: Whenever a troop with Momentum hit the enemy player, you would create and draw a Lucky Coin. The Lucky Coin was a resource that didn't give you a threshold (Needed to play cards) and it didn't give you an energy point immediately, but it did give you Fateweave, which allowed you to choose between moving a resource card to the top of your deck, or a non-resource card.
The result was a playstyle that could very rapidly escalate and push into ridiculous momentum territories, entire fields of troops all getting +5/+5 or more whenever you played a resource, and you always had one on hand due to the passive constantly spawning Lucky Coins.
It was fantastic, although only restricted to PvE, but I loved it to bits! Unfortunately, the dev team made some horrible decisions and tried to push too much on PvP which led to some consecutive flops and now the game is quietly awaiting server shutdown.
RIP HEX. Best card-game I ever played.
I just wish Slay the Spire’s visuals and sound design were half as good as its gameplay. Great game, but it’s ugly as sin.
I wouldnt say its ugly, just a bit bland. And graphics arent everything anyways.
It's interesting that you talk about the fact that the randomness make the game more interesting (and less overwhelming) than if you were able to create your perfect deck from a pool of all the cards, because it's pretty similar to the "draft mode" that most card game have. It show you a limited amound of card that you gotta pick to build your deck, which prevent you from building a too "perfect" deck, that you usually see in a competitive environnement.
I'm pretty sure that these mode inspired in some way Slay the spire, given how the appeal of both seems so similar. After all, draft mode of "normal" cards game are pretty much rogue lite, were you start each run from scratch, and have to make the best out of whatever random card you get.
It kinda make me want to try slay the spire, since draft mode have an entry fee in most other card game, while you'll be able to start a new run for free whenever you want in slay the spire.
One synergy I'm fond of is in Downwell, the roguelike shmup. Shotgun's a really powerful gun, but you only get two shots. But if you have the upgrade that refills you ammo when you collect gems, shotgun becomes something you can use constantly, *especially* if you pair "gems refills ammo" with the ability that sucks in nearby gems so you don't have to go out of your way to collect them. Runs in Downwell where you can manage to land those three things (or instead of shotgun, laser) end up being really fun-- but of course, you have to get lucky, first!
If you enjoy the synergistic element of Slay the Spire you might be interested that deckbuilding is an entire board game genre based around adapting to what cards are available for you in this particular game, and everyone is playing trying to find the optimal deck with this (usually) random selection of cards. The first of these is the hugely supported game Dominion with variants like Arctic Scavengers, Trains and many more.