Calculated Card Values in Slay the Spire (Mechanism Spotlight)

How does Slay the Spire explore new territory in the genre of deckbuilding games by leveraging its identity as a video game?

[tristanheck]

Jesper Juul's "Half-Real" talks about this (video games using machines to check rules while analog games use humans to check rules) in the first chapters. (If you ever need a games studies sources on this). He is not the first scholar to write about this.

[bradleyhcobb]

I think a much simpler and more generalized example would be the vulnerable/weak mechanics that cause the player or enemy to take/deal less damage.

It's hard for humans to balance a +2 and a -1 for each attack in a game like Gloomhaven. Asking them to calculate 50% extra damage or 25% less on the fly would be a bridge too far for most.

[tristanheck]

One thing that bothered me in Slay the Spire (I mostly like it a lot) is unclear formulations.

In the beginning, I would often just hope that the possible meaning of the ambiguous formulation is what I hope for, but that can really destroy your run.
So I ended up googling cards, a lot. And this is where I think a game falls apart.

When it unintentionally makes you look for resources outside of it.

And there are solutions for it. You could, since it is a videogame, have like an "*" that you can click on for a more in-depth explanation of the card.

[lonefreak]

Hey, Ryan. Nice video. I have never played Slay the Spire, but I am considering buying it. I think this difference in calculation potential between card/board and video games is one of the main advantages of the video game platform from the designer point of view. However all this hidden calculation brings forward another topic I find very interesting: how to display the results of all this hidden/automatic calculations to the player without making the game very confuse? Maybe you can explore that a little bit in the future? :)

[gyroh]

Loved this game. Did you get to play Armello? Also another boardgame-esque videogame about anthropomorphic animals fighting to save the kingdom from the corrupted lion king. It uses dice for combat, movement on a hexagonal plane. And cards for magic, equipment, traps, and helpers. Tons of fun!

Having played this game also made me think of how would it be possible to make it into a physical game without it being a pain in the butt to play.

[David-yjtr]

This is a great video but WAY too much preface and theory about how video games and card games are different. Oh nevermind "I thought this was a tabletop simulator video. I was hoping you were going to cover how to script intricate cards...