Slay the Spire: Metrics Driven Design and Balance

In this 2019 GDC session, Mega Crit Games' Anthony Giovannetti discusses how the dev team approached balancing for Slay the Spire.

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[ocdashi]

16:27 "Players will naturally gravitate to the ascension level that make sense for them" no we will always play the top unlocked level and take our ass beatings thank you.

[jonathandorozowsky]

I love how this dude briefly summarizes questions asked in Q&A before answering. Not only does it ensure everyone heard the query, but it gives the questioner a chance to clarify if necessary. I feel like it's somehow a living example of improvement via iteration and feedback.

[PetitAmiral]

Laughed out loud when I saw Corruption and Dead Branch pop out in the "warping" discussion :)

[PurpleFreezerPage]

Ok I know this is random but the first thing that comes to mind for why I love this game is the speed of every action in combat. There's no Pokémon style slow attack animations - you can go PAP PAP POW WAM in 2 seconds if you want.

[aenpien]

I was impressed by the balance of this game. It's cool to hear an explanation.

[metalmonster]

"How do you manage emotional feedbacks?" "Delete it" they nailed it.

[ryanbrothers]

This is one of the most successful indie games ever, a true success story. Cool to hear from the dev.

[rubenzs]

One of the most valuable GDC talks for sure

[hibryd]

They did such a fantastic job. I enjoy GDC talks conceptually, but most people have worked on games I haven't played or even heard of. But I've got 245 hours logged on STS. Love this game, best thing to come along in years.

[antondovydaitis]

It's extremely heartening to see competent and ethical development. Every programmer on Earth would do well to follow this role model.

[benedict]

Max respect for everyone in that session. Good questions, good answers.

[yourMoonstone]

This is SO good!!! The insight here is immeasurably valuable as I'm working on my own card game. Thank you so much for uploading this and thanks to the Mega Crit team for sharing their process!

[samliveshere]

250 hours later I absolutly love this game and still find myself going back to playing it

[MopeyN]

Bought this game 2 weeks ago (Switch release which I've waited for ages) and got 50 hours, so far. Excellent game, it has so many good different card game aspects. I didn't finish the video (yet), but as soon as it popped up as a new video on my playlist, I was smiling, already :)

[Bradbradhehe]

Awesome talk, always appreciated the way StS is balanced

[Lunareon]

Great talk, great game! Even if there's no actual co-op mode (yet?), it was a fun game to play with friends, just chilling out and making collective decisions. :)

[CE-otni]

That smirk and "no comment" when the co-op question came up... you know they gotta be working on it.

[Bhit_Whyz]

It's interesting that some of the design processes they went through resulted in a default decision, with relics or mechanics that kept other iterations of the design in place. Like discarding your hand at the end of your turn is default, but they have Runic Pyramid and the retention mechanic to enable holding onto cards. The enemy intents are visible by default (but some are ambiguous, like buffs and debuffs), but Runic Dome reverts it to that random state. The whole balance between ascension difficulty and daily wackiness. A super interesting lesson in how to capitalize on ideas that can be situationally interesting, but not suitable for basic play.

[Mattball]

You and your partner made the best strategy game ever, sir, thank you 👍

[brucebrenneise]

Ironic that Anthony mentions Bob Ross as an example of happy accidents and spontaneity when it's known that Ross painted 3 iterations of every painting he did for his PBS show. So, ultimately, further proof of the point being made here.