How Synergies Make Slay the Spire Fun

I have been obsessed with a card battling roguelike called Slay the Spire. And a big reason for that is how the game uses synergies. What are they, and why are they so cool? Let’s find out.

Sources

Lenticular Design | Magic the Gathering

Games shown in this episode (in order of appearance)

Slay the Spire (Mega Crit Games, 2019)
Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 (Stainless Games, 2011)
Enter the Gungeon (Dodge Roll, 2016)
The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth (Nicalis / Edmund McMillen, 2014)
Dead Cells (Motion Twin, 2018)
Into the Breach (Subset Games, 2018)
Team Fortress 2 (Valve Corporation, 2007)
Hearthstone (Blizzard Entertainment, 2014)
Artifact (Valve Corporation, 2018)

Music used in this episode

[blacksheep]

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.

[MicoDossun]

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.

[xeladas]

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.

[MikaTuukkanen]

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.

[shawnheatherly]

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.

[scepta]

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…

[DarylTalksGames]

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.

[MelvaCross]

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.

[Blackthornprod]

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 ^^

[DeepCDiva]

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.

[cream]

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.

[KromlockDidGood]

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.

[PencilCaseB]

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

[azerim]

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.

[ChaosWarrior]

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.

[ZGregerson]

Cool video as usual. Personally though, I just can't get into card/deck building games for some reason.

[roy]

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.

[AssasinZorro]

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.

[adnanilyas]

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.

[ZerTactics]

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.