Slay the Spire: The Board Game Review

Among the pantheon of indie games, few have reached the levels of success and notoriety as the much beloved Slay the Spire from Mega Crit. After a very successful Kickstarter campaign, bringing in nearly $4 million, Slay the Spire: The Board Game, developed by Contention Games, has reached backers and is poised for its retail release. Board games based on video games are pretty common these days, with the likes of Divinity: Original Sin and Cyberpunk 2077 notably receiving one. Slay the Spire: The Board Game may be the most faithful of these adaptations I have ever played.

Slay the Spire puts you in control of one of four distinct characters with the simple goal of building a deck of powerful enough cards to tackle the four increasingly challenging acts, with the end goal being to make it to the Heart of the Spire and, as the title says, slay it. Each character has a unique set of 80+ cards you can unlock and add to your deck to tailor your approach up the spire. These, along with the tons of special artifacts, potion cards, and upgrades you will have at your disposal, let you play your way and try new ideas.

You will progress up the spire, taking paths that will put you face-to-face with various encounters, from clashing with enemies or more robust elites to resting, shopping, and more. Aspects of each act are randomized, with some spots being blank and requiring you to put tokens down that will reveal themselves when you land on them. Encounters, enemies, and even the bosses are all handled by individual decks of cards that you draw from that help make each game session all its own, full of its challenges. If you find things too easy after a few games, you can adjust the difficulty, too.

Fans of the digital game will be happy to know that the Ascension system also makes its physical debut here in the board game. This system allows experienced players to increase the difficulty of their games by adding additional restrictions, increasing enemy health (there are even extra cards you unlock specifically for these Ascension levels), and more. Considering all the options and avenues for customization provided to you, Slay the Spire TBG offers plenty of replayability for its price tag.

This board game rendition of the indie superstar has seen some tweaks and adjustments to make it more friendly as a game for your tabletop, with most of those changes helping with the mental upkeep the game requires. An example of this can most clearly be seen in the health pools and damage values. In the digital game, these could range from single digits to the hundreds, with various triggers and effects impacting them. These values have been greatly reduced to make them easier to tally mentally on the spot, and they go a long way in making the physical experience enjoyable.

However, there’s still a fair bit of upkeep and maintenance you have to keep track of during your turn – moving cubes, making sure you factored in the vulnerable token on the enemy and what shields they had – you get the idea. It isn’t the heaviest or most intense upkeep in a game I’ve played, but if you are new to board games or keeping track of numbers isn’t quite your thing, it may be a turn-off for you. It certainly gave me a new appreciation for just how much the computer handles in the video game.

Being a deck-building game, Slay the Spire TBG comes with many cards, more than 700 of them, along with all of the other tokens, coins, double-layered boards, and other do-dads that make the game work. These pieces are high quality, with the cards being especially nice, thick, and durable. They feel good to hold and shuffle.

Each character’s skill cards are double-sided, with one side being the base version of the ability and the other its upgraded version. To make these cards work (it wouldn’t be much fun if you knew what cards you were about to draw), the game also comes with enough high-quality sleeves to put these cards in. Between popping out the tokens and sleeving the cards, you won’t be able to jump into a game right away when your copy arrives.

Thankfully, the organizational insert for Slay the Spire is top-notch, with references in the rulebook showing where things go, individual spaces for all of the components, and card dividers that clearly show what cards are where so once all of the prep work is done, getting the game setup and ready to play is pretty painless. The Collectors Edition of Slay the Spire comes with even more, such as neoprene mats for each of the four playable characters, additional boards, and hefty metal coins in a mesh bag, with a larger box to accommodate the added components.

The biggest draw and most dramatic deviation from the source material is cooperative multiplayer. You and up to three friends can each embody one of the characters and tackle the spire together. Playing as a team feels nearly identical to tackling the game on your own, with each player receiving unique artifacts, potions, and abilities. Each player will contend with their randomly spawned groups of standard enemy mobs (elites and bosses are still on their own), but combat is also where that cooperative aspect kicks in.

Players can target and attack any enemy, regardless of which row they’re in and who they’re currently attacking. And with the inclusion of some brand new cards, players can even provide shields and other benefits to each other to help weather particularly nasty turns. Often, my friends and I would act independently and deal with easier enemies alone, but with elites and the act bosses, teamwork and strategy proved crucial because if one of us went down, the game was over. That feeling of pulling the perfect card to save my friend or working together to take out an enemy before it could kill one of us never got old. The multiplayer works so well with Slay the Spire TBG that I’m on my knees, hoping that Mega Crit will adapt this cooperative mode into the upcoming Slay the Spire 2.

There is very little difference between playing through Slay the Spire as a solo board game versus with friends, and it just feels like you are playing a physical representation of the video game. Elite and Boss monsters have their health adjusted depending on the player count, but besides that, there isn’t a real impact on the game. And unless you want to play as multiple characters, you are on your own – there are no AI-controlled partners here.

I had a blast building out my deck and tackling monsters alone. It was that same rush I get when I’m having a good run in the digital game, but each time, I was left with the same large and obvious question – why don’t I just play the digital version? Even now, I can’t think of a good reason to play the board game solo over just playing the digital game.

I don’t feel right saying it’sa problem that it’s too much like the original game. The original game – and this board game – both feel and play fantastic. But it also is one of my biggest takeaways of the product. If you are primarily a solo board game player or expect to play Slay the Spire TBG solo, I don’t think this game will suit you. For nearly five times the cost of the digital game – $24.99 for digital / $115 (base version) or $170 (collectors version) for the board game – all you get is the physicality of the pieces and the ability to start at a later act.

It’s not that the solo mode isn’t a good time; it’s a great time, but you can get a nearly identical experience for a far lower price that also removes all of the manual upkeep and stat maintenance, and you can play it on your phone (or PC, or tablet, or game console). Without the setup time, space requirement, and faster turnaround time between runs, I would have liked to see something more substantial to make the solo mode feel unique in this adaptation and make it more worthwhile for all your solo players out there.