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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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
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
@@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.)
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
Holy Shit dude I love this video. There's one thing to do a good review on Synergy and how it works in StS. But it's another thing entirely when smart storyboarding, directing, and editing are put into play. I love how you fully show the card you are talking about; and you save the screen specifically for the card content, and not your face or just gameplay. I really loved the transition from the gameplay at 1:43 when you play the Heavy Blade, and you use some editing to pretend you're zooming in on it. Then you showcase the supporting cards with the actual card image and we can physically see the two cards and how they can work together. While it may sound obvious, it's been a real damper in so many "New Content" spoilers from youtubers who want to talk about the new hot thing. I'm talking about "New Cards for MTG" and people show the new card, their face... maybe a few memes... but they rarely show what combos and synergies they're talking about. Or "News about [[YOUR GAME HERE]]" and while talking about the news of the game, they're showing footage of said game's gameplay, but it's completely irrelevant to the topic at hand. SO DISTRACTING and I'm SO GLAD I found someone who doens't do 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
Finding attack synergies in fighting games is really fun, I end up building a deck of successive moves that I can use to engage or counter an enemy on the fly. Fantastic videos as always! Keep up the good work!
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?).
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.
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.
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.
An interesting take on this is the deterministic Prismata: every game has a unique set of units you can use, same as your opponent, each with their own drawbacks and advantages. It's quite nice to see this concept explored in more detail, definitely going to take a look at this game!
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.
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!
I love Magic the Gathering: Arena. Once you're out of the tutorial, it hands you a handful of decently-made decks which sho off the kinds of synergies you can get with the right cards and invites you to make new ones. For instance, I took some cards from decks built around sacrificing saproling tokens (B/G), using lots of small creatures (W/R), and life-gain (W/B) to make a white/green deck built around getting lots of tokens (mostly saprolings), plus some cards that do cool stuff when creatures come into play. _Slay the Spire_ has the advantage that you're not playing against someone who realizes what you're doing and kills your combo-critical creature before it can reach critical mass.
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.
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
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.
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
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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!
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.
I love sinergies in games such as diablo 2 or bravely default but you are right in that sometimes you just need to invest hours and hours through the entire game to build your characters just the way you like them before you can enjoy a build that you planned from the start, or you could be given the choice to re-spec your character completely at any moment but then it doesn't quite feel like you've earned them and it also becomes too easy and "ideal" for min/maxers to just copy whatever is the best strategy after they find it online. They are both interesting approach with different shortcomings which seem to be fixed by the roguelike approach like you mentioned. Now you can get some very interesting builds in little time and with their randomness you are rarely going to be able to spec the same way you saw someone else doing it. Slay the spire sounds awesome and now I wanna find even more roguelikes that let you create interesting builds.
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.
I can't say I've found a video game that does this for me, but discovering Synergies between cards are part of the reason why I'm such a massive fan of the tabletop card game Dominion. Every game can be a completely new setup between cards you've never had to use together, and it never gets overwhelming because you only have around 10 types of cards to try to use to your advantage. It's my favorite tabletop game ever.
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.
I had one of those incredible moments when playing the already mentioned Into the Breach. There is this squad, that uses a lot of smoke. Now, when I unlocked them, I had a pilot, who could attack the enemy in smoked areas. Playing with that combo was already powerful, but then I found a lot of upgrades, that caused more smoke and even hurt the enemy when being in smoked areas. It was such a powerful run.
I loved seeing the Mark Rosewater mention. I'd love it if you talked a bit more at some point about his game design theories, as he's honestly brilliant and is solely responsible for a lot of the ways the Magic the Gathering designers (and by extension, other card game designers) think about and talk about the theories behind game design. Lenticular design is just the tip of the iceberg, and even that could fill a video's worth of discussion.
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.
I recommend you giving a look at a recently released card game called KeyForge. It's from the same creator of Magic, but it tackles this issue you describe in 9:25, you don't have to build your deck, but it keeps all the same integrity and synergy from Magic. And also uses some ideas from random generation that at least look interesting.
"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.
I bought this game 8 days ago, since then I've clocked up 31 hours and my wife had clocked up similar. It's a marvellous piece of design, glad to see you talking about it.
One of my favorite things about some older RPGs like Final Fantasy V, and later RPGs that take inspiration from them, is when you start to figure out how to manipulate the game's systems to your advantage and, in some cases, even "break" the game; even when you're like me and not a particularly bright player, it can make you feel smart and empowered. In Bravely Default, the Dark Knight class has attacks that can do an incredible amount of damage on their own, though at significant cost to their own health - but if you have the Spell Fencer as their sub-class, you can absolutely *hammer* foes at almost no cost, provided you took a turn beforehand to cast Drain on their sword, which will make it so that all of those HP-using attacks heal all of that that spent HP simultaneously. Combine that further with the game's Brave/Default system, which allows you to either "bank" turns in battle for later use or spend those banked Brave Points to have multiple turns all at once, and other characters' spells and abilities that can boost their speed and attack, or even gift additional turns to them, and you have a character that's constantly, quickly and safely dealing massive amounts of damage. And playing around with the job, sub-job, spell, ability, skill and equipment combinations in Octopath Traveler, along with its own Break/Boost battle mechanic, can allow you to do things like exceed the game's normal damage output limit, heal party members above their maximum amount of HP, make obscene amounts of cash from enemy encounters or guarantee that every member of your party dodges incoming enemy attacks until their next turn (a real life-saver for that game's almost merciless late-game and optional boss battles).
Great video :) I kept thinking about The Witcher 3 as you were talking: it ticked many of the same boxes as this with its combination of weapons, armour, mutagens, powers and runes. It took time and effort to earn / find / harvest the materials for each of these, and you could really build Geralt around a specific witcher power or around poisons/potions or around building adrenaline and dealing massive damage with a certain weapon type. If one started to get boring or if the enemies were in some way resistant you could always respect into another tree but there was room to plan, collect and combine synergies to totally break the damage system
Battle Chasers is a game that I've played recently that comes to mind when discovering synergies. There are 5 characters to choose from, each with drastically different abilities and playstyles. However, you can only use 3 characters at a time, so finding different combinations of characters and how their abilities synergize with each other is always fun.
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
I've been playing a very similar (but more of a rouge lite) game for mobile called "night of a full moon" and I completely understand you, it's a great game that just keeps on giving, I keep finding new things with every playthrough even if I am not unlocking new cards.
another genious design: Some enemies counter certain synergies/playstyles like the shiv-synergy, you mentioned, gets countered by the time master. Or the Block comp, you mentioned, gets countered by the Gremlin Nob. This way you can not lean too hard into 1 playstyle. But it does not feel unfair since you can still beat your counter, you just have to be smart about it. Like always playing 12 cards per turn with the shiv-synergy against the time master
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!
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)
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.
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?
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.
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)
@@acherow 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.
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.
That sounds awesome dude
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 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!
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.
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.
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.
NOW I got why this (and why some RPGs) are so addicting, because of when you figure out the "synergy".
Thanks Mark!
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 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.
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.
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
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
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.
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
Holy Shit dude I love this video. There's one thing to do a good review on Synergy and how it works in StS. But it's another thing entirely when smart storyboarding, directing, and editing are put into play. I love how you fully show the card you are talking about; and you save the screen specifically for the card content, and not your face or just gameplay.
I really loved the transition from the gameplay at 1:43 when you play the Heavy Blade, and you use some editing to pretend you're zooming in on it. Then you showcase the supporting cards with the actual card image and we can physically see the two cards and how they can work together.
While it may sound obvious, it's been a real damper in so many "New Content" spoilers from youtubers who want to talk about the new hot thing. I'm talking about "New Cards for MTG" and people show the new card, their face... maybe a few memes... but they rarely show what combos and synergies they're talking about. Or "News about [[YOUR GAME HERE]]" and while talking about the news of the game, they're showing footage of said game's gameplay, but it's completely irrelevant to the topic at hand. SO DISTRACTING and I'm SO GLAD I found someone who doens't do that!
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
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
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.
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.
This is one of the most beautifully edited videos I’ve seen in a long time, great work!
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!
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.
NorthernLion has entered the chat
A Y E V E R Y B O D Y
I love my egg
Esports legend Northern?
missing tinted rocks as always.
LETS GO
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.
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!
You perfectly put into words why I fell in love with Slay the Spire. What a beautifully designed game
EY, I"m really happy to see this game get recognition left and right.
Finding attack synergies in fighting games is really fun, I end up building a deck of successive moves that I can use to engage or counter an enemy on the fly. Fantastic videos as always! Keep up the good work!
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?).
i love how combat handles in this game, i love the health bar animations and the strike that appears on the enemies and the screen shakes.
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.
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.
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.
Two things I have been binging is this channel and slay the spire. Can't wait to watch this!
Loving synergy based game design, this got me deeply interested in StS
An interesting take on this is the deterministic Prismata: every game has a unique set of units you can use, same as your opponent, each with their own drawbacks and advantages. It's quite nice to see this concept explored in more detail, definitely going to take a look at this game!
I think some good synergistic games are Invisible Inc. and Transistor!
I remember the editing stream for this video :) Such solid writing and presentation, in everything you make. Respect.
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.
wow, this is super well put together for a 10 minute video. Congrats Mark!
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!
I love Magic the Gathering: Arena. Once you're out of the tutorial, it hands you a handful of decently-made decks which sho off the kinds of synergies you can get with the right cards and invites you to make new ones. For instance, I took some cards from decks built around sacrificing saproling tokens (B/G), using lots of small creatures (W/R), and life-gain (W/B) to make a white/green deck built around getting lots of tokens (mostly saprolings), plus some cards that do cool stuff when creatures come into play.
_Slay the Spire_ has the advantage that you're not playing against someone who realizes what you're doing and kills your combo-critical creature before it can reach critical mass.
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.
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
I was there when you were streaming the making of this video
oh man, that old steam UI brings back the nostalgia.
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.
Never been into card games. Got his on Switch the other night - got addicted almost immediately.
3 years late but synergies make any game more fun imo.
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
Oh my god, Magic drafts are multiplayer rougelikes
You nailed exactly why I'm addicted to this game. I get to build my deck per run, on the fly. Great video as usual
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!
Did you buy it?
It does. You have to spend 5 dollars to unlock every new card😢
@@Frogthejam1Yhis has been approved by real spire patriots
✅️ TRUE ✅️
@@Frogthejam1this man lies
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.
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.
@@itsdabenji9518 I completely missed the age of the post so sorry for that!
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.
The Binding of Isaac has a bunch of synergies as well
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.
mfw i find a might be game breaking synergy only to end up seeing "Effect Does Not Stack" at the end of the description.
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.
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
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!
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.
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That's why going with that second squad in Into the Breach is challenging, but pulling off combos with them is very satisfying.
I love sinergies in games such as diablo 2 or bravely default but you are right in that sometimes you just need to invest hours and hours through the entire game to build your characters just the way you like them before you can enjoy a build that you planned from the start, or you could be given the choice to re-spec your character completely at any moment but then it doesn't quite feel like you've earned them and it also becomes too easy and "ideal" for min/maxers to just copy whatever is the best strategy after they find it online. They are both interesting approach with different shortcomings which seem to be fixed by the roguelike approach like you mentioned. Now you can get some very interesting builds in little time and with their randomness you are rarely going to be able to spec the same way you saw someone else doing it.
Slay the spire sounds awesome and now I wanna find even more roguelikes that let you create interesting builds.
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.
I can't say I've found a video game that does this for me, but discovering Synergies between cards are part of the reason why I'm such a massive fan of the tabletop card game Dominion. Every game can be a completely new setup between cards you've never had to use together, and it never gets overwhelming because you only have around 10 types of cards to try to use to your advantage. It's my favorite tabletop game ever.
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!
I had one of those incredible moments when playing the already mentioned Into the Breach. There is this squad, that uses a lot of smoke. Now, when I unlocked them, I had a pilot, who could attack the enemy in smoked areas. Playing with that combo was already powerful, but then I found a lot of upgrades, that caused more smoke and even hurt the enemy when being in smoked areas. It was such a powerful run.
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...
I loved seeing the Mark Rosewater mention. I'd love it if you talked a bit more at some point about his game design theories, as he's honestly brilliant and is solely responsible for a lot of the ways the Magic the Gathering designers (and by extension, other card game designers) think about and talk about the theories behind game design. Lenticular design is just the tip of the iceberg, and even that could fill a video's worth of discussion.
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.
I recommend you giving a look at a recently released card game called KeyForge. It's from the same creator of Magic, but it tackles this issue you describe in 9:25, you don't have to build your deck, but it keeps all the same integrity and synergy from Magic. And also uses some ideas from random generation that at least look interesting.
"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.
I bought this game 8 days ago, since then I've clocked up 31 hours and my wife had clocked up similar. It's a marvellous piece of design, glad to see you talking about it.
Aren't synergies one of the core concepts of every CCG anyway?
(he only played this one)
One of my favorite things about some older RPGs like Final Fantasy V, and later RPGs that take inspiration from them, is when you start to figure out how to manipulate the game's systems to your advantage and, in some cases, even "break" the game; even when you're like me and not a particularly bright player, it can make you feel smart and empowered.
In Bravely Default, the Dark Knight class has attacks that can do an incredible amount of damage on their own, though at significant cost to their own health - but if you have the Spell Fencer as their sub-class, you can absolutely *hammer* foes at almost no cost, provided you took a turn beforehand to cast Drain on their sword, which will make it so that all of those HP-using attacks heal all of that that spent HP simultaneously. Combine that further with the game's Brave/Default system, which allows you to either "bank" turns in battle for later use or spend those banked Brave Points to have multiple turns all at once, and other characters' spells and abilities that can boost their speed and attack, or even gift additional turns to them, and you have a character that's constantly, quickly and safely dealing massive amounts of damage.
And playing around with the job, sub-job, spell, ability, skill and equipment combinations in Octopath Traveler, along with its own Break/Boost battle mechanic, can allow you to do things like exceed the game's normal damage output limit, heal party members above their maximum amount of HP, make obscene amounts of cash from enemy encounters or guarantee that every member of your party dodges incoming enemy attacks until their next turn (a real life-saver for that game's almost merciless late-game and optional boss battles).
Spell fencer is just broken, you're not clever or should feel so in the slightest because you discovered that that class exists.
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.
Great video :) I kept thinking about The Witcher 3 as you were talking: it ticked many of the same boxes as this with its combination of weapons, armour, mutagens, powers and runes. It took time and effort to earn / find / harvest the materials for each of these, and you could really build Geralt around a specific witcher power or around poisons/potions or around building adrenaline and dealing massive damage with a certain weapon type. If one started to get boring or if the enemies were in some way resistant you could always respect into another tree but there was room to plan, collect and combine synergies to totally break the damage system
JoinRBS isn't going to be happy, don't talk about synergy.
At least he did mention archetypes.
Battle Chasers is a game that I've played recently that comes to mind when discovering synergies. There are 5 characters to choose from, each with drastically different abilities and playstyles. However, you can only use 3 characters at a time, so finding different combinations of characters and how their abilities synergize with each other is always fun.
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
I've been playing a very similar (but more of a rouge lite) game for mobile called "night of a full moon" and I completely understand you, it's a great game that just keeps on giving, I keep finding new things with every playthrough even if I am not unlocking new cards.
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.
another genious design: Some enemies counter certain synergies/playstyles like the shiv-synergy, you mentioned, gets countered by the time master.
Or the Block comp, you mentioned, gets countered by the Gremlin Nob.
This way you can not lean too hard into 1 playstyle.
But it does not feel unfair since you can still beat your counter, you just have to be smart about it.
Like always playing 12 cards per turn with the shiv-synergy against the time master
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!
Was great watching the video getting edited on stream, nice work as always ^^