★★★★★ Amazing game, amazing gameplay, great app port
Wed Jun 17 2020 TatoPaladinKeeping away from five stars for now since the port has a few kinks to get knocked loose. The game itself is great, highly addicting and superb replay-ability (since it’s impossible to play the same game twice), and the majority (if not all) of the game has been refined to its best state. When the iOS port was announced and subsequently released I was ecstatic, and bought it immediately!
However, as it’s meant for smaller screens and played with fingers, the port needs, in my opinion, some QoL changes to help the UI feel more friendly. First, many of the options in both the main menu and in other locations with small text are too small to comfortably use, as misclicks are all too often. Second, as others have said before, the card selection mechanics are a bit wonky ; to elaborate, there are multiple times I select a card to read it’s use, but then wish to play a different card. Due to the selected card hovering around my card-hand area, it makes it difficult to select a new card to play (especially with cards that can be played just by placing them on the field; those have a tendency to be played instead of de-selecting). Besides this slight nuisances and the occasional sound glitch, the game is amazing performance-wise for a full PC-to-iOS port! Must buy!
★★★★★ Flawless
Sun Aug 16 2020 FuriousSkyHeroSlay the Spire is a flawlessly designed and executed game. The only reason it didn’t receive 5 stars is because the developers were limited by the game itself. The genre—roguelike deck-builder—is brilliant and very innovative, but I can’t imagine any game of either of these genres receiving a perfect score. These genres, despite being fun and entertaining, lack the freedom to make a game that deserves a perfect score; one that’s not only fun, but exhibits emotion like Last of Us, tells a beautiful story like Half Life 2, or brings people together in some way like Rainbow Six Siege. The developers created Slay the Spire in the best way that anyone possibly could, they were only limited by their genre.
The actual gameplay is fantastic. It’s snappy, self-paced, easy to pick up, very fun and casual, and can become as complex as you want, depending on your skill or effort. It has practically infinite replayability, especially with the inclusion of many modifiers and challenges and fascinating synergies.
To consumers: it is worth noting that the cards can sometimes be difficult to accurately select on smaller devices. To avoid frustration or accidentally using the wrong cards, I highly recommend playing just a tiny bit slower to make sure you’re using the right cards.
★★★★★ How do you screw up the controls in a game like this?
Fri Apr 21 2023 MgddpubEdit: upping my review buy one so as to t punish the amazing developers for a subpar port . You do get accustomed to the crappy controls after a while. StS is one of my favorite PC games but playing on iPad is a pita because the card selection controls are so bad. There are countless games where you have to read and select cards and I’ve never once complained about how it was implemented. The first issue is the text is off the screen (which is completely unnecessary on iPad). So you have to tap to bring the card up (usually you just tap hold in games to read a card). But it’s a fine line between whether the game thinks you want to read a card or use it. Sometimes you think you’ve dropped a card and go to play another but play the first card. It’s just janky and sticky. If you read a card that doesn’t require a target and tap to dismiss it, it plays it instead. I’ve played more wrong cards in this game in 5 plays then in every other deck builder combined over my entire life. Fix it for five stars. Also the sound is really tinny and there are some sounds that sound literally like static.
★★★★★ A few bugs, to keep it from perfect
Sun Jun 14 2020 Mitty2415So I love this game, new to the deck building genre, but I heard this one was the best. So I bought it right when I saw it drop. Everything good, except for a few bugs, small, but nonetheless need to be fixed. One is text in my the relics, when you have a relic that has a status the effect of the status stays popped up which will block the definition of the relic sometimes leaving you having to guess how it works or what triggers it, also the touch controls are a bit finicky when trying to read the card from your hand, I have iPhone X, and when you want to read what a card does you have to slide it up just a bit till it sticks up, when sometimes with a skill card is confused with playing it and in turn you play the card you wanted to read. This is bothersome, why not just hold the card to read? Other deck builders have that where you hold card and it magnifies it, this would be better honestly. Those 2 things fixed this Is by far a 5 star game, I wanted to give 5 star in Faith but I want to see if you’ll make changes.
★★★★★ Port needs work
Thu Sep 16 2021 VoodooVyperAnyone who says this port is fine is delusional. The interface is god awful. Picking up a card just to view it is a process just to get it back in your hand. You have to be very careful not to accidentally play it if it’s a non-attack card. Card selection is also an exercise in frustration, being largely inaccurate. Additionally, the design of your hand is poor, only showing you the top of your cards and no text description. Worse yet, it’s been like this for 10 months with no indication of an update coming, as the devs had initially indicated shortly after release. I understand it’s difficult to provide a timeline, but we haven’t heard anything. Wouldn’t be surprised at this point if they abandoned it. The game is great, don’t get me wrong. The UI doesn’t make it unplayable, but it makes it very unenjoyable. Giving 2 stars until it’s fixed in a patch, will update after.
Update: Lowering my rating to 1 star. They somehow managed to make the controls even worse. I don’t play the game because of this, it’s a chore. The game has been out for over a year with 1 update and no shortage of complaints about the controls. Devs didn’t listen and made it worse. Guess I’ll update my review next year when the next update comes out, but I won’t be holding my breath. Wish I could request a refund.
★★★★★ Great game, iOS port needs work
Mon Jul 13 2020 N4ktoI’ve sunk an embarrassing number of hours into the PC version of Slay the Spire, and I was overjoyed when I learned it was coming to iOS. However, there are several annoyances with the iOS version:
1. I can’t listen to music or podcasts while I play. Even with all the sound effects and music turned down to 0, the game kills anything I’m listening to in the background as soon as I launch it. Would it kill the developers to add a mute option in the settings menu so I can listen to something else while I play?
2. The devs implemented some sort of invisible “mouse cursor” for lack of a better word to track user touches. The problem is, whenever a card or enemy appears under the last position of this invisible “cursor,” it appears as selected. This has caused me to accidentally play cards I didn’t intend to several times when trying to deselect a card that happened to be underneath this invisible cursor.
3. Screen real estate feels poorly used on the phone version. Text on cards is almost illegibly tiny. It’s easy to accidentally switch out of the app when trying to select a card, and in many cases, card text is obscured by the app switcher bar at the bottom of the screen.
★★★★★ Tiny bit buggy, but this game is incredible.
Fri Aug 07 2020 Drew FieldsHad this game originally on Steam, but once I saw it was on iOS, I had to have it. I read in many reviews here that people have had issues with bugs and crashes, but I haven’t noticed anything that’s even close to a deal breaker. Sometimes the game won’t boot if my phone is on Low Power mode, but all I have to do is turn off Low Power mode to get it to work. Once the game is running I can turn it right back on, too, and it runs wonderfully. It definitely feels like they’re using a virtual mouse cursor for this port, so moves can be a bit fidgety. But even so, as long as you’re deliberate with how you touch the screen, you shouldn’t run into many issues with that at all. It’s only bothered me once or twice, and I’ve put many, many hours into this game. At the end of the day, I don’t think I’ll ever go back to the Steam version, because this game is just so much better when it’s totally portable. I can just pick up and play anytime, anywhere, and I’m even more hopelessly addicted to it now than ever before!
★★★★★ Ignore bad reviews
Sun Jul 16 2023 TayoramaThis is the greatest game of all time. The more you play it the more depth it has. There are streamers who have played this for tens of thousands of hours and are still improving and learning on every run. The port to mobile may not be perfect but this is an indie game that wasn’t designed for mobile. I’ve done a full run through of all achievements and highest ascension on all characters 2 times on pc and once on phone and the phone experience is just as good once you learn the game. This is a game for someone who wants something offline that they can go back to over and over again. I imagine that I’ll play Slay the Spire on and off for the rest of my life.
Just get the game and keep trying. It takes some time to see it but it is so perfectly balanced and challenging. Once you can make it to the highest difficulty you see that the design is absolutely perfect being extremely difficult yet always fair and the choices you make always matter.
