14 Games Like Slay The Spire

There are Ascension levels in Slay The Spire, but this Ascension is a different game entirely. It was originally called Ascension: Chronicle Of The Godslayer, but its new name sums it up perfectly. The game was designed by Justin Gary, Rob Dougherty and Brian Kibler who are Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour champions, so you’re in good hands. The aim is to get more Honour Points than any other player and to do that, you have to build the best deck possible. You can spend Runes to acquire better cards. Strategy and monsters, what more could you ask for?

This game is similar to Slay The Spire in that deck-building is a key part of it, but it does a lot more than that too. Card Quest focuses strongly on character development in battles. Rather than directly adding cards to your deck to make it stronger, in Card Quest you acquire weapon boxes that each come with various cards. When these cards are put in your deck, the deck is shuffled so that you don’t know what’s next. There are also different classes: Wizard, Hunter, Fighter and Rogue. Each class has sub-classes beneath it. All in all, Card Quest is a different, arguably tougher challenge than Slay The Spire.

In Darkest Dungeon, you lead a group of heroes to a dungeon where you need to explore each room within it one by one. Naturally, on your way, you’ll run into surprises from creatures who will try to attack you. That’s where the turn-based strategy comes in. Also in the rooms are treasure and weapons that you and your team can equip. The game requires team management skills, risk management and more and looks really similar to Slay The Spire in terms of aesthetics.

If you’re a huge fan and follower of Slay The Spire, then it’s not unlikely that you’ll have already heard of Dream Quest. Fans of the genre view this game as Slay The Spire’s direct competitor and that’s largely because it is very, very similar to it. Dream Quest doesn’t limit the number of cards that each person has, but it also doesn’t show you what your opponent is doing, which is an interesting angle. You can use cards to upgrade weapons too, and bosses in this game present a great challenge. This one is a must-try for fans of Slay The Spire.

If you’re into watching people play Slay The Spire, then you might already know that streamers who play that game also play FTL: Faster Than Light. Both games might not seem so similar on the surface, but just a few hours of gameplay will prove that they are. With FTL, you own a spaceship that you need to mod up with subsystems and weapons so that when an encounter happens, you can move forward through it. It’s also made by the same people who made Into The Breach which appears later on this list.

Where Gloomhaven is truly different to Slay The Spire is in the fact that it is a board game. But if you’re willing to try that out, then you’ll be able to enjoy it with a few friends. You’re dealt a set of cards which will determine how you have to play the game and we can’t overemphasise how important strategy is with this game. STS fans will enjoy figuring out which set of cards is the best hand for doing what and there are around 95 different dungeons to explore with monsters galore.

Guild Of Dungeoneering is a turn-based dungeon crawler. Rather than controlling a hero to defeat monsters, with this game you build the dungeon around them and see how they react and what decisions they make. Think of this like a Creator mode for a dungeon crawler. You can lay down monsters, rooms, traps and loot for the hero to manoeuvre through. Your deck contains different events and acquiring better cards means better options for the hero to have to fight through. Some people complain that the game can get a little too repetitive, but it’s worth trying to get a dose of something similar to Slay The Spire regardless.

With Heat Signature, you control a pod which travels to different spaceships which you need to sneak inside of. This alone requires docking your pod with a spaceship’s airlock. Once you get in, you need to take out the crew members with gadgets, which means you need to outthink them. The main goal is to loot their gold afterwards, so they’ll certainly try to fight back. That’s where the strategy comes in. The game allows you to pause when surrounded by enemies to think about the best way to approach a battle. There are also fights in slow-motion, which is something cool that not a lot of games similar to this offer.

Into The Breach tasks you with trying to save human civilisation by fighting off colossal creatures that have been breeding and getting bigger underneath earth. You do this utilising futuristic machines and of course, other problems arise along the way. The game offers dire consequences because making the wrong move means that a city could be wiped out, which adds some pressure to choosing the right strategy. As we mentioned before, this one is made by the makers of FTL: Faster Than Light.

As opposed to Slay The Spire where you have to build your deck according to the options, with Invisible, Inc., you customise your deck differently for different agents. You have the job of equipping the agents with what they need to adapt to their surroundings which includes both weapons and training. A wrong move means that an agent will be killed, so no pressure!

For many people, Monster Slayers is the toughest competition for Slay The Spire. This game puts focus on a card-based battle system which makes for epic gameplay. The end aim of the game is to defeat Harbinger, the final boss, and you can take any path you like through the Northern Valley to get there. On your path, you’ll fight undead goblins, dragons and more, the whole time trying to keep your energy for the big boss battle at the end.

This game is unique in that when you die, you take over your character’s child who will then become the potential hero. This keeps on happening until you defeat all of the enemies. The best element about that is that each character is born with differences, some of which can actually help you in various battles. The gold you attain with one character passes on to the next, which means upgrading abilities is still key here. This is a really nice twist on the genre.

This game starts you off in a sector of hell, where you’ll have to make your way through paths like Flesh Gardens and Bone Plains and these contain some very formidable enemies. Like any game of this kind, looting and upgrading is key to winning battles with the right amount of energy for bigger battles.

SteamWorld Quest is Slay The Spire if it were an RPG. In this game, each of your 3 team members begin with 8 cards which automatically get shuffled before each battle. You can save up more powerful cards to use later when you’re in a tougher battle too. SteamWorld Quest has all of the elements of a deck-building game, but there’s also a great medieval storyline that adds value to the gameplay too.