What is it: Slay the Spire is a roguelike card battler where you pick from one of three character classes and attempt to ascend the titular Spire, by navigating a series of fights and events over three floors, each capped by a selection of bosses. The art is fairly dull, the plot is almost non-existent, but it has mechanics that are really finely honed, and the variety of stuff you can do means replaying it never feels like a chore.

What Platforms is it on: It's early access at the moment, so PC only. Switch is in consideration, asking here won't hurry them up.

Why should I care: Roguelikes are an offshoot of Rogue, a permadeth RPG on a grid based system, but mainstream audiences aren't too into that kind of stratified system. Games like Spelunky and Isaac really popularised the roguelike formula by twinning the permadeath and procgen levels and pickups with action sensibilities. Slay the Spire goes back to a more deterministic style approach but adds in the element of a deck of cards, adding some randomness into what you can do. Your skill at drafting cards as you win fights so you can create a deck that works well, coupled with your ability to calculate the correct move at any given time are where the strategy comes in. It's a game that if you're good at it, you can pretty much always win, but getting that good at it takes ages.

The three character classes in the game have individual decks with no card crossover besides the standard attack and defence cards. Draw, Play, Discard and Exhausts are the verbs that make up your turns, but each character has a spin on what playing feels like given their innate traits, their card pool, and the relics that they can pick up. It's a game of beautiful and incredibly satisfying synergies, where a single card or passive relic can turn a run around. You can win with a deck stuffed full of cards that you can roll through without hesitation, or you can hone your deck down into a handful of cards that allow you to run infinite combos.

Yeah, but...: If people are interested, I might well do an "Intro To" style stream. It's absolutely worth looking beyond the card game facade, and the fairly underwhelming aesthetic presentation, because the game underneath it is brimming with brilliant ideas and incredibly smart design decisions that have seen me put near enough 100 hours into it over the past few months.