Deck-building roguelike games have become wildly popular with a slew of fantastic titles from mostly indie game studios. Of these games, Slay the Spire is one of the most well-known in the genre. The mechanics are flawless, and the game is wonderful at creating a deep desire to try again and again.
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Many games have come out since this one was launched with the hope to bring a question to every gamer's mind: Can any game best Slay the Spire? Wildfrost, published by Chucklefish and launched on April 12th, 2023, is the latest to take on the challenge, and it just might have a chance.
Curate a deck and traverse through procedurally generated battles; those are the basic principles for deck-building roguelikes. Every game in the genre borrows from others and introduces its own unique mechanics to make their game stand out. Slay the Spire has all the basic and extended mechanics that other games in the genre have, such as upgrading cards, removing cards, and items that boost your character.
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Wildfrost, however, goes further with an abundance of enemy archetypes, battle partners, and card upgrade options. Wildfrost cards, partners, and totems can all be upgraded with charms so that they have secondary effects compared to Slay the Spire, where cards either become cheaper or stronger. Lastly, Wildfrost has position management for your team that is significant and similar to Darkest Dungeon and so it wins this category.
Both Slay the Spire and Wildfrost do great by showing you the basics and mechanics of the game before brutally beating you down and forcing you to realize the game won’t be easy. However, being painfully difficult doesn’t automatically make a good game; it’s how the game allows you to grow into it and learn to overcome the challenges that make it fun and satisfying to play. In this aspect, both Slay the Spire and Wildfrost do pretty well, but in different ways.
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Slay the Spire begins simpler than Wildfrost with fewer mechanics at the start and makes the first obstacles more simple on how to overcome them. Wildfrost starts you off with lots of important mechanics to learn, with which you’ll need to overcome the first boss compared to straightforward attacking. Once you’re past this, both games are equally difficult and interesting, however, Slay the Spire does better to ramp you into it.
In these kinds of games, you’re often likely to try to min-max your deck to beat the game. Slay the Spire allows you to go wild and create hyper-specific decks that are almost game-breaking, while Wildfrost is more reined in. This doesn’t make Slay the Spire easier however since the game allows this kind of synergy/strategy, it’s more difficult and requires you to be lucky to get the cards and upgrades you need.
Wildfrost definitely has synergies for both you and the enemy that are powerful, but nothing game-breaking that creates an easy sweep. This category is a tie. It depends on whether you would play for hours, hoping to hit a perfect run that obliterates the game, or whether you would like the variability of strength to be more consistent.
You get to choose from four characters in Slay the Spire, where each character has a completely unique style of play that involves independent sets of cards. You’re restricted to your character's card set plus a colorless card set that’s shared with every character.
In Wildfrost, you can choose from three randomly generated leaders with different stats and abilities but generally play similarly. You can and should base your deck around your leader's ability, but it isn’t completely necessary. However, Wildfrost makes up for this by allowing you to build a team that also synergizes with your deck. Both games feature a plethora of cards, upgrades, and enemies, so it’s difficult to compare in that aspect and results in another tie.
While some games allow you to earn permanent upgrades for buffs or new abilities that persist between games, both Slay the Spire and Wildfrost only allow you to unlock new cards that increase the versatility of your deck-building. None of the unlocks in either game make the game easier by making your character stronger but instead make the game have more options for you to choose from.
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Of course, some of these options you unlock allow you to create powerful synergies and strategies, but overall you unlock more options vs upgrading your character in both games. Wildfrost, however, groups these unlockables in a more interesting and fun way by requiring you to acquire these new options through specific challenges compared to Slay the Spire.
Slay the Spire was never lauded for its beauty but almost entirely for its gameplay. It’s not to say Slay the Spire is unattractive, however, Wildfrost is wildly fun and adorable. Every character and enemy oozes personality and charm. Every animation in Wildfrost, from the UI elements swinging into the card idle animations, creates a familiar and exciting energy in the game. It’s incredibly exciting to enter new zones since you’ll encounter new partners and enemies that are wildly creative and just plain fun.
Slay the Spire is incredibly vague with its generally nonexistent lore. The world is most definitely interesting, and the monsters in the game are both inspired and creepy. But if you’re interested in learning more about the world and what you’re fighting for, it’s slim pickings in Slay the Spire. In Wildfrost, you unlock journal pages that add lore and background to the world and why you’re fighting through monsters in the tundra. There’s no dialogue from enemies or your team in the game, however. If a storyline and lore are important to you, Wildfrost is your best pick.
There’s a reason why Slay the Spire is well-known in its genre. The replayability is through the roof and is always a great pick-up if you’ve got some time to kill. Both Slay the Spire and Wildfrost feature Daily Challenges, where everyone in the world starts their run with the same deck. You compete for the highest score of the day in these Daily Challenges, and they are a great refreshing way to play the game when you’ve completed the main story. Slay the Spire does have the advantage here, though, because of the potential synergies you can get in your deck. It’s incredibly satisfying to create the perfect deck in Slay the Spire more so than it is in Wildfrost.
Overall, both games are wonderful if you’re focused on mechanics or balance. But, if aesthetics and story are important to you, Wildfrost does better by a wide margin. Slay the Spire dominates in replayability, though, without question.
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