★★★★★ Great Game, Just Needs Some Adjustments
Mon Jun 15 2020 akdag2014I love this game on PS4 and Switch, and am glad it’s finally on iPhone so I can play it when I’m somewhere and don’t have/can’t play my Switch! The performance of the game runs great on my iPhone 11 Pro, including surprisingly good (low) battery usage. My biggest complaint comes from the optimization for iPhone, or lack thereof. It seems the game is largely a straight port from the other systems, which is great in some respects, but doesn’t work so great in others. Some of the menu items are very small and hard to read and/or tap without tapping the wrong thing accidentally. Also when it comes to looking at and playing cards, it’s hard to make a card be fully visible in order to read what it says. Then I also run into the problem where if you were looking at one card but decide to play a different card, you have to make sure the first card goes fully back into your hand before dragging the card you want to play. There have been many instances where I accidentally played the wrong card, but didn’t realize it until after, because I was touching the correct card.
One other minor but important feature that seems to be missing right now is cross-save between iPhone and iPad. I mainly want to play on my phone, but if I were to ever play on my iPad, I’d want the save from my phone to carry over, rather than having to start from scratch on the iPad.
Overall, it’s a fantastic game that is well suited for mobile play, and I know I’m going to sink a lot of time into it! But some tweaks to the UI would go a long way, and adding cross-save between iOS devices would be much appreciated.
★★★★★ 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.
★★★★★ Great game but impossible to beat.
Thu Jun 09 2022 Reaereaerea1234567890101010Nerf the final boss in the standard mode.. I literally had a deck that was so busted I was winning every elite and regular fight without losing hp. I get to the final boss in act 3 and he is hitting me for 21x3……. Why? You have a max of like 80 by that point and he’s hitting you for 63?! He has 450+ health and you can’t do nearly that much damage because when you play 12 cards your turn ends.. I had 3 potions and he was just under half health when I died.. he hit me for 18x3 on the turn I died.. I didn’t happen to draw 200 weak cards and 400 defense cards to block that ridiculous amount of damage.. so does only 1 build work because I’ve never made it to the final boss at max ho and had none of the other fights be even close only to lose.. why is the final boss that hard? That makes no sense.. why isn’t he the same difficulty as the first two in relation to the rest of the floor? He needs to do half the damage he does to be balanced.. doing 80% of my health in one attack is obscene.. idk why the final boss isn’t balanced at all.. I’ve made it to the boss every time and never once beaten him.. I thought for sure I was winning this one because I was finishing fights without ever taking damage no matter what elite I fought and I still wasn’t even close.. why 21 damage when you’ve been building a deck the whole game and you don’t just have 2 cards total so that you always draw what you need? I only had 21-22 cards and I still had too many to draw the ones I needed when he was hitting me with big attacks.. I just don’t understand why he’s not balanced at all.. it makes no sense.. it’d be a 5 star if just the final boss had any balance whatsoever..
★★★★★ 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!
★★★★★ 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.
