History VideoGame / SlayTheSpire

** The Bronze Automaton has a "HYPER BEAM" that deals massive damage but forces it to cool down for its next turn, a reference to the attack of the same name and function from ''Franchise{{Pokemon}}''.

On April 10, a sequel was confirmed to be coming to Early Access in 2025 with at least one new hero, the Necrobinder.

* GameMod: The PC version has Steam Workshop support.

''Slay the Spire'' is a [[{{Roguelike}} roguelike]] DeckBuildingGame, developed and published by an US-based {{indie game}} studio in UsefulNotes/{{Seattle}}, Washington known as [=MegaCrit=] Games. It follows the story of several mysterious outcasts as they attempt to climb the eponymous Spire, all in the hopes of reaching its heart and destroying its evil influence. This won't be easy, as the Spire is full of cultists, monsters, hostile constructs, and even stranger terrors, all looking to bring your quest to a premature end.

The game received its [[https://store.steampowered.com/app/646570/Slay_the_Spire/ full Steam release]] on January 23, 2019 with three fully-playable characters (the Ironclad, the Silent, and the Defect) and a daily run mode. On May 21, 2019, the game released for the UsefulNotes/PlayStation4, followed by subsequent releases for the UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch on June 6, and the UsefulNotes/XboxONE on August 14. A fourth class, the Watcher, was released in 2020. The Watcher would go on to represent the series in ''VideoGame/{{Fraymakers}}''.

** The Ironclad card Searing Blow starts off with mediocre damage. However, it can be upgraded an infinite number of times, growing in damage exponentially with each upgrade.

** The Silent can do this with a shiv-focused deck. Shivs deal only 4 damage[[note]]At least at first. The Accuracy Power card boosts Shiv damage by 3 (5 if upgraded) and the Wrist Blade relic boosts the damage of all 0-cost Attack cards by 3.[[/note]] but are free and generated by certain Silent cards. There is an achievement for generating ten or more shivs in a single round.

* LookBehindYou: Implied by the [[https://slaythespire.gamepedia.com/Distraction Distraction]] card's artwork. The Silent pointing her finger is enough to make the enemy look away.

** Likewise, the Defect's Biased Cognition can count as this for Orb-heavy builds. It gives you 4 Focus up-front, sharply increasing your orbs' effectiveness, but makes you lose 1 Focus per turn afterwards, so if you don't win quickly, you’ll end up worse off than when you started.

** Curse cards are junk cards that are permanently added to the players deck, usually through random events. In addition to being useless, many have other negative effects. Most can be removed from your deck at shops or random events like any other card

** The Artifact status effect prevents the next debuff from applying to the player, nothing about that says it must be from an ''enemy''. Often players have a EurekaMoment when they notice or realize that it negates the downsides of many useful cards, e.g., getting to keep the Strength from Flex, not losing Dexterity from Wraith Form, and so on.

* FighterMageThief: The first three playable characters fit broadly into these roles, though each of them can be built in a number of ways:

** Shivs. They cause a mere 4 damage, but cost 0 energy. However, they can be the deadliest weapons in the entire game. For example, there's the Wrist Blade that adds 4 damage to all attacks costing 0 energy. There's Accuracy that adds 4 (or 6 if upgraded) damage to all Shivs. Infinite Blades will give you a Shiv every turn. The Ninja Scroll gives you three Shivs automatically to start combat. Cloak and Dagger gives 6 Block ''and'' a Shiv. Oh, have Curses or unnecessary cards in your hard and have 1 Energy left? Storm of Steel will turn ''all'' of them into Shivs. Then, there's the engines that can operate with Shivs. Master Reality will upgrade all created Shivs (and Shivs are always ''created''). Envenom is an obvious buff to Shivs -- every Shiv is +1 Poison. After Image and A Thousand Cuts activate with Shivs. Artifacts like Ornamental Fan, Shuriken, and Kunai add 4 Block, 1 Strength, and 1 Dexterity with every 3 attacks played, while Panache (+5 damage) activates with every 5 card plays. The Dead Branch artifact adds a card every time a card is Exhausted, and Shivs are Exhausted upon use. Finisher? Yeah, you know all those Shivs (and other attacks) you used? Well, the Finisher card does an attack for every attack made that turn. With the right artifacts and cards, Shivs may be able to cause 20 or more damage ''each'' for ''zero energy''.

* MemoryMatchMiniGame: The match and keep event has you playing with the in game cards. You get 5 tries, any cards you match are added to your deck, including curses.

* AfterTheEnd: Several relic descriptions mention a "Spireblight" that seems to have wiped out most of the edible plant life in the world. The relics in question are [[MundaneMadeAwesome various pieces of fruit,]] which are treated as precious artifacts of a time long past.
* AIRoulette: N'loth asks for a completely random relic to eat — so he may ask for boss relics that come with a downside[[note]]such as Coffee Dripper or Ectoplasm[[/note]], relics that had a limited number of uses[[note]]such as the Old Coin or the Empty Cage[[/note]], or even the useless ''Spirit Poop''.

** To a lesser extent, the Ice Cream relic, which can allow you to hoard up energy and then spend it all in one round on a huge X-cost card or a barrage of high-value card plays.

** Depending on your deck, a lot of seemingly amazing cards can just wind up being dead weight if you don't have the right cards to fully take advantage of their abilities. Many cards only shine with other cards or even relics to provide synergy. Likewise, some relics are almost useless without cards, particularly those involving mechanics such as Poison and Exhaust.

** On the Ironclad side of things, Searing Blow's special ability is that it can be upgraded an infinite number of times (as opposed to every other card where it's a one-and-done affair), and the bonus damage the card receives increases with every upgrade. Unfortunately, this means that you have to focus on upgrading only Searing Blow, since it requires a few upgrades before it becomes viable, which in turn means that cards with more utility are left in the dust and you're foregoing opportunities to heal. One slight upside is that other cards such as Armaments and Apotheosis allow you to do this for the current combat[[note]]Armaments can upgrade another card in your hand, or all other cards in your hand if it's upgraded, while Apotheosis upgrades all other cards in your deck, then exhausts itself[[/note]], and Armaments does ''not'' exhaust itself when used, meaning that if you're lucky enough to keep getting Armaments and Searing Blow in your hand at the same time, you can upgrade Searing Blow multiple times in the same combat.

*** Blasphemy instantly puts the Watcher in Divinity mode: Triple damage plus an extra three energy. The catch? It kills you next turn. The player can therefore only use it if they can be sure they can finish the battle that turn. You ''could'' theoretically circumvent this downside by being Intangible when the supposed death kicks in, but that comes with its own set of issues. Upgrading it gives it Retain, allowing you to keep it in your hand between turns, turning it into 1-cost Divinity on demand as long as you can still defeat the enemies in time.

*** Deva Form gives you increasing amounts of energy per turn to the point where you'll have more energy than you know what to do with. While good with Fasting or decks with a lot of card draw, Watcher normally doesn't have much of an energy deficit and can usually do her job just as well without Deva Form.

* BloodyMurder: Ironclad's Hemokinesis involves sacrificing HP to spray a deadly spray of blood on enemies for high damage. And since he has "Burning Blood" and a number of flame-related powers, they could tangentially be considered under this trope as well. [[note]]Particularly Combust, since it deals damage to yourself to hurt others[[/note]]

** Flash of Steel is a zero-cost, three-damage card that also allows you to draw one card. This makes it one of the few cards that synergizes well with almost every deck, as it's never a dead draw and can even add significant damage to "machine gun"-type decks.

** What cards, relics, and encounters you run into are completely random and can completely screw you over if you start trying to build a specific type of deck and then find nothing to help (for example, if you pick up Accuracy, but then never get any shiv cards to use the boost on).

** Shivs. They cause a mere 4 damage, but cost 0 energy. However, they can be the deadliest weapons in the entire game. For example, there's the Wrist Blade that adds 4 damage to all attacks costing 0 energy. There's Accuracy that adds 4 (or 6 if upgraded) damage to all Shivs. Infinite Blades will give you a Shiv every turn. The Ninja Scroll gives you three Shivs automatically to start combat. Cloak and Dagger gives 6 Block ''and'' a Shiv. Oh, have Curses or unnecessary cards in your hard and have 1 Energy left? Storm of Steel will turn ''all'' of them into Shivs. Then, there's the engines that can operate with Shivs. Master Reality will upgrade all created Shivs (and Shivs are always ''created''). Envenom is an obvious buff to Shivs -- every Shiv is +1 Poison. After Image and A Thousand Cuts activate with Shivs. Artifacts like Ornamental Fan, Shuriken, and Kunai add 4 Block, 1 Strength, and 1 Dexterity with every 3 attacks played, while Panache (+5 damage) activates with every 5 card plays. The Dead Branch artifact adds a card every time a card is Exhausted, and Shivs are Exhausted upon use. Finisher? Yeah, you know all those Shivs (and other attacks) you used? Well, the Finisher card does an attack for every attack made that turn. With the right artifacts and cards, Shivs may be cause 20 or more damage ''each'' for ''zero energy''.

* ModularDifficulty: Custom Mode let's you pick seeds, ascensions, and enable card you haven't even unlocked. You can also enable tons of modifiers, including but not limited to: endless mode, making enemies drop relics, starting with various relics, lowering max HP, debuffing enemies, ignoring paths, etc.

* NoSell: The right combination of cards and/or relics can make you completely immune to even the most powerful attacks - for instance, the Tungsten Rod and Apparition cards make you invulnerable to ALL attacks, and even a Disarm card [[note]]The weakest Strength-reduction card[[/note]] can reduce the Heart's "Blood Shot" attack from 2 damage 12 times to 0 damage 12 times.

** The Watcher card Blasphemy immediately puts the player into the Divinity stance, which grants three energy upon activation and ''triples'' any damage dealt to the opponent. The Death part comes into the equation when it kills the user at the start of the following turn. On a lesser note, being in Wrath stance doubles all attack damage - yours ''and'' the enemy's.
** Downplayed with X-cost cards. They use up all your remaining energy and have effects based on how much energy was spent on them -- devastating if you've built up your energy properly before unleashing them, but without any energy afterwards you'll have to end your turn barring any 0-cost cards you have.

* BadLuckMitigationMechanic: There is just a 3% chance of a non-boss card reward offering being rare, but for every common card offered, this chance goes up by 1%, resetting back to 3% once a rare card is offered[[note]]Also, at the start of the game, the rare card chance is set to -2%, making rare card offerings impossible after the first encounter and unlikely after the second, as three cards are offered after each encounter[[/note]]. This makes the Busted Crown's drawback more severe that it would be otherwise; because it limits card rewards to one choice instead of three, the rare card chance climbs up only a third as quickly.

** Exhausting and discarding cards may look like a downside at first but they can also be handy in getting rid of temporary debuff cards added mid-combat or mitigating the effects of curse cards you've gained during your journey.

* ClingyMacGuffin: The Necronomicurse, gained by obtaining the {{Necronomicon}}. It cannot be removed from your deck, and exhausting it causes it to be immediately put back into your hand. Another is Curse of the Bell, gained by obtaining Calling Bell, which cannot be removed from your deck but can still be exhausted. Finally, there's the Ascender's Bane, which is permanently put into the deck on Ascension 10 and higher, but is Ethereal (meaning it exhausts for the combat if it's in your hand at the end of your turn). Other than that, they act like standard, unplayable curses. {{Downplayed}} with the Parasite curse, which reduces your max HP when removed from your deck.

* FissionMailed: After beating Act 3 with each character at least once, you get the opportunity to collect three keys in subsequent runs. If you beat the Act 3 boss without the keys, you'll get destroyed by the Corrupt Heart in a cutscene, [[DownerEnding and that's where your run ends]]. If you collected all three keys beforehand, though, you'll still get beaten down by the Heart, but are then instantly revived and allowed to continue on to Act 4.