Aura

quietly worried about this same thing with hades 2

for me, i'm interested because no other deckbuilder roguelike has come anywhere close to hitting the spot STS did in the first place. I'm excited for "more STS" on that basis alone

people have built aggressively on the foundation but i think the games built on the foundation mostly don't understand it

as a comparison in board gaming for a few years after dominion came out everyone was making deckbuilers there but close to 20 years on nobody is really making deckbuilders but dominion is still making expansions

I feel the same way, but an interesting thing I find is that I keep coming back to the first one after playing a bunch of similar games. None of them have captured the same sort of magic for me like the original did.

Honestly, I was wondering just how they'd iterate on Slay the Spire in a way that the mods haven't already, one of the things I saw in the screen shots was adding a modifier to a specific card and that made me go, "oh, cool! ...I think there's a mod that already does that, though."

From what I remember, the game had a huge data driven playtest period. So one of the strengths was how well balanced the mechanics were, with there not being too many "always take this, it's so busted" or "never take this it's garbage" cards/relics.

So even if it winds up retreading ground a bunch of other games have covered in the meantime, it might be able to stand out if it's got that same level of mechanical polish that not every game has.

when sts came out, its only competition was dream quest. now it has to fight the likes of balatro. gonna be interesting to see if the people even give a shit about more deckbuilding in an era where "if it's indie it's a roguelike with deckbuilding elements" is a valid joke.