Slay the Spire is arguably one of the best roguelike deck-builder games out there. You get to take on a new challenge every time you play, as the intimidating Spire’s layout alternates, and you try new combinations of cards and relics. Slay the Spire is a sometimes difficult but satisfying experience you must try if you haven’t already.
But, for those who aren't interested in its expansive modding community or have no more card games to play in real life, quite a few games might scratch the same itch Slay the Spire provides. Let's look at some of the most well-known ones and discuss why they might satiate your thirst for more StS content.
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Updated April 6, 2023, by Luke Ackroyd: Slay the Spire is a fantastic experience full of content to keep you hooked for a very long time, but eventually, you might feel like moving on, and you’ll likely be eager for other deck-building, roguelike games to dive into next. Luckily, there are plenty of similar games to enjoy, from multiplayer card battles to single-player roguelikes with a similar theme. Many games have been inspired by Slay the Spire, so deciding which ones to focus on can be challenging.
21 Inscryption
If you’re eager for more card games like Slay The Spire, then Inscryption is a great, spooky choice to try. Not only does it have deck-building and roguelike elements, but it’s also full of puzzles as you attempt to escape the unsettling cabin you find yourself inside. Inscryption is undoubtedly on the scarier side of the deck-building genre.
Without giving too much away, Inscryption has compelling gameplay and a thrilling storyline that will surprise you around every corner. The card battles are fun, the boss fights are challenging, and you're in for an unforgettable experience if you feel brave.
20 Tower Tactics: Liberation
Tower Tactics: LIberation offers a unique take on the deck-building genre by combining it with tower defense. Instead of trying to slay a spire, you're protecting a tower from the dangerous Salkoth, whose army keeps approaching wave after wave.
Like Slay the Spire, you'll craft a deck to help you with the increasing difficulty of the challenges ahead. You can also gain many trinkets and spells during a run to increase your defenses over time. Another similarity is how the map differs each time you play, keeping your experience fresh and exciting. Tower Tactics: Liberation is a must-play if you love tower defense.
19 Vault Of The Void
Vault of the Void is a deck-building card game that aims to remove some of the unpredictability of the classic roguelike experience. It provides valuable information constantly to inform your decisions when picking what fights to take on and what cards to go with.
If you enjoy planning out your moves, yet retaining a fast-paced feel to combat, then Vault of the Void is for you. You'll use your cards, abilities, and mysterious void stones to battle many minions that stand in your way. You also get to swap in and out your cards as you progress, allowing you to have a lot of fun discovering exciting combinations.
18 Pirates Outlaws
Pirates Outlaws is a fun Slay the Spire alternative if you’d like a different theme to get lost in. Instead of climbing a mysterious tower, you’ll set sail to battle rival pirates, skeletons, and other thrilling monsters. You'll navigate various locations as you map out your expedition across the water, ensuring that no adventure will be the same.
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Pirates Outlaws has a similar feel to Slay the Spire but has enough differences to keep it fresh and new. It even has different game modes, including the classic tavern brawl mode all pirates want to jump into. Pirates Outlaws has an easy-to-grasp learning curve as you get to grips with the various cards and characters to unlock, and it will soon have you feeling like a mighty pirate.
17 Tainted Grail: Conquest
Tainted Grail: Conquest is a deck builder in a hyper-dark fantasy setting surrounded by an apocalyptic mist called the Wyrdness. The atmosphere is dour and nihilistic, and the game even has a torch-management system that heavily impacts combat in the fog. In this roguelike, you’ll steadily progress through a map, fighting mobs, leveling up, getting new cards or passive abilities, and encountering random events with a series of choices.
Tainted Grail has you walking around 3D maps to amplify the atmosphere throughout. All the different classes are fantastically unique in their play style. Also, the narrative is built around the replayability aspect of roguelike deck-builders. If you’re a long-time deck-building veteran, the combat might get easy once you optimize each class, even on the harder difficulties. But overall, it’s a great choice if you’re looking for a game like Slay the Spire.
16 Roguebook
Roguebook perfectly captures the feeling of Slay the Spire like games but still provides something different. You’ll pick a main and secondary character from four playable options and advance through a series of hex-grid levels each run. Instead of a 2D map, you’ll reveal more of the hex-grid, using brushes and inks to discover as many beneficial events or battles as possible.
The combat itself is different enough, introducing a Swapping mechanic between the front and back characters and a host of other game-specific status effects that may take a little while to get used to. While the runs are a bit on the short side with only three playable maps, there's a ton of depth to these randomly generated maps and a vast amount of replayability with the NG+ mode. The only significant drawback of Roguebook is its story, which is all but non-existent. But, to most Roguelike fans, this is more of a plus than a negative.
Banners of Ruin is another interesting game that takes the classic Slay the Spire format, which made the genre so popular in the first place, and twisted it a bit. Banners of Ruin focuses on multiple units in combat, with placement playing a significant role in battles. The game involves groups of anthropomorphic animals, each with gimmicks and perks to being on the squad. For example, bears are a tanky wall, weasels are all about DoT effects, rabbits focus on moving allies and enemies around, and wolves are all-rounders.
It's a bit easy for a deck builder and incredibly easy compared to some other roguelikes, but the art style, unique mechanics, and emphasis on tactics make it worth a look, to be sure.
14 League Of Legends: Legends Of Runeterra
Riot’s League of Legends: Legends of Runeterra is a collectible deck-building game that was released in 2020. It is not an in-game card game like Gwent but a completely separate entity from the rest of League of Legends. You get to build decks using your favorite characters from the main game and new characters, too, using their skills to craft your own strategies in each battle.
Legends of Runeterra is an excellent alternative to Hearthstone or Shadowverse and has steadily improved more and more with each content update and patch it has received. It has also been consistently popular with each update for the most part since its original release.
13 The Binding Of Isaac
The Binding of Isaac, among some other games, really started the whole wave of roguelikes in the first place. The game has multiple iterations, including Rebirth, Afterbirth, and Repentance. Each one of these expansions or new iterations adds an insane amount of new content as well, such as new bosses, over 20 different endings, challenges, unlockables, and characters.
The Binding of Isaac has thousands of different item synergies, an adorable yet grotesque art style, and an insane amount of content. Truly, if you want a game you can literally play forever, and every run feels relatively fresh, this is the game for you.
12 Griftlands
Griftlands, made by Klei Entertainment (the same studio behind classics like Shank & Don't Starve), is a unique deckbuilding title. It's much more narrative-focused than you'd probably expect and adds some pretty unique mechanics to the genre.
Griftlands is a deck builder, to be sure, but it's more accurately a sci-fi roguelike narrative deck-building RPG. When it comes to Griftlands vs. Slay the Spire, each run of Griftlands is significantly longer than a standard StS run. But the whole negotiation combat mechanic it adds is fascinating and makes it much more possible to play as a silver-tongued mercenary than a bloodthirsty one. With three playable campaigns, an endless mode, and even unique daily challenges, Griftlands has an absurd amount of content for the price, and the world that it paints through the multiple stories is one that we've never seen before in any game like it.
11 Darkest Dungeon
Next is a game that isn't about collecting cards but instead collecting misfits, and it's called Darkest Dungeon. You then take these colorful characters and force them to explore deeper and deeper into different dungeons until they lose hope or die.
The tone and design of Darkest Dungeon is by far its biggest draw, but once that pulls you in, the compelling and punishing gameplay will keep you hooked. For something that started in Early Access, it's a game with a ton of content, especially with the DLCs. Plus, there's a gigantic modding community for it as well. All-in-all, Darkest Dungeon has a ton in its repertoire to keep you playing, and it's a ton of fun the entire time.
10 Across The Obelisk
Across the Obelisk was released on April 8th, 2021, and has a player base that steadily grew since its launch. It is an excellent choice if you’re looking for multiplayer games like Slay the Spire. It is a map-based, roguelike deck-builder where you and up to three friends choose between a roster of characters to form a team of four. These characters all have their own starter decks and unique gimmicks to get to know the more you play.
The characters cover various archetypes, from a werewolf knight to a cleric pig and even a pyromaniac cult leader. There’s a lot of content to enjoy throughout the game, and the fact that it’s a collaborative experience with your friends makes it even better.
9 Gordian Quest
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Gordian Quest is another deck-builder game that significantly differs from others in the genre. For example, character placement plays an essential role in the game. You also control multiple characters simultaneously, each with their own deck and level progression. But the most significant difference is the deck-building system, with a skill tree that allows you to draw new cards from three different decks (per character), upgrade or master specific cards, or just gain general stat buffs.
This system allows for a ton of versatility between the already unique characters. Then, once you add the equipment, runes, status effects, and stat modifiers, Gordian Quest becomes much more complex in the best ways.
8 Monster Train
Here's something perfect if you want more of Slay the Spire or as close as possible. While Slay the Spire is about vertically climbing the tower, Monster Train is focused on horizontal travel, taking the Pyre of Hell back to The Frozen Heart. Along the way, you'll be summoning Demons of all sorts to fight against the Angels trying to stop you.
It has a lot in common with Slay the Spire and is pretty unapologetic about it, but Monster Train also has a lot of new stuff it brings to the table. The three different floors are a neat idea that works better in practice than you would assume. The Clan combinations add a ton of diversity, and the Pact Shard system from the Last Divinity DLC changes how you approach each run. Sure, when later on in a run, the overlapping of different buffs, debuffs, character traits, spells, boss effects, and more can get pretty confusing, but you get used to it after some time.
7 Into The Breach
Into The Breach is made by Subset Games, a company most known for Faster Than Light. FTL was all about journeying across the stars building up a crew and ship as powerful as possible to try and hopefully beat the Rebel Flagship. Meanwhile, Into the Breach is more puzzle-centric in its design, though you wouldn't expect that, given it's a game all about fighting gigantic insects with mechs.
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It might look simplistic in style and gameplay, but Into The Breach is anything but simple. Figuring out where the enemy will attack, how you can stop them, and how to manage your team of mechs is so challenging yet rewarding. And, if you expect to beat this game in one try, you've got another thing coming, so get ready to play it again and again.
6 Loop Hero
Loop Hero is a roguelike deck-builder that seemingly popped up out of nowhere and became one of 2021’s best indie games. You play as an inhabitant of a world that has been thrown into a chaotic, timeless loop by a sinister Lich. Many quickly burned through it and were ravenous for more games like it.
Not many games can compare to the unique tone, gameplay, or style that Loop Hero has going for it. While there are cards in Loop Hero, it’s much less of a deck-builder and more of an auto-battler. Still, there's a lot here for StS fans, especially in terms of its difficulty and replayability.
5 Ring Of Pain
While many other deck-building roguelikes are big, expansive RPGs with breathtaking visuals, Ring of Pain has a far more simplistic art style. It is still visually appealing, with a creepy feel to it as well. You’ll be exploring the randomly generated ring dungeons, planning your route as you encounter many creepy horror entities along the way.
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Ring of Pain has many deep mechanics hidden beneath its simplistic surface that will keep you coming back for more. Because the runs are typically much shorter than other roguelikes, it is effortless to jump into a new playthrough and keep playing repeatedly.
4 Dicey Dungeons
Dicey Dungeons is a deck-builder in disguise. Instead of cards, you'll use dice to determine what actions, attacks, and how much damage you'll do. But, in essence, it works very similarly to any other roguelike deck builder. The tone of Dicey Dungeons is one of its best aspects, as it takes place on a game show where the protagonists try to make it to the end and be granted their biggest wish.
Various characters are turned into living dice before entering and are assigned classes based on their overall build, personality, and background. There are characters like the Warrior, the Thief, and even an Inventor. Each class has different passives and options for how they use their dice, and this is where the beauty of Dicey Dungeons shows itself. How you'll play the Witch character is entirely different from how you'll play the Inventor, and that's a significant accomplishment for a game of this genre.
3 Guild of Dungeoneering
The Guild of Dungeoneering is a blast of a game with one of the best Menu music of all time. Instead of playing cards to cast spells or summon monsters, the cards in The Guild of Dungeoneering are used to build the Dungeon around the Dungeoneers exploring it.
That might bring an image to mind of people covered in armor and weaponry delving into a well-rendered series of dungeon rooms, but actually, the art style is a lot more...craftsy than you would expect, and that absolutely works for it.
2 One Step From Eden
When a popular game like Slay the Spire does well, a trend usually starts of other similar games coming out. But, one game series that desperately needed a trend of its own was the Megaman: Battle Network franchise. Those games had such a unique approach to combat, but not many other titles tried to emulate it until One Step From Eden. With a pixel-based art style, One Step from Eden is Battle Network on a budget, mixed with some anime aesthetic and roguelike flair.
This game is really tough and almost requires you to learn the iconography from over 200 spells, so you'll recognize them in an instant. The combo system feels similar to Wizard of Legend or Magika, and it works surprisingly well in this format.
