ENDED - Historical Low* - Freecell Quest - 80% off

Oh, it occurs to me, have you ever played Card Hunter? That's a fun card/RPG hybrid game, and one I I loved back in the day. It did get a new developer a year or so ago, so it's been releasing new content again for a while now. It's free-to-play and, assuming the new developer is sticking to old traditions, rather reasonably priced for its paid content.

As far as Slay the Spire, it was as I recall the fifth example of its design, with examples of the design dating back years before Slay the Spire (even just on Steam, Monster Slayers released about five months before StS's Early Accees launch, or about two years prior to its live launch). Moreover, that count of five is not including extremely similar but reasonably different games like Hand of Fate (which released further back even than the early 2017 release of Monster Slayers, being released back in 2015).

Both Hand of Fate and Monster Slayers are ones I had a lot of fun with, and Monster Slayers was different enough to be worth playing in addition to StS, despite in many ways being more simplistic than StS. For one thing, Monster Slayers focused more on a traditional single player unlocking flow (versus focusing more on fun customizations and personalizations like StS), which gave it a fairly compelling "gotta keep playing until everything is unlocked" vibe, since you were more regularly unlocking new classes or class improvements.

Similarly, Hand of Fate was a more obviously different-but-similar offering to Slay the Spire that I had loads of fun with (what with the real time combat being a lot less annoying and lot more compelling than I thought it would be, the freedom of movement in its map nodes being rather compelling in an RPG dungeon exploration sense, and the game having an even more compelling unlocking design than Monster Slayers).

Since StS released with such praise and affection, there've been countless clones, as well. I think I'm up to eight clones of it that I've played, now?

Royal Booty Quest isn't recommendable, especially as it seems to have been abandoned, but is still notable for launching into EA immediately back in 2018, a full year before StS even finished its own Early Access (it was also free to claim, initially, making it a lot more reasonable a game to try back then, than now with a StS equitable $20 price tag hanging over its decidedly less equitable content). Well, it's not as bad or explicit as its name suggests, what with the game having originally been a partial asset theft of Slay the Spire. and even now still benefiting from that underlying infrastructure. There's nevertheless still good reason for its store page being overwhelmed with negative reviews, as it currently is.

Neoverse is a much more recommendable StS derivative and, following certain early updates, changed itself to feel a lot less like a clone, then becoming legtiimately interesting in its own right. In fact, when I last played it (in June 2020, or thereabouts, with the store page's news feed showing continued updates up through December of that same year)- and while it was still far less polished and far more frustrating than StS, and lacking the QoL mods (or robust modding support in general) of StS- it was at the same time actually far more fun in some design aspects.

Of all the StS styled games I've played since, I think Neoverse'd probably be the one that best gives a StS vibe, while still being distinct and appealing enough in its own right. Though, to be clear, two years is a long time for my fuzzy memory to call back to, so maybe give it a proper look yourself, and see if it's what you're expecting.

Well, at the very least, I can be confident in asserting that it's a better option for you to pursue than Royal Booty Quest. 🙄