Best Games Like Slay The Spire

Released in 2019, Slay the Spire is one of the better indie games to combine roguelike and deckbuilding mechanics to create an infinitely replayable gameplay loop with tons of room for strategy.

If you enjoyed the game’s unique approach to card battling and progression and crave more roguelike deck builders like it, we’ve got you covered.

In this list, we’ll highlight the best games like Slay the Spire to play in 2023, including the best card games like Slay the Spire on PC, console, and mobile.

We’ll be updating this list in the future with new titles, so make sure to check back and let us know if we missed any of your favorite games similar to Slay the Spire!

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Our first recommendation for Slay the Spire fans is Inscryption, another deckbuilding roguelike that incorporates escape-room style puzzles and psychological horror themes.

It’s the latest project from eclectic indie developer Daniel Mullins, best known for Pony Island, and introduces its own creepy card-based mythos while serving as a love letter to video games.

In it, you take on the role of a prisoner forced to play a sadistic card game against an unhinged host with multiple personas shrouded entirely in darkness.

Like Slay the Spire, each run sees you progressing through a series of card-based battles with random events, branching pathways, and opportunities to expand your deck with new cards.

The follow-up to Red Hook Studios’ grim and gritty strategy RPG maintains the dark and atmospheric tone of the first game while making some refinements to the original’s turn-based combat system.

Best described as “a roguelike road trip of the damned,” Darkest Dungeon II sees you forming a party of misfits traveling by stagecoach across a treacherous landscape brimming with danger.

Instead of collecting cards like in Slay the Spire, players collect different characters with distinct skills, strengths, and weaknesses that can play off of one another during battle.

We are glad to announce that the sequel is just as addictive and challenging as the original, with added features that fans of Slay the Spire may enjoy.

One of the more recent releases on this list, Across the Obelisk is becoming increasingly popular with Slay the Spire fans who crave a new roguelike deck builder.

It follows a similar premise to StS but throws co-op into the mix, allowing up to four players to band together and choose from 11 characters with unique starter decks and game-changing abilities.

These cover a wide range of fantasy archetypes along with some more unconventional heroes with clever playstyles that can synergize with teammates.

If you’ve ever wanted to play through Slay the Spire with a friend, then Across the Obelisk is the perfect game to do so.

Next up, Banners of Ruin is a roguelike card battler and deck builder that sees you assembling a party of up to six animal-based characters with unique cards and abilities that can define your deck’s playstyle.

The game is set in Dawn’s Point, a fantasy-inspired city on the brink of collapse as rival factions fight for control, forcing you to crush any enemies that try to get in your way and forge new alliances.

Along the way, you’ll collect weapons and armor that grant special effects to your characters and give them a fighting chance in battle against increasingly challenging and unpredictable foes.

Like Slay the Spire, players can use the knowledge from failed attempts to make better decisions as well as earn tokens to unlock new cards and passives for their next run.

Gordian Quest is another deck builder currently in Steam Early Access that shares some similarities with StS while differentiating itself in a number of ways.

The first is a greater emphasis on positioning, with certain cards having special effects that become activated whenever your character is placed onto a specific spot on the battlefield.

Additionally, the game has you controlling multiple characters with their own decks and level progression instead of just one hero like Slay the Spire.

There’s also a skill tree that affects the mechanics for drawing new cards, upgrading certain cards, and assigning stat buffs to each character in your party.

Continuing on, Tainted Grail: Conquest is a dark fantasy themed deck builder with roguelike progression and RPG mechanics that make for a satisfying blend.

In it, you’re tasked with exploring ever-changing maps while fighting deadly enemies as you look into the fate of the mysterious island of Avalon.

While traveling through these treacherous lands corrupted by dark forces, you’ll take on quests, save NPCs, and help build up your own village.

Tainted Grail boasts nine different character classes that can be further modified to create new and inventive combinations with unique synergies.

Trials of Fire is another deckbuilding roguelite with more tactical-based combat in which players choose three heroes before setting off across a post-cataclysmic wasteland.

Battles center on Slay the Spire-like card-battling as well as making tough tactical decisions and positioning characters to get the most from every turn and card in your deck.

To this point, the game places a major focus on deck customization, allowing you to build a party that’s prepared to take on any challenge as you carve your path in a fantasy world in ruin.

The expanded number of three hero decks versus just one in Slay the Spire presents new opportunities for creating synergy and tackling challenges.

If you’re looking for a new game that plays out very similarly to Slay the Spire, Roguebook is a roguelike deck builder that will do you good.

Each card has a cost and serves a specific purpose that can be boiled down to attacking your opponent or defending your characters from taking damage.

Instead of just one hero with a distinct attack style and deck, you’re controlling two whose playstyles differ significantly.

Where it sets itself apart from StS is world exploration, with your characters traversing a tiled world filled with treasure, new cards, and of course, more battles.

Considering how well-received Griftlands has been by the deck builder community, there’s a good chance Slay the Spire fans have already given it a go.

Regardless, we’ll take any chance we can get to recommend a game made by Klei Entertainment seeing as they’re one of the best indie developers, with hits like Shank and Don’t Starve in their catalog.

Griftlands is the studio’s first major foray into deck builders and hits the mark quite well while being a lot more narrative-driven than Slay the Spire fans are used to.

Additionally, the average run is a lot longer than in StS, though the actual combat and deckbuilding mechanics are fairly similar.

Another pretty obvious recommendation for anyone who loves Slay the Spire is Monster Train, in which players try to guide a train filled with monsters across a hellish landscape that has frozen over.

You have five monster clans to pick from that can be leveled up throughout the game to unlock new cards for future playthroughs.

Combat is naturally turn-based and features modified card-battling mechanics that allow you to mix and match minions and spells from several clans instead of just one.

Whereas Slay the Spire is all about vertical progression up a tower, Monster Train focuses on horizontal movement using three active battlefields instead of just one.

While we’ve covered a lot of hugely ambitious roguelikes and deckbuilding RPGs so far, we’d also like to shine a light on more modest, mechanics-driven games that may not be as popular.

Ring of Pain is a roguelite dungeon crawler that incorporates card battle combat and puzzle mechanics to make for an addictive “one more run” gameplay experience that’s hard to put down.

In it, you’re tasked with delving into randomly generated ring dungeons filled with creepy enemies, obstacles, and hidden paths waiting to be revealed.

It’s the kind of game you can play over and over and keep finding new little secrets that affect how you approach combat and interact with the world.

Another underrated indie gem that will appeal to Slay the Spire fans is Dicey Dungeons, which acts plays like a deck builder despite presenting itself as a dice game.

Cards are swapped out for dice that determine the player’s actions as well as attack sequence and the damage amount dealt from each one.

The story is presented as a game show of sorts in which the player character is trying to make it to the end to have their biggest wish granted.

Like Slay the Spire, there are a variety of characters to play as, each taking on a different persona and class with unique passives based on their natural skills, personality, and motives.

One Step From Eden is an action roguelike card battler that shares some similarities with Slay the Spire while drawing most of its inspiration from the classic Mega Man: Battle Network series.

It achieves this by combining strategic deckbuilding with real-time action that sees you fighting alone or with a friend on lane-based battlefields.

Cards are used to cast powerful spells on the fly against opponents that evolve over the course of a battle and require you to wield game-changing artifacts you collect along the way.

It’s an exceptionally difficult and fast-paced game that requires considerable investment on the player’s part to learn every spell’s unique effects and role in battle.

For a more story-driven deckbuilding adventure with RPG mechanics, we recommend checking out SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech from indie developer Image & Form.

It centers on a party of courageous heroes tasked with exploring a hand-drawn world and battling enemies using personalized decks of 100+ character-specific cards.

Like StS, there’s a tremendous amount of depth to each battle, with players able to carve out their own strategies as they explore a world that’s equal parts fantasy and steampunk aesthetic.

While the developer is best known for action-platformers and other non-card-based strategy RPGs, Quest stands out as striking the perfect balance between storytelling and strategy-driven gameplay.

If you want another genre-bending game that blends deckbuilding with roguelike progression and auto battler combat, look no further than Loop Hero.

 This one-of-a-kind tactics game has just the right amount of deckbuilding potential to scratch any Slay the Spire itch while introducing some fun new concepts.

In it, you’re tasked with arming a hero with powerful loot before sending them on along a randomly generated loop path filled with various enemies and other obstacles.

As you complete loops, your deck expands, granting you new enemy, building, and terrain cards that can be placed in key points to farm for resources used to upgrade your camp.

Stepping away from card battlers for a minute, we have Into the Breach by Subset Games, a compact roguelike strategy game that sees you defending planet Earth from an army of alien monsters.

Gameplay revolves around tactical turn-based battles using soldier-operated mechs that can be armed and outfitted with a variety of weapons and armor.

Similar to both Slay the Spire and Subset Games’ previous title, FTL: Faster Than Light, the game is divided into procedurally-generated scenarios with ever-changing enemy formations and rewards.

While it places a bigger emphasis on puzzle-like challenges than StS, it leaves plenty of room to try and predict your opponent’s next move and devise strategies to stop them from winning.

Of course, you can’t discuss roguelikes without bringing up one of the most influential games in the genre, The Binding of Isaac.

Although there have been many iterations over the years that add new content, including the Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, Afterbirth, and Repentance, the core gameplay loop remains largely unchanged.

Players are tasked with exploring procedurally generated, top-down dungeons reminiscent of classic Zelda titles while battling enemies and collecting different equipment.

Like Slay the Spire, there are a seemingly infinite number of ways to approach the game by using different characters, item synergies, and combat strategies.

Last but certainly not least, we have the wildly popular and successful card battler based on the iconic world and lore of Blizzard.

Often regarded as the king of deck builders, Hearthstone has spent years perfecting its battling and progression systems while introducing new modes designed to cater to every kind of card game fan.

This makes it the perfect recommendation for any Slay the Spire player who enjoys creating personalized decks and creating their own synergies.

Of course, it is a lot more multiplayer-focused than many of the games highlighted on this list as well as StS, so keep that in mind before picking it up.