aka “Jorbs responds to Slay the Spire Beta Drama”

There is a video where Jorbs talks about StS2’s Beta branch and the many complaints about a Boss called the Doormaker. This is mostly “inside baseball,” but Jorbs brings up a problem common to many games. (For reference, the modified Doormaker steals every 10th card you draw. The point was to stop infinite combos where you draw your entire deck, which lets you play the important cards and draw them again, etc all during the same turn).

Jorb points out that at the start of the game, the game state (what you can do) keeps branching and growing. You get more options, the number of variables increases, etc. He continues….¹

“An issue that StS1 always had and StS2 had on release is that at the end of Act II, this game tree funnels a lot. … It stops expanding and more and more things start compressing as you get to a point where … you see how to win all the fights ahead of you.” (And you just have to click the buttons for 20-30 minutes).

While I’m not the player that he is, it is somewhat true. Typically I die in Act I or Act II. Rarely in Act III and when I finally beat Ascension 10 for the first time, I was fairly confident of winning once I won Act II. (I was not on the Beta branch). The Doormaker is a major “bomb” in game design terms. If your deck requires you play a specific card to win, there is a 10% chance he’ll eat it. If your deck requires you to play the same card dozens of times … well, now you need a new plan. (Which does exist, and is more inside baseball).

(Slay the Spire 2 offers you a positive “bomb” at the start of act III to balance this, you will get a huge bonus from the Ancient One).

1. This is from the transcript, except cleaned up to remove ums and things like that ︎