Hey everyone, We hope you are all having a good time slaying the Spire (or getting slain)! We reached our 1 week anniversary so we figured we would shed some light on upcoming plans, a beta branch, and briefly share our thoughts on difficulty and game balance. Before we start, we want to mention that patches will be pushed out weekly on Thursday nights (Pacific Time). However, this week's patch will be on Friday due to the holidays.

Roadmap

Once crashes and compatibility issues stabilize, fun stuff like content and gameplay balance will be pushed frequently. We generally work on Content and Systems in parallel. These lists are sorted by priority. Keep in mind these are NOT absolute and your opinions and feedback helps us understand what you all want most (plushies, obviously). CONTENT

• The Third Character.
• Enemies: At least three more combat encounters for level 3.
• Game Modes: Daily Challenge & Infinity Mode (Unofficial Name)
• Cards: At least 90 more cards
• Relics: At least 25 more relics.
• Events: At least 10 more events.
• Potions: There'll be more to chug, quaff, and chuck.
• The True Ending + Secrets

SYSTEMS

• Loot Boxes: Haha, just kidding.
• Leaderboards: A way to view your best scores against your friends and all the other players.
• Improved Save & Continue: Saving will occur more frequently (at the start of each turn, after choosing an option at an event, etc) as the current system creates some confusion.
• Input Configuration + Controller Support: Rebinding of hotkeys for you power users and we're seriously looking into controller support- though it has been a huge challenge.
• Statistics 2.0: The screen will be getting an update to let you view your run history, your decks, and an ability to export that content for sharing or bragging purposes.
• Localization: Translations! This is too big of a topic so we'll go into further details when that ball gets rolling.
• Steam Trading Cards: The quality of the game is more important for us, so this will come at the end.

Alright, I think that rounds it up. There are a lot of small things that aren't listed here or features simply too far in the future or determined by other factors.

Beta Branch

We'll be setting up a beta branch (Beta in an Early Access? Yup, that's right) really soon so players who have a higher tolerance for unpolished content are welcome! Art will be a bit janky, certain relics or cards may be over or underpowered, and the game WILL implode at times. We take quality and balancing extremely seriously and so if you plan on being a beta tester, we thank you in advance. For the Beta Branch, patches will be pushed out much more frequently.

Thoughts on Difficulty and Design

Slay the Spire is intended to be a challenging game that takes time to master. That said, we will be taking a hard look at balance and especially looking for ways to improve underpowered cards and strategies that are too weak, while reigning in some of the more swingy enemies. Difficulty in video games is a tricky thing. We don't want to dilute the challenge and we certainly don't want to make the game feel impossible. It's a priority for us as designers that you never feel cheated when you lose. Though we gather data, numbers can't always reveal the nuances of gameplay. Because of this, if a scenario feels extremely broken or unfair, we recommend you let us know in the Steam discussions or our Discord channel. Going forward with your help, we think we can hone in even more on the sweet spot between challenge and power. Thank you for all the kind words and support so far! -Mega Crit Games