By now, pretty much everyone knows Slay the Spire, the progenitor of the roguelite-deckbuilder era the indie games sphere has been living in for some time now. And we're all patiently awaiting the release of the sequel early next year. But did you know that in 2024 they turned the digital cards into physical ones with the release of a very popular tabletop game?
In an unexpected surprise announcement, the developers of Slay the Spire have shared that a fan-favorite PC mod packed with characters and content will be brought to life on the table in an official Downfall expansion for Slay the Spire: The Board Game, coming sometime in the near future to Kickstarter.
Downfall is a fan-made content expansion that you can play for free on Steam if you own the base game. As I understand it, this mod has been around for a number of years, adding nearly commercial-quality content to Spire such as a 5th character, the Hermit, who cares about the positions of cards in your hand, and a whole new way to play the game (the titular "Downfall" mode) which lets you play as boss characters that fight against the heroes that the player usually embodies. The mod also adds all sorts of new cards and relics to the game across the various character classes.
Despite containing a large amount of high quality content, the Downfall mod has never been officially integrated into the digital version of the game. But now for the first time, it's getting the Mega Crit stamp of approval: albeit in physical form only.
This makes for an interesting where the official tabletop adaptation of a videogame is seeing new content added that the digital version doesn't technically contain. (Of course in this case, you can click a button and download the mod, provided you're playing on PC.) The one other time I've seen this unusual phenomenon occur is with the Sakura version of Dorfromantik, only available in boardgame form.
The Slay the Spire boardgame comes with a hefty price tag and takes up a lot of shelf space, but it packs in a huge amount of the videogame's content to compensate. Me and my friends have played it a lot more often than I thought we would manage to: there's something about taking a videogame people are familiar with and allowing them to play together that lets things click pretty smoothly and removes some barriers.
We can only speculate how the interesting Downfall content will be integrated to the tabletop version, but could I dare dream that this expansion might introduce a competitive option, where one player plays as Downfall boss characters, pushing back against the others attempting to ascend the Spire? We'll have to wait and learn more details when the upcoming Kickstarter launches soon.
P.S. A fun side note for thinky puzzle people: did you know that the Mega Crit newsletter has for some time now contained original Slay the Spire-themed Connections puzzles? Very cute.
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