Slay the Spire has been a shining example of Steam Early Access done right. It was a clever, polished roguelike deck builder when it launched a year ago, and has only gotten better since, with new cards and characters and art and consistent weekly patches. Now, according to the latest update, the final content for Early Access is coming to the game next week.
Technically, that final content is in the game already—if you're playing on the beta branch. It's been in testing for a couple weeks now, and should go live in the main branch of the game in patch 50. Mindful of spoilers for a build-up a year in the making, Slay the Spire's developers and its community have avoided talking openly about what that final content entails. The gist is that it's Act 4 of Slay the Spire, which goes beyond the cliffhanger of current successful runs to provide a final boss and a real ending.
Given Slay the Spire's popularity, I think it's safe to say this won't be the final content for the game, period—new characters, cards, and balance patches down the road seem likely. But this update will round out the game's campaign for its release out of Early Access.
As a bonus, the developers have been incorporating unlockable "beta" card art created by the community that you can use after you've beaten the game. This started with the placeholder art Mega Crit Games used during development, before the artists came in and drew the real thing. But the devs didn't make placeholder art for every card, so the community's stepped up with some wonderfully bad MS Paint concoctions to fill out each deck. Here's one that's actually in the game:
And here are a bunch of submission from the Slay the Spire subreddit. I'd definitely play with these enabled, even though the new card art is consistently beautiful.
Void beta art by Astrolux
Perfected Strike beta art by Ketura
Sadistic Nature beta card art by Ketura
Leap beta card art by Brainpostman
Immolate beta card art by Brainpostman
Apparition beta card art by Wordsmobile
Enlightenment beta card art by Seewon
Delightful deck-building dungeoncrawler Slay The Spire‘s daily challenge has become part of my gaming routine, always an interesting climb up the roguelikelike tower with different modifiers, and I’m happy to see today’s early access patch revamps it a little. Along with removing the vexatious ‘Brewmaster’ mod, which stacked our decks with potion-conjuring cards, it adds eight new mods to the daily pool while changing how mods are selected. On paper, it sounds like developer Mega Crit Games got together and decided to make 45 minutes of my day better every day? Ta!