When I was a kid, Sailor Moon was my jam. Do you know what's also my jam? This super cool Sailor Moon-themed Slay the Spire mod that adds her as a playable character, along with 75 new cards and 20 new relics. This isn't just a one-dimensional reskin: Creators Aelie and KumaGorath have created some entirely new mechanics to learn, too. It's all very impressive.

Though I'm far from a Slay the Spire pro, I've taken this mod for a run and was surprised by how comprehensive it is. The modders created a fully animated Sailor Moon avatar, and well over half of her cards have unique animations when cast. But what's really cool is how Sailor Moon plays compared to Slay the Spire's main cast.

Unlike normal Slay the Spire characters that have a few core features (like Defect's orbs), Sailor Moon has a bunch of different keywords and mechanics you have to keep track of. Her most basic stat is Magic, which increases the damage dealt by Magical cards up to a certain limit. In order to max your Magic stat, though, you'll need to periodically play Transformation cards which increases your Magic Capacity.

One little touch I like a lot is Teamwork cards, which have combo effects when played after using certain cards. All of these are themed like the other Sailor Scouts, and when using one they'll temporarily join you on the battlefield to cast their spell.

It's a lot to take in and, like with any new StS character, I'm struggling to connect the dots on how to best draft new cards and make a viable build. I'm not sure how well balanced all of this is, but I'm having fun just tinkering around with the all the bright, colorful spells and imagining poor Sailor Moon having to run an endless gauntlet of card-based horrors.

You can download the mod from the Steam Workshop (be sure to download the other required mods, too). 

I've never been much into card games on PC, unless you count poker—which is why when a fantasy card game has some poker in it I tend to pounce. I played We Slay Monsters last year, a turn-based RPG built around poker hands, but more recently I starting using The Poker Player mod for Slay the Spire.

The Poker Player mod adds a new character, who unfortunately doesn't have any custom art so it just looks like the Ironclad. But where the mod lacks art it makes up for with a fun twist on Slay the Spire. It adds 40 playing cards with suits (clubs, diamonds, aces, and hearts) and ranks (1-10). There are also a bunch of new specialty cards built around the poker systems, and new relics to enhance your play.

The general idea is that you're trying to build the best poker hand—pair, two pair, three of a kind, straight, flush, full house, four of a kind, straight flush. The fun thing about the mod is that your poker hand gets played at the end of your turn: the showdown. So rather than trying to do damage, add block, and use buffs during your turn, you mostly do it at the very end when your hand is put together. It's a fun twist on standard Slay the Spire, and takes some getting used to.

Your poker cards each cost one energy, and you can discard them in exchange for a new one from your draw pile until you're out of energy. (Or if you've put together a good hand you can end your turn early.) Each suit also does something specific: clubs deal damage to all enemies, diamonds do damage to the enemy with the lowest HP, spades give you block, and hearts (cleverly) heal your own HP. These effects are boosted by how good your poker hand is when you've reached the showdown at the end of your turn. So in addition to trying to build a good poker hand, you're trying to build a hand in the suit that benefits you most depending on your current monster situation.

It can get tricky at times. You can still find a few standard cards when adding to your deck, but they kind of get in the way of your poker hands since when you use them you wind up with fewer than five cards in the showdown. And when you're fighting enemies that add cards to your deck (like slimed or dazed) and your deck fills up with those extra cards, it can be hard putting together anything besides a pair or three of a kind. But that's the challenge, and it's fun. (You are protected from the first six status cards added to your deck thanks to the default poker relic, but six is never enough, is it?)

There are some nice zero-cost cards added by the mod that let you discard unwanted cards or peek at your draw pile to see what's next or add a few extra cards of a certain suit. And you can upgrade your poker cards just like you can standard cards—so if you're not making enough straights you can craft a six out of an extra five, and so on.

As you might guess there are number of vanilla cards, potions, and relics that the mod restricts you from using because they'd really muck things up (like Runic Pyramid, which lets you keep cards at the end of your turn, and the Swift potion, which lets you draw three cards). Even some events have been modified to fit the poker theme.

I do wish the art in the mod was better, but The Poker Player has been very well thought out and I'd recommend it to poker lovers and anyone who is looking for a new twist on Slay the Spire—it really lets you approach the game differently. You can subscribe to The Poker Player in the Steam Workshop here, and you'll also need these three base mods: Basemod, StsLib, and Mod The Spire.

I thought I had finally won roguelike deck-builder Slay The Spire. In building my Silent deck I focused on card draw and energy production, which allowed me to generate near-infinite loops that, even if ended by a bad draw, generated so much block that nothing could touch me. 

I was strong as hell. There's a regular enemy in the third act with 999 health, and you don't have to actually beat it, just outlast it, because it dies on its own after a set number of turns. With this deck, I felt confident I could've killed it even without the timer. Nothing could stop me.

And then I got stomped by the final boss. Just wrecked.

My deck contained too many useless cards that created the potential for what happened: drawing the worst possible hands at the worst possible moments. It was unrefined, and missing some key components that would've given me a truly infinite loop. It was a great deck until it was terrible. (Alas, I didn't screenshot it at the time and it'd take forever to find it among my other runs, but it's nothing unbelievable.) 

One of the many brilliant things about Slay the Spire is how often it's possible to reach the end, whether or not I'm strong enough to beat the bosses. I can take easy routes, hitting events and rest sites and merchants and avoiding elite enemies, build a decent deck, feel good, and then stare down 60-or-whatever incoming damage with a hand that can do nothing about it and realize my deck is complete trash.

This is evidenced by the achievements. 60.3 percent of players have beaten The Shapes, the boss that appears at the end of the third act, but far fewer have reached and completed the ending beyond that. Many arrive, few survive.

I love that about Slay the Spire. I'm often turned off by roguelikes because, heck, I don't want to play the opening level or act or section 100 times to learn how to handle whatever's after it. I could never get into Spelunky for that reason, although I respect that its design clicks for others. (We gave it one of our highest review scores ever.)

What makes Slay the Spire different to me is that I don't start a new run thinking, 'Can I reach the end this time?' I know I can reach the end. The question is, 'When I reach the end, will I be a god?'

To that end, plenty of my runs do end in the first or second act, because you don't become a god without taking risks. Sometimes, I start building a deck that I know will be weak until I find the right card, and just don't find it before eating dirt. Other times, I die because I targeted elite enemies too aggressively, hoping for a key relic drop (if you haven't played, relics are items with passive effects that can completely change the deck you build).

Dying can be frustrating in Slay the Spire, but these are calculated deaths, and that softens them a lot. I'd rather not reach the end of the game if I'm not going to be strong enough to win it all—or at least have a chance—so really it's better if I die early when things aren't panning out. Rarely in a game have I died and thought, "Well, this is for the best." That's part of what makes Slay the Spire so hard to put down. 

And, generally, that's just one of the reasons Slay the Spire is currently my favorite game of the year—Evan nicely encapsulates many other reasons in his review. 

If you haven't picked it up, Slay the Spire is on Steam. If you're not into card games or roguelikes, this is the game to change your mind.