Shut the front door, Slay the Spire is being turned into a board game.

It's being made by a company called Contention Games, which has a similar-ish-looking game called Imperium: The Contention. Similar in that it's a deck-building and customising game, which, of course, Slay the Spire is.

Exactly how Slay the Spire will translate is unclear, but the brief description on Contention Games' website says the board game will be co-operative, and for one-to-four players. The Slay the Spire computer game isn't co-operative, however, so I'm intrigued to see how a one-player game will become, potentially, for four.

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Slay the Spire, probably the best game in the world ever, is finally coming to iOS and Android devices. It's due this month on iOS and on Android at some point in the future.

A specific date will be shared in the E3-style Guerrilla Collective event taking place this weekend, it sounds like.

Slay the Spire developer MegaCrit announced the news in a Steam update. It said the iOS version will be the full PC game. Screenshots of the iOS version seemed to confirm the newer fourth character, the Watcher, will be included (it's pictured as a fourth, unlockable character).

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Mega Crit Games' superb solo card-battling rogue-like Slay the Spire - superb enough to be named one of Eurogamer games of 2019 - has just received a mammoth update on PC, introducing, among other treats, a brand-new playable character known as The Watcher.

Slay the Spire's free new update is significant enough to warrant the version number 2.0 and brings a list of balance changes and bug fixes long enough to require some hearty scrolling to get through. The big news addition, though, is The Watcher, a "blind ascetic" who "brings her training in the divine stances and a seeing staff to cast judgment upon the wicked Spire spawn".

The Watcher can scry and retain cards, but it's those stances, a gameplay mechanic unique to the character, that really sets her apart from other playable heroes.

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Over the festive break we'll be running through our top 20 picks of the year's best games, leading up to the reveal of Eurogamer's game of the year on New Year's Eve. You can find all the pieces published to date here - and thanks for joining us throughout the year!

Most card games are about building decks, permanent decks, to use in every battle, and for a while, I'm totally on board with it. I enthusiastically dream up themes and strategies bigger than 'use the most powerful card' and wonder how anyone will possibly beat me. But it never lasts. A mixture of earning cards too slowly and increasing complexity puts me off, and I check out.

I could go and copy builds online, like everyone else, the cheats, but it bugs me. I like thinking of the strategies myself, it makes me feel fuzzy inside. But I can't keep up with the internet hive mind, so, before long, I fall behind. Then I see everyone trot out the same strategies against me time and time again, and I get cheesed off. What happened to spontaneity?

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After teasing it four several months, MegaCrit has finally announced the fourth character to arrive in its roguelike deck builder - The Watcher.

Currently available to play in the beta build of the game on PC (instructions on how to access that here), The Watcher is described as "a blind ascetic who has come to 'Evaluate' the Spire. Master of the divine Stances."

The new character's abilities revolve around 'Miracles' and 'Stances'. Miracle cards stay in your hand until they're used, they cost nothing to play and give you one extra point of energy when used.

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I bet you know the feeling, like the game is against you. You're pulling all the wrong cards or rolling all the wrong numbers and you die. It's like the game didn't want you to win and you had no chance - what were you supposed to do? Maybe you were at a boss and now have to start all over again. Maybe you were about to win a tournament and didn't. So sorry - it was just bad luck.

Argh god! It's infuriating - at the time - especially if someone pulls the "oh bad luck" line on you as it happens. Wankers. But this notion of luck, it's there in games and secretly - or not so secretly now I'm writing about it - I love it. I love bad luck.

It's not that I like losing - as if! (You've never seen me at LaserZone - I'm embarrassingly competitive. I once went there with my son, who was about eight years old at the time. I told him we'd stick together. I promised him. "You and me, son." But the minute we got in there, I was off, stalking the fake mist like a ghost. "Dad? Dad?!" I got the highest score that day. I gave my child something to aspire to. What?) So it's not that I like losing, but I like the possibility of it.

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If you don't have either Xbox Game Pass or Game Pass Ultimate, it's about time you looked into it, because they're putting Slay the Spire on it next month - and some other games too, I guess.

Microsoft has announced August's line-up, which offers a little something for everyone, from witty party games to delightful roguelike adventures.

On 1st August, Game Pass for console will get Ashes Cricket and Pandemic. The former is a fast-paced cricket game that boasts a "realistic and authentic" experience, while the latter sets you as a member of an elite disease control team whose goal is to save the world from deadly infections.

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Last week, I wrote about games dressing up their mechanisms to make them seem snazzier than they are, because really, underneath it all, they're often just numbers. I love how they do this. It's like draping a fancy cloth over an engine, obscuring the mucky oiled cogs with colour and character, and it works so well. It was Slay the Spire, a card game, which got me thinking about it, but no sooner had I written about it than another game came along I couldn't ignore.

Godhood, it's called, and it has the most appealing sales pitch I've ever come across: create and spread your own religion! What a remit - think of the things you could do...

It begins well. You name your god - you, in other words - and you name your religion, then you decide what your worshippers will be called. How cool is that? A few customisation tweaks later and you choose what you'll be about: peace, war, lust or chastity - there are a couple more options but they're greyed out. Then, you're in.

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I love how games dress your powers up to make them sound really exciting, I always have, but the game which really got me thinking about it recently was Slay the Spire. I have a big crush on it right now - I don't know why it took me so long to get around to playing it.

In Slay the Spire, what you're doing sounds great. You don't simply hit someone a few times: you Riddle with Holes. You don't simply do damage and draw another card: you Headbutt. And you don't damage every time you play a card: you Choke. It goes on and on.

I love what this does. I love how it obscures a mundane truth lurking backstage. Because behind it all, it's just numbers. We all know that, just like we know an illusionist on the stage isn't doing magic for real, but we suspend our disbelief because it's more fun. If you really wanted to, you could reduce it to a spreadsheet with numbers on, but why would you want to?

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In the middle of the journey of our life, I found myself faced with a choice: eat the banana or eat the donut? The more I thought about it, the more I realised that this choice was trickier than it initially seemed. The banana would heal me for seven per cent of my health. The donut would raise my HP cap by seven. To be healthier now, or to potentially be healthier than ever in the future?

In the end, I'm an optimist, so I went with the donut. I definitely thought about it, though. I thought about it for a good five minutes. It's probably the longest, all told, that I have ever been confronted with a donut before making my mind up about it.

Slay the Spire isn't just a devious blend of card-battler and roguelike, then. It's also a game that likes to tempt you with donuts. It likes to bother you with ghosts and gods and tricksters and traps. You start at the lowest level of a tower and each floor contains a battle or a treasure or a shop or a campfire (this last one can either heal you or be used to improve one of your cards). But like FTL, whose forking-path structure it loosely follows, Slay the Spire will occasionally chuck in a random event. Banana or donut, for example. What will it be?

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