Slay the Spire II Early Access Review Bombing | Design Club

[music]
Good time zone internet. Hello and welcome to Design Club, the only game design show on the internet that's back after several weeks away with a fascinating story talk about with all of you. I am your humble host Will, joined as always by my pal Jeff. Say hi to the people, Jeff. Hi to the people, Jeff.
Hey everybody, I'm Jeffrey Zahkin, the studio director of Extra Credits and Extra History. And for purposes of this and more importantly very long time game designer and player of Slay the Spire. Um here with my good friend Will. Both of us have played thousand plus hours easily of Slay the Spire one. Yeah, I I have 750 hours listed on Steam, but that doesn't account for other platforms and also doesn't account for the amount that I've spent watching it. Um And by the way, quick shout out. The iPad version of Slay the Spire is really, really good.

It is one of my go-to travel games when I'm traveling with an iPad.
I am I'm I'm actually going to be flying out to California next at towards the end of the month for for a fan event thing. And I am making sure that Slay the Spire one is loaded on my iPad. I'm very excited. Which city are you going to? Anaheim. Um the Final Fantasy fan festival is out there. So we're going to hang out with a bunch of friends and it's going to be great. F F That's a lot of apps.
It is. It is indeed. So Uh we wanted to talk about a phenomena that has sort of taken hold of Slay the Spire two. Now if you've never played Slay the Spire two or Slay the Spire or don't care about Slay the Spire, that's okay. We're going to be This will still be a thing. This
[laughter]
is still a thing. We're going to be talking about sort of a phenomena that's occurring and this is sort of a great crystallization of that. So let's let's set the stage real quick and we'll we'll get into our discussion. So Slay the Spire two came out

Slay the Spire one. When did that come out? Um A decade ago? Yeah, years 2019.
Okay. 2019.
Slay Okay, Slay the Spire one came out and has been in a hit and considered by a lot of people one of the best roguelike or possibly even games ever made. It has near universal acclaim and as a little two-person indie team with a couple of contractors sold enough copies that they never have to work again. Yes. Like it was retirement FU money. Yeah.
But they decided they wanted to make another one. Yes.
So like we do need to set the stage with this. Their team is slightly bigger now. Yep. They're like eight or 10 people. Um but it's still the two original devs. Yep. They've transferred to a whole new engine. Yep. Um what were they using for the first one, Will? They used Java and now they're using Godot. They were going to do One of the reasons that this took

so long is they were going to do Unity and then you may recall we discussed here extensively Unity made some choices. Mhm. They were certainly choices that a company could make and the devs have
Which they then backtracked on, but Yeah. there were notable devs that exited during those choices. Yep. Um so they remade it in Godot and about three weeks ago Yep. it came out uh was released on Steam as early access Yes. with the devs publicly saying we probably have at least a year plus still of work to do. Yes. On this. So just kind of setting the background for all of this. But the game is amazing. The game is if you played Slay the Spire one, it is very familiar but with more stuff. If you never played Slay the Spire one it is everything you would love about that with even more. Yep.
And they still have that like year to go. So like future looks bright. Right.

Game launched to near universal acclaim. Right. And play is played Right.
by by hundreds of thousands of people daily. Their daily user count is absurd. They are currently up there with games like Arc Raiders or
[clears throat]
um uh Deadlock or like they're they're approaching daily user levels of like Grand Theft Auto five on Steam, which is
Which is absurd. Oh, and they launched on the same day as the new Marathon game, which was kind of sad for Bungie because but like Marathon's doing fine. But um Kind of. It's hard to have a big game a game that big get eclipsed Yeah.
like almost every other way by small team A A team so small that they they poked fun at Marathon. They said, you know, "Sorry, Marathon. It must be hard launching on the same day as us." And then they had to apologize because they didn't think that there was any world in which they were actually going to eclipse the Marathon launch and they did and it looked like a

little mean
little mean and sad. Yeah, right. They were like, "Oh, our bad. We didn't think this was going to happen. That's our bad." So a big hit.
Okay. So all of that to set the stage. Yeah. Will, what happened? So as part of the early access process the the team behind Slay the Spire two is following the same process that they followed for Slay the Spire one, which is that they're going to be making balancing changes and um in addition to adding more content because it is Slay the Spire is a complicated enough game that you need a volume of data it is not reasonable to gather in house to balance the game well. And they've gained millions of runs, I think at this point I would I think it's safe to say millions plural of runs worth of data on the cards that are played on the on how people lose on when people lose on all

10 of the difficulty 11 of the difficulty levels that are present in the game on all five of the characters. So they've gotten a lot of data out of this. And this by the way is a combinatorics mathematical problem. If you Will, if you and I were tuning a platformer Sure. you and I could probably tune it pretty well because there's not going to be a lot of weird unexpected happenings as we're bouncing from platform to platform or wall to wall or any other things. Sure, we may bump into things where we're like, "Oh, this wasn't clear enough." We see that later with our testing. Right. When you're testing a game where basically you have random or where you have a start with then random things you add on and every every floor you go up new random thing is added, subtracted or done to your deck. Yes. The testing possibility adventure horizon because of combinatorial math, which is this times this times this times this where it starts getting wider and wider

gets to the point where it's almost impossible for a small group of people to test it enough Yes. without throwing the gates open and just getting massive amounts of people playing to say, "Is our game tuned as well as we thought it was?" Cuz you can do a really good job at the start, but then you just need to see what are the things we never thought of Right. Exactly.
up once it's in the wild. And and and this is a problem that many dev teams are quite familiar with. There's a famous quote about Magic the Gathering that the weekend that a set releases that a new set of Magic the Gathering releases, it gets played more in that one weekend than it got played during all of the testing and development. Just because of the number of people involved. So that's why we often see cards that are like, "Oh, you didn't think about this interaction." because it's a small team and of course they didn't think about that interaction because one person out of the hundreds of thousands of people playing it that weekend thought of that interaction, right? And then posted it online. And

then posted it online and other people um refined that idea and now Grand Grand is the most terrifying creature in all of Magic the Right. Iteration six hours in. Yes. Yeah. Exactly.
And in Everquest back when my first MMO when we were working on it, we I used to call it the zeros problem where when we had 10 people playing and testing, we'd found things. But every zero of people we added, we found a whole new slate of things that we'd never thought of. So when we went from 10 to 100, 100 to 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, million, each of those like there would be a whole new set of things where we're like, "Oh, we need to fix, balance, change, etc. this because it's just nobody had ever thought of it in the previous grouping of players." Right. Okay. So Mega Crit is gathering all of this data and they're saying that the purpose of gathering all of this data is to help figure out how to make the best long-term game they can. They'd like this game to last a decade or more of

just people enjoying and playing it. Okay, great. Awesome.
[clears throat]
In order to um keep some amount of stability in the early access game they have instituted a voluntary opt-in beta branch. So we're in an early access game that is not yet completed and they have said that the game will be in early access and there will be major changes for the next year. And inside of that early access game, there is a beta branch that you have to go into Steam go into a special menu and say, "I would like to participate in the public access beta branch of the game." And it's different. It's very weird. Lots of things have been changed. Every character has had cards changed, buffed, nerfed. Several enemies have been buffed or nerfed. One of the bosses at the end of the game has been completely reworked and in no way resembles the version in the live branch except that it uses the same models um but it's a totally

different boss fight, doormaker. Doormaker has been reworked they're now three distinct versions of doormaker, the live version, the first version on the beta branch, and the current version on the beta branch, and they're all completely different from one another. So let's talk for a moment about beta branches and why we have them. Yeah. So um often during development um you will have a game up and running and before your game is out um you will have test servers where you can go and test your game. You can play it through and often early you will open up the game to players to be on test servers. Test servers are exactly as the name implies. This is where we go to test things. Right. And you are as a developer allowed and encouraged to do weird and wacky things on the test server because this is where we test things. Cool. At a certain point it is no longer

acceptable to be doing that on the place that most people are trying to work, develop, and or actually play the game. Right. And so you'll end up splitting this. You'll have your live servers which is what you think is your best current version of the game
Mhm. and you'll open up a testing or beta branch of the game which is where you are then allowed to go as a developer and do wacky things and test and tune and break things knowing that you're not affecting the majority of the people over here who are happily playing your game and you're still getting data from them but like again just going back to EverQuest years ago we had a test server. And on that test server when I was making spells that's where I'd go test them. Right. I'd enter them in. I actually had my own zone I'd made with like a whole set of like literally like it was kind of shooting ranges and other weird things that I could go test them on and we'd have players running around in there too. Occasionally I'd put in a new thing be like over on the beta forum I'd be like hey

these five new spells on the you know test server beta branch for anybody who wants to go check them out and give feedback. So it is designed to elicit feedback and then it's the safe place where you're not messing up everything else. And let's let's talk about that real quick. So you said that you would invite players into the beta branch. When those players come in they're not expecting to level a character and have a long-term relationship with that character's story right? Because that's not why that's there. That character is a short-lived experiment in I need a druid to try this new druid spell that lets me summon 47 Tyrannosaurus Rexes on top of something thus squishing it to death under a mountain of lizardy goodness right? Like that's
You saw one of my early spells. Right like that's but but the point is it is there specifically for the purpose of doing weird stuff and trying new things. It's not there to be balanced. It's not

there to be the main experience. It is there explicitly to make the main experience better and to get an early glimpse of what might be happening right? Maybe maybe I go check out Jeff's test server because I love playing druid and he mentioned that there's a new druid spell and maybe I'll I'll get I'll get to see and I'll get to say hey I think this druid spell's great and then I'll be one of the first people to have gotten to see the new really cool Tyrannosaurus meteor spell right? Or whatever right? And that's cool for me as a player if I'm really invested in that. And a lot of groups on these kind of servers will also do things like faster XP or leveling up or even give you like hey you can log in and just start to a level 20 or thing but also like we used to do periodic wipes on the test server just so people didn't get attached to stuff. Like once a month we wipe everything. Yeah. That way like and players knew this going in. This wasn't the place you went for long-term play. Right. Okay.

But again if you're doing good development and you don't want to be putting weird live this is where you run it and every game that is live and does updates have this. Like League of Legends has a really good test beta branch that you can opt into at any point and go see all the changes that they're fiddling with for the next patch. Yep. I know the um uh a lot of my uh streamer friends play Dead by Daylight. That has a public test branch. Um they're often you know they've even done it for bigger games. Uh I know Blizzard is a big fan of public testing. Um even Final Fantasy has done it. They did a public test for the idea of um uh what what were they digital only like portable servers essentially that they could stand up and shut down for like [clears throat] demand. They did like a whole test where they were like all right it's a week. These servers only exist for a week go have fun. Right?

Like pretty much everyone who does live service games does this. Now Slay the Spire not a live service game but they are in development which in an early access game which kind of has this weird relationship where it's almost live service in some ways right? Where the game isn't done and you have this ongoing live relationship between the player and the developers. And things are being patched regularly. We're getting it looks like we're getting a beta patch every Thursday night so we'll get one tonight. I'm very excited. We got one last week at 11:00 p.m. Eastern and I was like winding down to go to bed and I was like not anymore I'M NOT LOGGING in checking it out. Oh I need to actually I need to find a way to chat with that team. Yeah. Thursday nights a bad one because it means when you inevitably have messed up a couple things your Friday is a scramble to Oh I know. fix all of the stuff so that you don't have to work on the weekend. Like a lot of teams will do like Tuesday. Tuesday night. Tuesday is the MMO reset

day for a reason. But
Oh yeah. That that is neither here nor there. So this is a so okay so And quick note though as much as we preambled all of this doesn't always work. Like I I there was a spell I removed in the EverQuest beta branch that I'd put in to test and I just couldn't balance it. It didn't feel right. I remember removing it. A year and a half into the live game I still had people asking why that spell was removed or the game was nerfed or that class was nerfed and when the spell was coming back. Sure. And there was like this was a test of a single thing on a beta branch that I didn't think worked and so I removed Yeah. like So despite no matter how much you tell people this is where we test things some people will see the thing they like and be like this is how it should be. Right.
Or we don't like this change up every time Riot changes a thing in League of Legends on their beta branch there's a small internet tizzy despite the fact that they do this all the time

Yep. that something is happening positive or negative to somebody's favorite or least favorite or champion they don't like to play against Yeah. something favorite item favorite Yeah. neutral mob blue buff got nerfed by 0.05% jungle main
critical damage by 1%. Oh no ADCs are no longer playable. Yeah. Yeah. So Okay. So um all all of that having been said let's let's get back to Slay the Spire too. So Slay the Spire is in early access. It has a beta branch. The devs go to the go to the public and they say hey we have some weird I like they explicitly essentially say up front we have some weird ideas for things that we want to try to see if they work. They will be confined to the beta branch. Right. Nothing on the beta branch is final. Everything on the beta branch is an experiment. You are welcome to try it out. You're

welcome to play on it but it's
If you so desire. If you want to.
Most people will never touch a beta branch. Oh by the way the fact they did make the beta branch as soon as they made people pay money I think was the right move. You have paid your money. You can play the regular game as it is the you know what they consider the good live version of the game forever we've never seen them messing with stuff. Up until it's patched. So okay. Yeah. And the first change I've I've got the I've got the the notes here. The first set of changes that they made on the beta branch was on March 19th late in the evening Eastern time March 19th. And they introduced uh they led off with introducing some new card art, some new visual effects. And there were a bunch of reworked cards. We're going to focus on two of them so we don't spend forever here but the short version is

they really didn't like how easy it was to accidentally go infinite. So in card games the very basic version is you can create a stable loop of game actions where upon completing the loop you have gained an advantage. So if I have a
stay neutral. Okay stay neutral while doing another actually never mind. Gained an advantage in some way.
Right. So if I have a card that says pay one energy draw two cards and I have a card that says for zero gain two energy and I have another
Discard one card to gain an energy.
Right. And I have another card that uh or I have some effect that says every time I draw a card you take one damage and I can do that loop forever I win the game. Right? Barring other circumstances that might stop me. And it's fun to go infinite. I've forced one or two on Slay the Spire, and it's not necessarily the most um

it's not the most consistent thing, but it is an option. And some people really liked it, and some people really didn't, but I think a thing that everyone has to admit when they look at it is that it was way too easy to go infinite when you could do it without any rare cards. You could do it with only the most common cards you find in every run. And way more frequently than you could in Slay the Spire what like I remember [clears throat] both thinking myself and watching Jorbs do a couple streams with the remarks of oh wow, there's a lot more ways to do infinite. It's a lot easier. Correct. And lots of things have been subtly or not subtly changed to prevent that, but two of the cards got changed. Silent lost a card called prepared, which was a key to enabling infinite. It's a zero cost card that lets you discard two cards to draw two cards, and you might think, well, that sounds a lot like Faithless Looting from Magic the Gathering, and I would say, yes, it's Faithless Looting, and everyone who's played Magic goes, ah, I see the problem

now, and I go, yes, you do. Faithless Looting's never been used for a fair thing ever in all of Magic the Gathering, and neither has prepared. Um so that was a problem, and it got removed from the game entirely and replaced with a new card called Prepare, Yep. present tense.
They lost the D. They They lost the D. Prepare is a completely different card that was just trust me on this, useless. It was useless. Mhm. Just go with me on this. And the other one was Glow, which was a card for the Regent that got nerfed in an different and interesting way to also not enable it. Okay, so But and there was a stated intent from the developers, which is it is too You're right. You're right, everybody. It is too easy to go infinite. We're looking for ways to decrease that while still being interesting. Yes. Paraphrasing, but Yeah. And okay, so again, let's just let's just recap real quick to make sure that we're all on the same page here. This is

on This is a beta branch experimental patch that you have to opt into Mhm. on an early access
access game. Right. Okay. So this is an experiment inside of an experiment inside an unfinished game. Mhm. And people started leaving negative reviews on the game because of changes that were made to the beta branch of an early access game. Mhm. And that's coordinated reviews. Mhm. Coordinated Coordinated negative reviews, aka they decided to start review bombing Slay the Spire. Yes. I have thoughts, but go ahead, Will.
Right. I have questions, and my first question is Mhm. what? Huh? You uh uh

o- okay. And And by the way, we can we can clearly see that's review bombing. I pulled up the um uh I have the the Steam DB up. I I'm not going to pull it up on stream cuz I don't think it's like terribly illustrative, but if we look, it's currently 82% positive, and the overwhelming majority of negative reviews occurred on Friday, March 20th, Friday uh Saturday, March 21st, and a small number on Sunday, March 22nd in the
So the two two days after the patch. immediately following this beta branch patch. Mhm. So uh and and we should also be clear. I would say a- and and Jeff, you can feel free to disagree with me on this. Um Oh, I will. MegaCrit has done a phenomenal job Oh. of providing tools for users to submit feedback at any screen
with that because at any screen, at any point while you are playing the game,

beta branch or not, if you are playing Slay the Spire 2 on PC cuz it's only available on PC cuz it's easiest to iterate fastest without needing to go through console patches, you can press F2, and it will bring up a custom menu where you can leave feedback. In fact, it was originally 500 characters of feedback. People asked for room to say more. MegaCrit expanded it to 8,000 characters of feedback. At any point,
Nice. an unlimited number of times, you can press F2 and leave them a feedback, a bug report, a balance note to say, hey, I ran into this, and this is how I feel about it, and I'm sending sending this to you. And all of it gets read. 100% of it gets read, right? So they have a open line of communication between the players to the devs to say, give us your feedback. And people instead of exercising that incredibly powerful, very nice thing decided to leave negative reviews. Which is pretty much the nuclear option.

Yeah.
Because what you're actively encouraging there is people You're basically saying, this game sucks. This game sucks. Don't buy it. Yes. Which for a game that you want to be good and play for a while is not very good behavior, and B, you're playing somebody else's game. This isn't your game. If you are playing a game that is getting tuned, like that's part of the game. That is part of the contract you are opting into, especially in a pre-re- in a early access game. Yes. An early access game by definition means unfinished.
Right. And I'm just going to say this, you are a bad person if you are review bombing an unfinished game. Leaving feedback on forums is fine, and in fact, encouraged. Chatting on any of the methods that are

provided in, but saying, I don't like a way that people are balancing a game that is not out yet Right. is bad. Yeah. Straight up, and does very bad things to the entire game development and community. Yeah. Because honestly, let me tell you, as a developer, when things like that happen, you just decide you don't want to let people do feedback. You start removing ways for people to do feedback, or you start putting out things like invitations to the beta branch. Yep. And you tune everything in private, so people don't do this and don't have that behavior, and honestly, your game ends up worse for that because you're not getting the behavior, but in some ways it ends up better because your game isn't getting review bombed, and you can still sell copies. Yes.
Like people actively review bombing beta branch stuff means that beta branches go away. Correct. You get re- The nice toys that you get to play with get removed because it's not worth the develop- especially with a small

team, not worth their time anymore. Correct. Yeah, it's
Sorry. Mine Mine are rant, but
No, no, it's a it's a good rant, right? And I I think uh The Snacken has a really good point here, um which is that if this were less of a juggernaut of a game, if this were not a game that is like Mhm.
[clears throat]
um just absolutely chugging through all of Steam, it could have severely hurt the game. Now, it's not. Now, there's a big There's a big thing that's going on in the YouTube chat that I do want to address, which is that yes, a large amount of the negative of the total aggregate negative feedback on the game is in Chinese. There are also concerns that Chinese players may not have access to all of the same feedback tools as everyone else. Mhm. Also true. However, Yep. Oh, and one note that um Chinese

people may not be able to access the Discord, Correct. but that's not anything MegaCrit can do. That's the Chinese government with the Great Firewall of China saying no to removing access. Correct. So that's There's a which the devs may or may not know about. Correct. There is the a- and and I will say that there is that is part of the problem. I have also looked through, and I have also found cases where people are having a moment, perhaps need to fondly plant face down in a lawn for a little bit over some of the changes to the game, right? It's not just in Chinese. I did I did do a pretty I did the thing that no one should do, and I read the comments. Um the lots of people were having lots of very large emotions and feelings about the about the beta branch, um not just in Chinese, though I did also Google

Translate some number of the Chinese reviews and Chinese comments to try and get a sense. It's obviously not the best, but it is better than nothing. Um so all those things being true, it is still true that there uh I I I find it hard to believe that whatever the language that people are participating in, that the idea that it's not directly related to the beta branch, given the timing of the negative reviews, to be suspect, right? I I find it very hard to believe that this is not directly result of the beta branch, right? Whether it's Chinese reviews or English reviews or French reviews or whatever. Right? Um Yeah, it's And again, that's Like even if they didn't have access to all the tools, A, I'm sad they didn't have access to the tools, but B, you're still taking a thing on the beta branch, and you're honestly acting a

little entitled. Yeah. To be able to like to try and slam burn the whole thing down
Yes. for a game that's still getting built because you don't like a design choice that the people who are making the game that you theoretically like cuz you're in and playing it have made. Yes. Um to to to the best of my knowledge, there is it would be entirely odd if any regionality was only had access to the beta branch given the way that Steam does builds. Mhm. So, the way that Steam does builds is there's
Well, that that would never be a thing.
Yeah. The the way that Yeah, the Um They It could be. Mega Crit could have accidentally for that region pushed that live because there are different versions that can go out to regions often that will have like different language or other things. I will also say I don't think that's the case. I I I think I think that is that that is the the

certainly a possible thing, right? But not likely in this case. Um again, not just Chinese comments, not just Chinese reviews, right? That is that is definitely a part of the overall picture that we do need to keep in mind is different cultures treat reviews differently. Different cultures also have different issues such as translation issues in different branches of the game. I know they've been working on improving the translation across multiple different languages, especially because Spire is a game and most card games are this way where specific words really matter. Um because they need to be consistent across all the cases, right? Because for instance, a key word, right? If you translate it one way on one card and a different way on another card, then it's not clear the two cards work the same, that's a problem, right? So, um I can definitely see frustration there. Though again, I don't think that's the case here. And it is still a

problem, right? We we still like regardless of the why, we do still have this problem that a game is now subject to negative reviews because the game has remained the same. The live version that people have paid money to play Mhm. is the same. That's still on version .99. That hasn't changed. You can still revert to version .99. The live version is the same as it was the day that the game released. You can still play that version. It's fine. It's not going anywhere. Mhm. Actually, and like good example of this, remember a couple weeks ago when Will and I were streaming without a hitch with some of the devs? Yeah. We were playing on their test branch. Yep. Like it wasn't the live branch that was out cuz they'd added a couple things that day. They're like, "Hey, let's put it in. Let's play on this." Like devs switch between branches or versions of their game

all the time. Yep. Like this is just part of how game development is done. Yes. And so, there will all every game always has multiple branches. The one that the players are playing, all of the old ones saved in case there needs to be any sort of revert or revision, and the new stuff you're working on, which is incremented up a new branch. Yep. Mhm. But in a lot of cases, too, this is just like the game is so good that it's really surprising, A, that people are choosing this, but also, it's a very particular style of play. Saying, you know, that certain people are really latching onto I like infinites. Sure.
Like there's a lot of ways to play this game, and part of the fun of the game is the number of ways that you can play and solve the things with each character. Yes. I I do I do think that there is

Okay. I'm going to disagree with the general perception, but Jeff and I are both not average Spire players. So, keep that in mind. Okay? Spire 2 is not that hard compared to some parts of Spire 1. Really not. They they've smoothed out the curve the level curve, for example. In Spire 1, when you went from Act 1 to Act 2, there was a pretty immediate jump in power for those first couple fights that you were fighting in Act 2 Yes. that were just straight up like straight up it wasn't a kind of nice curve that went up on this level of difficulty. It was like Yeah. kind of going over. So, they've they've done a lot of smoothing of the curves Yeah. of this game so that it is an not easier to win, but an easier progression Well, maybe easier to win. They're still tuning. Correct. But an easier progression to play. And part of

the problem is that because people are trying to play it as if it was Spire 1, and it is not, the lack of flexibility means that they feel as though the only winning strategy is an infinite. Because that is a viable strategy that the two games share. And so, by removing some of those infinites and asking people to play more uh thoughtfully, more complexly,
Tactically. Yeah. Um people feel as though the game is no longer winnable, um and I have a hard time with this, right? Because I have played I'm over 100 hours in Spire 2 already. And I have several hundred more yet to go. I'm on A9 with almost everyone. I'm on A10 with like two characters. Um Good work. You're ahead of me. I haven't had as much time to play.
loving it, right? And even when I lose, I can see the ways

that I did it. And so, part of the problem, too, is that it is not necessarily the most clear to the players why they lost, and so the immediate impulse, particularly when a game has just experienced a balance patch, particularly when a game is still being balanced, is I didn't do anything wrong, it must be the game. And I'm trying so hard to not come across as you simply need to get good, but I believe I believe one of the problems is that people are trying to play it like it's Spire 1, and it is simply not Spire 1 in a significant number of ways that demand that you think about the game differently. Yeah, and part of it, too, is what you're talking about, the like realizing why you lost. Like Will, if you and I were playing virtual tennis online, Sure.

I would have a pretty easy time understanding why I won or lost because I would be either it would be how I'm playing against you, how I'm hitting the ball, am I missing it a lot, are you missing it a lot, Yes. am I hitting it out of bounds? All of the things, I can look at them and be like, "Oh, I can see pretty easily I was hitting the ball poorly." Yes. In Spire, because you make a choice with every floor, as well as choices within every fight, there are choices that you might have made five or eight floors ago of like choosing cards that didn't end up synergizing well, or putting too many early cards in your deck that turned out that just bloated it later that can make it feel like you don't quite understand why you didn't do as well as you thought you should have. Right. Like honestly, Spire was one of the very first games I saw that brought in removing cards from your deck as a serious part of the strategy Yes. back when it launched. Like I don't think I'd commonly seen that before. It it's the only other deck builders I

can So, both Dominion and Ascension, which are some of the OG proto deck builders, included the idea of removing some of removing worse cards from your deck, but they're very different in that there's not really a PvE element to it. They play quite differently. Um But [clears throat] I will say Yeah, I I I overall agree that um the And I mean, but part of this goes back to Magic: The Gathering and other games like that. Like you play 60 cards in your tournament deck because if you play more than 60 cards, with certain rare exceptions, you are theoretically putting cards that are you're not you're not putting the optimal amount optimal amount in. If you have 65, well, you could have 60 that would be your best 60 instead of 65 with five that aren't quite your best. So, like there was that in there of you pared down to the minimum you're allowed to play so that all of them in there are the strongest. But there again, there weren't a lot of

games before that that were as popular that were talked about both removing as well as adding. Yes. And And so, there's just there's interesting strategies on a And a lot of players still who play Spire don't quite realize how powerful things like removing are. The other the other big one that I've noticed, and and this is sort of another communication problem, is how many of you, Jeff included, have heard someone talk about their Shiv deck? Or a poison deck, or a claw deck, or a or juggernaut deck. Those are not decks. Those are cards, or collections of cards that have similar words on them. [clears throat] But that's not a deck.
It's a theme. It's not a deck. You can build a deck that includes that theme. But that's not the whole deck. There are other parts of the deck that you need in order and relics that support that theme in order for the deck

to work. And that's been a big problem, too. And I've been fighting against that since moment one of STS 2, which is Don't build to an archetype. Right? And If you could pre-construct your deck, Yes.
I would completely feel differently. Yes. But in one of the whole things about Spire is you start with a generic deck and with luck of the draw, Yeah. start get to start drafting into your deck. Yes. So, you might be like, I like Shiv decks, but never see a Shiv card while playing Silent your entire first act. Right. That's why you don't take accuracy until you have a card that says Shiv. Cuz it's just useless, right? Then it's a then it's a curse that you have to pay one to get out of your deck for the fight. Right? Cuz it doesn't do anything. So, the the And this all goes to the same idea, which is that It's true. I do. To be to be totally fair, Thunder made

the right call. It just happened to get a claw into his deck and I made fun of him for it. And I still make fun of him for it. Thunder and I play multiplayer together. It's great. Um the the This feels like it's all the same problem, though. I just want to take a step back, right? We're getting a little in the weeds with like Slay the Spire 2 specifically. It all feels like players not understanding and not knowing how to gain understanding or how to express their frustrations over the game in ways that aren't negative reviews or blanket statements. Right? We get a lot of like someone was mentioning a Reddit thread about how blocking isn't viable. I disagree. To put it mildly, as someone who ran who did a tank run in multiplayer last

night, I disagree. I blocked for 91 turn. It was great. Um Were you Ironclad? Yeah. Um Did you have Shield Bash? Uh no. I just was So, in multiplayer, got multiplayer, there's a card called tank. It says, you, the Ironclad in this case, take double damage from all attacks. Everyone else takes half damage. Mhm. So, you were literally tanking for the party. And I just thought that that was like a really cool interesting idea. So, I got like a barricade and the card that gives you double block from the first card you play each turn. And I took you'd be defense and I was just blocking up a storm so my teammates could do all the damage and I was just sitting there not dying. It was great. I loved it. Um
Right. So, but those like understand This game is more complicated than the overwhelming majority of players understand. Including me.

I'm not putting myself outside of that. You're not sitting behind the scenes with your big thing of spreadsheets and stats and, you know, all this stuff doing large-scale data analysis on the game you've made to do fine-tuning. Right. Like you will never understand aspects of it as well as the people who built it. And that I think is one of my big problems. People like the game. People liked the last game. People like this game. People had faith coming into this game that the devs who made the last game and made the sequel would be making a good version of this game. And they got in there like, yay, they made a good version of this game. At this point, hopping in and being like, we know you still got a year of work to do with, you know, new stuff and tuning, but I'm going to start trying to backseat, you know, drive dev commentary on it while you guys try and build it, seems awfully presumptuous. Yeah. And so
is great, but I don't like your decision. I'm going to review bomb you is like a shotgun to the head. Yeah.

It's
That feels pretty entitled to me. And it's difficult, right? Because we're getting to a point And and and maybe maybe maybe chat can speak to this, too. Mhm. Early access is kind of at an odd point, I would say, in public perception. And I think this is part of the overall problem. I saw someone mention a phrase that that has come up before, which is they're charging money for it, so the game is out. Which is kind of true. That is true to an extent. You are exchanging money for a product. The product is the game as it releases day one of early access. You might never get an update to that game. It would stink if that was the case, but that is a thing that has occurred enough in the world of gaming, unfortunately, that that is a thing that people expect. So, the relationship that I think a lot of people have um

are um How do I put this? The relationship that a lot of people have with it is is like twofold. You're holding two ideas in your head. One, the game is not finished. Two, I paid for the game, it should be good. Right? And like that relationship feels like it it ebbs and flows over time. And I don't know how where people are
It's also not true with all like any game. You play you pay money for League of Legends. They change it all the time. Yeah.
You pay money for Grand Theft Auto. They do patches. Like almost any game that has ongoing development, whether you have paid, you know, whether it's free to play or paid, the devs continue to update their game to keep it current, topical, and bug-free. And that is just how modern

games work. Yes. They will get changed. Yeah.
Some games get changed very, very little. Some games get changed especially live service games, all the freaking time. Fortnite now is different than it was 2 years ago and 2 years before that and 2 years before that. They continue to add and update. That is part of how these games work. Yeah. And so, part of signing up for buying a game that says early access mean like that is a thing. Yes, you have paid for it. It is your game to play. But you're also Emperor caveat, you know, you will buyer beware, you are buying a game that explicitly says on it, we are going to be making changes on this game for a while. Yeah. Big sign, bold letters. Yep. You are scanning chat, Will. What are you thinking? Um oh, chat's talking about multiplayer and I disagree with like 90% of the assessment being made of multiplayer, but that's a side track, so I'll get to it later. Um the

I think the big problem, too, is this cynicism that's sort of pervasive right now, right? And we see this a lot and sometimes it's deserved, right? And sometimes it's not, but it is the general MO now of cynicism towards early access games, towards a lot of um You know, it's pretty cutthroat with get like I mean, we can we can look at Highguard, right? Highguard got had no shot. Highguard had no shot. It came out and got kneecapped in less than 24 hours. Mhm. The internet was absolutely brutal to Highguard. That's not now. Completely separate discussion from did Highguard deserve a shot or not. I am simply talking about the speed and ruthlessness with which the internet accomplished the disassembly of a

project that was ostensibly a triple-A title. Mhm. Right? The the speed and efficacy of the actual rapid disassembly of Highguard's future prospects was impressive and horrifying, right? So, I think there's a fair amount of um of of cynicism in the in the space regarding particularly new titles, early access titles, things that are contingent on future improvement, right? People don't care about as much about future improvement. They generally want to see it now. Mhm. They want they want to see that improvement now, not later. I I think. And and that's sort of a twofold, right? One, more games are coming out, so people have more options. And two, we've been burned enough that we don't necessarily believe that it's going to get better later anymore, I think.

Yeah, and it's it's funny, too. Like As you said before, Will, early access now means something different than it did 2, 5, 10 years ago kind of thing. Like early access games for a while were the game ain't done yet in any stretch of the imagination. And nowadays it means the game is polished enough that we theoretically could be shipping this very shortly. Yes. Like um there's a difference in expectation. So, there is absolutely kind of that to play with around this whole concept. But, again, like if I ever make another game that releases on Steam and I put it on early access, I feel like I'm going to have like a big poster as one of the like when you're looking through the screenshots, it says "Early access. Hey everybody, this is what early access means. If you're buying it now, please be aware that X."

Yeah. If not, keep it wish listed. Buy it once you're out we're out. Yeah. I So, I don't know
[clears throat]
for many games. And I think Slay the Spire 2 is in this category. And this is one of the other very interesting things. I don't know that it that the early access tag actually matters to the overwhelming majority of people. Like they'll say that it does, but I don't think it's going to get a big bump when it hits 1.0. When they finally say we're done with early access and we're releasing and they get front page coverage on Steam and it goes on sale for a bit and there's a big media push and there's all kinds of streamers playing it, those streamers will already have been playing it. Oh, yeah. Right? Jorbs, Frost, Bay Lore, me, like the the directory is full of

people. I played with three other content creators for eight hours yesterday. It was amazing. Right? Like the the game already exists, right? So, now like the idea of just calling it something different of saying that it's the 1.0 release, I don't know actually matters anymore. Like it will because that'll probably be when we finally get to kill stupid architect. I can't wait to kill the stupid architect. I hate him so much. Um and Hates you and your friend. Yeah, he hates everyone and everything. Yeah, right. Like I don't know I don't know that it's actually going to change anything, right? It'll I mean, it'll be another chance to do a marketing push, but it's weird. Well, do you know that when was it? I think Gmail was out for 15 years before they removed the beta Yeah. tag from it. Like nobody thought of it as beta anymore at a certain point. And I don't even

think Google made a big announcement when they did it with Gmail. They just kind of quietly removed I noticed when they were like, "Hey, the beta tag's gone." Yeah. But, like some things exist for a while in that state. Games are a little different. Like I don't think I've ever seen anything be like, "Here's our 3-year early access." Counterpoint. Mhm. Warframe is still in beta. Warframe? Warframe. But, that's an ongoing gag at this point. Warframe is Yeah, like So, Warframe was like Gmail then where it's just like, "Yeah, man, we won't take the tag off for a very long time." Yeah. But, yeah, I mean I think expectation for a lot of people on early access is, "Hey, somewhere in the next 1 to 6 months this is going to be turning to the you know, thing." But, it's the it is at this point this game is done enough we can come and play it comfortably. Yeah. And Slay the Spire 2 unequivocally hit that. Yeah.

But, it was just it's just so weird to see people get upset at a tuning process off the main like on the beta branch of the early access thing to the point where they go to a review bombing set. And honestly, just as a developer, it's a really disheartening thing to see an audience that loves your game and is playing the crap out of it be like, "No, we're going to try and backseat how you tune this game that you've made." Yeah. Like I don't if Spire can't do it, right? What what is necessary for a dev to do it now? Like if this group of people, right? If theoretically the most die hard Spire fans are the ones doing this, right? How should other devs take a lesson from this? Is there so Is this just a one-off? Is this an odd phenomena? Is this just bringing to light a risk that was always there? Like where are we at

with this now? Does this say something about what the industry should be doing in the future? Like I'm not sure. I kind of feel like it might be, but I don't I don't 100% know. Uh so, this is a great question. Who cares about Steam reviews and review bombing in 2026? Um you don't because you're here watching two people talk about video games in an animated um coffee shop on a Thursday. You are by definition not the average consumer of video games. Those things
than a lot are like if you're watching these kinds of shows. But, review bombing is huge. When people hit the store page, if it says overwhelmingly positive, that is a we have direct direct direct research statistical evidence Yeah. that

the overwhelmingly positive, you know, mostly positive, etc. sell course orders of magnitude higher than if it gets mixed or you know, the slight the slightly negative down to like the lower that tag goes has a direct effect on how people buy it. Yeah. Because there are so many games now that that first impression coming in, if your buddy recommends a game and says it's the best game ever, but you land on the store page and it says mixed reviews, there's a good chance you're not buying it. Just straight up. Like it is that strongly associated now with how good is this game that and again, this this is this isn't just hearsay or my opinion. Like statistically backed research, some of which I helped to do like in the industry at certain points. It's amazing how strong the review score bias is. Yeah. Um I I know I I am aware of the propaganda that is at work and I know I am not

immune to it as someone who looks at Steam pages for games that I get asked to play on Steam on stream. Mhm. Right? I got two games today. Like I got emailed by two different games and I looked at both of their Steam pages to see what the games were about and to see if they were a good fit for the community and the audience. And one of them I decided to go with and I'll probably be playing it in the future and one of them I did not and I it was in no small part due to the reviews on the Steam pages for those games. Uh-huh. Right? And I am aware that that is working on me, but I am also being affected by it, right? It is almost impossible not to. Yeah. Like the um Yeah. The the first impression impact of consumer marketing.
Right. First impression and anchoring effect that first impression brings.
anchoring is huge, right?
Yeah. Um and while those those games may not have been uh affected by like a

coordinated review um effort like a review bomb, that doesn't For the purposes of this illustration, what matters is the final result not how we got there. Yeah. And on like as Dan Dan asked an interesting question, did you dive in? Most people don't. Like whether Will did or not, a majority of people hit the page, have their impression formed in the first two or three seconds and either continue on the page or bounce off and go look for another thing. Yeah. And so, this is one sadly where nuance doesn't matter. Yes. Though actually, Steam added a while ago the recent sentiment and overall sentiment I believe specifically to help counter parts of review bombing. Yes. You can also there is a setting where you can remove you can set it to either review only in your own language or to review periods of anomalous activity like review bombs. Oh, man. Sad day, my latte is empty.
Yeah. So, and and and this is the other

problem. People are pointing out that it has overwhelmingly positive on Steam. It depends on your settings cuz on mine it doesn't. Well, how are your settings different? Uh I have I have it set all languages, all time, no exceptions. Um and that's one of the defaults, I believe. Okay. Keep going. I'm actually I have no idea how what it's like to set
mine is currently So, A, it shows up on Steam DB um which should not count. Steam DB has it at 81%. If I go to my version of the store page and I'm logged in, I get 80 3% positive. Very.
Interesting. Mine is set all I currently see is overwhelmingly positive with number. Like I don't see an actual score or other things.
Right. How many out of how many reviews do you have? 38,471. I have 92,944

reviews. I have mine set to be as open as possible, right? So, like it it Again, this is another thing that depends where different people are going to see different things depending on their setting. Yeah. Um if I go into that, I believe I can see Oh, there you go. See language breakdown.
Uh and you can have um If you go down to your preferences, there's a way to uh see
Oh, I'll figure it out later. I was just minorly curious like what my setting was. Yep. Yeah, like mine has 38,000 96% positive.
Yeah, that's a whole other part of this as well. Oh, yep, reviews in your language. So, okay, it is set to my language. And And again, this is this is one of the complicated things, which is that um this will have a lumpy effect, right? It won't It won't affect everyone in the uh

the same because people will have different settings and and different everything everything else, right? Some people will have periods of extreme volatility turned off. Some people will have languages own review own review own language only. Um a bunch of other settings that will change the way that you view the the game. Yeah. Now, I want Steam review setting comparisons true. Yes, agreed. Yeah. Yeah, chat, how are you feeling about the I I I kind of wanted to ask as we as we sort of um talk about this. How are you feeling about Spires beta and is it an example of an early access or beta that you think other companies should follow? Like that's that's I guess what what I want to talk about is not necessarily like what the impact on Slay

the Spire is, but is this having been a wildly successful launch by all metric standards, right? Like all metrics indicate that this is going super well. There are currently um uh 157,828 people playing with an all with a 24-hour peak of 345,151 according to Steam DB. A smashing success the likes of which most indie companies could only dream of in their wildest in their wildest dreams, right? Is like despite people's negative feedback to the beta branch, is this a model that other companies should follow? Like is this it? Is this the thing, right?
Yeah. But again, it part of this was like it's interesting. Like this is probably going to end up being a shorter episode because while we may pivot to talk about something else, there is like it's an interesting thing. Will and I are both offended for minorly different reasons.
Sure. But it's also a big enough game

that it's going to pull through on this.
Right. But another a game like this, if this had been MegaCrit doing Slay the Spire 1, Yeah. like early access, hey, we're not a big we are we've never had a hit. We're a young team that nobody knows who we are. That kind of behavior from people playing the game is a thing that could sink a studio. Yeah.
And keep us from getting what would have been otherwise a really great game. Yeah. As someone who who loves games made by three people, right? Three seems to be the magical number of people for me to get like one of my favorite games, between one and three. Um also just as a note, um I I do absolutely love the placeholder art um that they have made uh it is one of my favorite things and I think more devs should take notes on this. All of the placeholder art is MS Paint. And it's terrible. Oh, it's so bad. It's

terrible.
On purpose terrible. And I am truly hopeful that we will get the option upon beating the architect to enable the beta art for individual cards so we can go back to that truly on purpose terrible MS Paint art because I love it. And it's a thing that carried over from Slay the Spire from Spire 1 where they did terrible early hard. Excuse me. They did honest to god placeholder art.
Yeah. All devs placeholders. No No No AI, no nothing. It's all Hey, we just We made a thing in MS Paint. You can tell what card it is. Have fun. Love it. But um by the way, there was no AI imagery for Slay the Spire 1 because it did not yet exist in a meaningful sense.
cuz it didn't. Yeah. Speaking of which, Will. Yes. I want to show off my cool toy cuz I just got back from PAX East.
Yeah. And I found an official Here we go. Certificate of Authenticity that this is an official thing that I can use to make my face glow.

Yeah, that that's not that's not the important part.
Oh, that's not the important thing?
No, it's not the important thing. It's the I love these. These are so good. They are. I am
Defect Defect remains coded. Oh, oh, green. Yeah. I am so happy with finding those. This is going to go on my background desk with my couple of other light-ups. Yeah, it's actually Look at this one. Like it's So, while while Jeff shows off his toy, I do I do want to wrap this up for the YouTube comments.
What do you all think? Is this something you knew about? Is this something you cared about? Is this something you are now interested in or is this just sort of something that we've grown to expect as part of the early access experience. Um let us know in the comments how you feel about this cuz it feels like a weird interesting story that we can point at and say, this is not as it has always been. This is a different way that we're going to have to look at what it means to be beta, what it means to be early access, what it means to bring a product in

collaboration with its player base into existence. Um I'm very I'm I'm very interested in um uh in in what you all have to to to say about that. Um we'll be back next week with a different topic, but in two weeks, not next week, but the week after, we have a special treat for you that we will tell you nothing about until right before it happens, but we're very excited to be here both next week and in two weeks. And I'm happy to report that now that all of the travel is done, Matt and I will return for breakfast on Monday morning, 11:00 a.m. Eastern, 8:00 a.m. Pacific. We're going to be talking about this and other things such as the Nintendo um price changes. We're going to be talking about the Epic Labs. We're going to talk about a whole bunch of stuff. So, please look forward to all of that on Monday. Uh and I think all that remains is for Jeff to say goodbye to the people. So, say bye to the people, Jeff. Bye to the people, Jeff. Hey, everybody, have a

great week. See you next week. Goodbye.
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