Slay the Spire

Mega Crit's 2019 release created the deckbuilding roguelike as a genre. You climb three acts of a branching map with a starting deck of nine near-useless cards, and every fight offers one of three cards to add - so the run is a series of small decisions about what you are willing to make your deck worse to make it better at one thing. Cards you decline matter as much as the ones you take, and the best players remove more than they add. Four characters play completely differently: Ironclad wants strength and self-damage, Silent wants poison and card draw, Defect stacks orbs, Watcher cycles stances at enormous risk. Relics modify the rules outright, and a single one can define a run. Enemy intents are shown before you act, so like Into the Breach it is a puzzle rather than a gamble. Ascension levels give it a difficulty ladder that takes hundreds of hours to climb. Practically every deckbuilder since is measured against it, and Slay the Spire 2 entered early access in 2026.