Slay the Spire redefined the roguelike‑deckbuilder genre by combining persistent runs, branching paths, and card‑based combat into a compact package with high replay value. Its appeal lies in the loop of building a deck, upgrading it while ascending the spire, reacting to relics and events, and seeing how far you can climb.
Announced as part of November's Xbox Showcase, Vampire Crawlers marks a significant departure from the simplistic gameplay of Survivors, adding increased depth and strategy via its strong focus on deckbuilding while still retaining a similar visual style and a penchant for chaos. Other notable features include the village, which serves as a central hub for your Survivors, as well as a shift to a 2.5D perspective.
If you dip back to early July of this year, we released our annual Gen Con preview article, where we talked about our most anticipated board games of the convention. It's always enjoyable to look over the hundreds of new releases for the convention and figure out which one has sparked your interest the most. And for me, it was Tag Team from publisher Scorpion Masque.
The next title from French game developer Quantic Dream isn't what you'd expect. The studio, best known for single-player narrative adventures including Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls, is putting out a multiplayer game called Spellcasters Chronicles, which will debut in a closed beta on Steam before the year ends. Combining action and strategy with elements from MOBAs and deckbuilding games, the free-to-play Spellcasters Chronicles appears to be a unique blend of mechanics and concepts.
