Finally finished Slay the Spire, and yes, it is as good as all the nerds say it is. As you can see, it took me many hours to finally call it beaten, but during that time it such a strong hold on my waking thoughts - other parts of my life may have suffered a bit during, but don't tell them i said that

Not a huge CCG guy growing up, mostly for financial reasons, but cards are nearly fundamental to games (in general) and i always enjoyed playing them, collectible or otherwise. I did jump on Hearthstone when it came out, and spent a few years trying to keep up with that, until eventually burning myself off of it during lock-down. At some point during that Slay the Spire must've emerged, and cards in digital games have mostly exploded since then

Anyway, enough of (personal) history. For those who don't know, StS is a card game rogue-like, you start with a basic deck of ten or so cards, and can add a shiny new card to it after each victory against the various enemies of the Spire, on your way to the top. Other traditional rogue-like elements are here too; character-changing relics, treasure rooms with free goodies, shops with (hopefully) the things you're looking for, risk-reward elite enemies, and bosses ending each act

While there are common card mechanics across the board, each playable character has their own suit of cards, and embodies a broadly different win strategy - having within a few deck archetypes you can build towards (or mix and match). They're introduced in what feels like simplest-to-hardest to understand, but most importantly they all feel quite different to play (some more unique than others perhaps)

Took me a while to realise that i needed to resist the urge to add new shinies to my deck, as having a smaller more focused deck is often better than an overall more powerful deck, that's harder to find the things you need, when you need them (just a basic tip from me).
Good good stuff. Now i want to play every other card game in my library..