Slay the Spire co-creator advises that 'taking risks is actually the least risky thing you can do,' arguing for the appeal of 'hyper-engaging' games

Gaming IndustrySlay the SpireSlay the Spire co-creator advises that ‘taking risks is actually the least risky thing you can do,’ arguing for the appeal of ‘hyper-engaging’ gamesWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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Casey Yano, co-founder of Slay the Spire developer Mega Crit, quit his job several years ago to work on the deckbuilder that would eventually earn a92% from PC Gamerand a 97% overwhelmingly positive rating on Steam. It wasn’t a smash hit at first, when it launched in early access, but as Slay the Spire picked up attention it eventually became the inspiration for dozens more singleplayer deckbuilding roguelikes. Many of those games have also been successful, but the surprise breakout of this year’s Helldivers 2 andits unique approach to a live service shooterprompted PC Gamer’s Evan Lahti to ask to what extent developers should be trying to capitalize on whatever’s currently trendy.

“If any big companies are listening: Taking risks is actually the least risky thing you can do,” Yano said in a recent PC Gamer roundtable interview on the State of PC Gaming. His argument: “People just want novelty. If you see a strange flavor of ice cream, you’re gonna try that ice cream. I want to try the weird ice cream. I’m just saying—the pineapple mint sorbet I had the other day was incredible.”

Earlier in the conversation Yano said that Mega Crit’s tiny team hadn’t given any thought to creating or popularizing a genre with Slay the Spire. The game was simply born out of his frustration with how slow most card games felt, and that they typically weren’t built to be singleplayer. “The expectation for a card game was that it has to be PvP, and I didn’t think that was true,” he said. “The only way to prove anything on the internet is to do it yourself, so we just made a game.”

Douse pointed to Slay the Spire as a key example of a different sort of trend in modern PC gaming, one divorced from genre labels: what he calls “hyper-engaging games.”

“We’re seeing more people super into specific games and finding communities in those games,” he said. “That’s a cool thing, right? … There’s a trend of hyper-engaging games at work. We made a hyper-engaging game. Traditional logic is don’t make it hyper-engaging. Make it broad so you can pick it up off the shelf.”

“Oh no,” Yano said. “We went all-in.”

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Our 2024 State of PC Gaming roundtable touched on a range of other topics, from the influence of Slay the Spire to the current use of AI in games to the biggest trends in PC gaming over the past year. You can check out the full conversation in the embeds above and below, or find PC Gamer Chat Log wherever you get your podcasts. You may also be interested inSlay the Spire 2, which was announced after this discussion was recorded. It’s due out in 2025.

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