KPWHYS

I completed Act IV of Slay the Spire a few days ago after encountering the final boss a little less than 10 times. It's a great rogue-lite and what was interesting was how I learned one of the most important parts of the game. First, some context. Slay the Spire is a rogue-lite + deck builder mashup. In combat, players start with ~20 cards in their decks and a subset of 5 is drawn from their deck every turn. Players have a mana budget each turn and each card has its own mana cost. Used and unused cards every turn are mostly returned to a pile that can be drawn from after the initial draw pile is exhausted. At the end of most battles the player has an opportunity to choose a card from three to add to their decks. The beginner's inclination is to constantly add new cards, because most of them are pretty cool, allow combo opportunities and individually stronger than your default deck. Deck size turns out to be critical for the player because your draw size stays the same unl...

The Auto Chess genre is on fire. The original DOTA Auto Chess by Drodo Studio kicked off the storm and quickly surpassed 300,000 concurrent players . At breakneck speed, both Valve and Riot Games have launched their own Auto Chess inspired spins and both have grown very quickly . Today, it is probable that both Riot and Valve's versions have surpassed Drodo's in active players. The only piece we await in this contest is Riot's delivery of a mobile version, which will be their first successful product on mobile. As usual, Blizzard will be too late. The big question for me: Is this war over? And did Drodo let the win go? I'm a big fan of Drodo and have reached Bishop-6 on Drodo's mobile Auto Chess Origins which launched on iOS Jun 5, 2019. They've accomplished a dream of many studios to create a new genre with a massive global audience. This is a moment reminiscent of the birth of MOBA on the Warcraft 3 mod scene and history looks to repeat itself with ...