Hollow Bough
The score is the floor you died on.
Slay the Spire is the game where you climb a tower with a deck of cards, and the deck is the run — every fight offers you another card, and the pile you end up holding is the argument you made about how to survive. Its sequel put the same idea back on the table in 2026 and the shape has not changed, because the shape is right.
This is that shape, one screen and one sitting: a branching map you commit to a column at a time, fights where everything telegraphs what it is about to do, and thirty-five cards to build ten into something that can go further than it should. It is an homage and it says so. Nothing is lifted — every card, every foe and every noise here was written from scratch — and it is not connected to Mega Crit in any way.
Drag a card onto something, or click it to play it at the marked target · 1–90 play the nth card, and pick the nth thing on every other screen · ←→ change target · Space end the turn · V look at the deck · P pause · M sound · on a phone, tap a card and then tap what it is for
- Fray takes half again as much damage
- Slow deals a quarter less
- Venom bleeds each turn, through block
- Sharp every attack hits harder
- Resin every block card gives more
- Thorns hits back at whatever hits you
The score is depth#
Every other cabinet on this floor scores the thing you did. This one scores how far up you got before something stopped you, and nothing else comes close: clearing floor N pays N × 60, so the floors add up on themselves and a run that reached floor 40 has banked more from the climb alone than it could earn in a hundred fights.
Downing something pays 20, an elite pays 400 and a boss pays 1,500 — enough that finishing a fight beats surviving it, and not enough to be a strategy. There is no ending. Act 3's boss is followed by act 4, which is act 1 with everything scaled up, and act 7 after that. The run ends when you die, and where you died is the score.
A turn#
Three energy, five cards, and a hand that goes to the discard pile at the end of every turn whether you spent it or not.
- Cards cost energy. Attacks deal damage, skills give block or draw or mend, and powers stay up for the rest of the fight. Drag a card onto a foe, or click it to send it at whichever foe is ringed.
- Block does not carry over. Whatever is left of it is gone when your turn comes round again, so blocking for a turn that was never going to hurt is a card thrown away.
- They tell you what they are doing. The pip over a foe is its next move and the number on it is what that move will cost you, already adjusted for everything on both of you. That is the whole game: the information is free, and what you do with it is not.
- The deck reshuffles. When the draw pile runs out, the discard pile is shuffled back into it — so a card you added is a card you will see, and the deck being small is what makes it reliable.
Fray
The frayed thing takes half again as much damage. It is the cheapest damage in the game and almost nothing removes it.
Slow
A slowed thing deals a quarter less. On a boss with one big move a turn, that is the difference the turn needed.
Venom
Bleeds at the start of each of its turns and goes down by one, through block. The only damage on the cabinet that ignores armour entirely.
Sharp
Every attack hits for more. It multiplies with everything else, which is why a run that stacks it stops caring what the numbers on its cards say.
Resin
Every block card gives more. The same argument on the other side of the fight.
Thorns
Hits back at whatever hits you, once per hit — so a foe with a three-hit move takes it three times.
The map#
Thirteen columns an act, laid out left to right, and you pick one node at a time from whatever the one you are standing on connects to. The fork is the decision, not the node — an elite is worth its boon and might kill you, a shop is worth what is in it and you cannot know until you are there, and skipping a rest to take a fight is how a run gets rich and how it ends.
- A fight pays honey and offers a card. Taking every card is a mistake; the deck you draw five from gets worse with every card in it that is not doing anything.
- An elite is one big thing, and it pays a boon — a passive that lasts the whole run.
- A hollow mends 30% of your HP or puts an edge on one card for good. There is one of each on the column before the boss, and never enough of them anywhere else.
- A trader sells cards and a boon, and will burn a card out of your deck for good. Burning is usually the best thing on the shelf.
- A cache is three cards, free, no fight.
- The unmarked ones are eight short scenes with two ways out apiece, and the wrong-looking one is sometimes right.
- The boss is at the far right of every act and there is no way past it. Felling one mends you whole on the way into the next act — the only full heal in the game, and the reason spending HP on the back half of an act is a real option rather than a debt you carry up the tree.
Posting a run#
Sign in with Discord and the run posts itself the moment the climb ends; play as a guest and it is kept as a personal best on this device instead. The board ranks on score and shows the floor you reached beside it — which is very nearly the same number twice, and that is the point of this cabinet. The arcade page has the longer version of how the boards work, and the other cabinets.