My Process of Designing a Mod for Slay the Spire

Conceptualization

Inspiration: The Concept of Drifting through the Spire was humorous and fun.

  • I was a fan of Initial D and Eurobeat as well as the game Slay the Spire, and found the idea of Drifting through the spire as an inherently amusing premise. The initial idea involved drifting as a mechanic, which players could activate by playing certain types of Drift cards every turn, and while the mechanic was active, it would play the show’s iconic eurobeat music.

Setting Design Goals

  • The Drifter should be designed in a similar way to the base-game characters in Slay the Spire.

  • The Drifter should deliver on the theme of Initial D; you should feel like you are driving and drifting through the spire.

Developing Mechanical Themes / Archetypes

Using the base-game characters as a template, I created Major and Minor archetypes for my cards.

  • Slay the Spire characters have various archetypes in their card synergies which overlap and intersect with each other. I would need to create some of these to make my card pool interesting, and mirror the base-game better.

First I decided that theme would be important to this mod; I brainstormed some flavorful concepts to base my mechanics off of.

  • Using the idea of Drifting, I decided that the flavor would be the primary element of this mod - therefore I should design archetypes that fit in with the theme.

  • Speed, Drifting and Racing were all very flavorful concepts which could work as mechanics.

  • Using elements from the show, I also decided that Recklessness and pulling off risky yet powerful moves was another good concept.

Next, I translated these concepts into mechanical identities.

  • Drifting: Some kind of stacking buff that can build up, but must be maintained by playing Drift cards every turn.

  • Speed: Drawing, and lots of it. Players would enjoy seeing a card that can draw them lots of cards - potentially much more than the normal characters, and it would capture the feeling of speed.

  • Racing: Ultimately did not have a strong mechanical identity.

  • Recklessness: Cards that debuff you but have a strong reward.

I defined my Major and Minor archetypes:

Major:

  • Drifting

  • Drawing / Speed / Having many cards

  • Self-vulnerable

    Minor:

  • Drawing during turn: Specific synergies for when you draw cards during your turn.

  • Overdraw: To add to the feeling of speed, and ensure that all of the extra drawing is not ‘wasted’ I decided the character would have an Overdraw mechanic, where cards drawn above the character’s hand size go to Overdraw, and are drawn later as the player’s hand empties. I could also use this mechanic as a minor archetype.

  • Speed: I used Speed as a specific effect, which gives extra card draw - however leaning into the theme of Recklessness, reaching certain levels of speed would incur debuffs.

  • Discard: As a consequence of drawing a lot of cards, I could also play with discard effects, or effects which like having a small hand - since playing with a smaller hand would be easier with all of the extra draw effects in the class.

Giving my Character Strengths and Weaknesses

Before I proceeded with the design, I decided on some strengths and weaknesses for my character. Since drawing was a strength, I decided that energy generation would be a weakness.

  • Design Considerations: With the character able to draw many cards, any cards which generated energy or costed 0 were naturally going to be more valuable.

Developing a set of 75+ Cards which interact with these Major and Minor Archetypes

As I brainstormed and implemented cards, I organized them by which gameplay theme they interacted with.

  • As I developed cards, I added them to an excel document, documenting what type of card they were, their cost, and which archetypes they interacted with, and if they enabled these synergies (setup cards) or benefited from them (payoff cards).

  • Using this, I could ensure that each gameplay theme was well represented, and that cards interacted with multiple themes.

Next I used a data-driven approach to make sure that certain rules were followed; using the base game characters as a reference.

  • Using the base-game characters’ card pools as a reference, I would compare my character’s card pool to them, making sure that certain metrics were followed:

    • The character had a good mix of low-cost and high-cost cards.

    • The character had a number of common, uncommon and rare cards that were similar in distribution to the base-game characters.

    • The character had enough block cards and attack cards.

    • The character’s common cards would be able to output enough damage to deal with the early acts, as well as having options to deal with problematic enemies which require specific solutions (Gremlin Nob, a character which you cannot effectively block, and must attack quickly.)