Games like Slay the Spire that keep the branching climb
Playze Staff · Nov 14, 2026
Three hundred and fifty cards, two hundred relics, fifty-odd events and four characters. That is the entire contents of Slay the Spire, and people have put thousands of hours into it, because the interesting part was never the quantity — it was being handed a branching map and made to choose the risky path or the safe one before you knew what your deck was going to become. Games like Slay the Spire are easy to find and hard to sort, because most of them copy the cards and miss that decision. The seven below keep it, in seven different ways, and each has a dated low from our own record beside it.
| Game | Deck, or something else? | Low | Date | Store |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monster Train | Cards, three floors at once | $1.29 | 23 Oct 2026 | Driffle |
| Across the Obelisk | Cards, four decks at once | $2.64 | 24 Oct 2026 | Gameseal |
| Roguebook | Cards, two heroes, hex map | $1.27 | 7 Nov 2026 | Gameseal |
| Inscryption | Cards, then an escape room | $6.13 | 30 Oct 2026 | Eneba |
| Griftlands | Two decks, talking and fighting | $0.76 | 27 Oct 2026 | Gameseal |
| Balatro | Poker hands, not a card pool | $9.57 | 7 Nov 2026 | Driffle |
| Dicey Dungeons | Dice slotted into equipment | $2.01 | 29 Oct 2026 | Driffle |
The climb survives, the board changes
These three keep the structure intact: a map you read before you walk it, relics that quietly rewrite what your deck is for, and a run you lose more often than you win. If you would rather browse the wider genre than the specific shape, our roguelike games on sale list covers the action end of it instead.
Monster Train stacks the fight vertically: the pyre is on the bottom floor and anything that reaches it wins. (Official Steam screenshot)
Monster Train is the one every list arrives at, and Gfinity Esports calls it the closest alternative to Slay the Spire outright. The map and the artifacts work the way you expect, but the fight does not: it happens on three floors of a train simultaneously, and the enemy climbs toward a pyre on the bottom one. That changes the fundamental question from "what does my deck do" to "where does my deck need to be standing", because a unit placed one floor too high is a unit that never swings. It also means a bad draw is survivable in a way it is not in the Spire — you have two more floors of road between the mistake and the loss. Clans combine in pairs, which gives the game its real depth: ten or so pairings, each with a different reason the run works. Shiny Shoe later built a sequel, which is on PC Game Pass, though the first remains the tighter design. Our price record on Monster Train moves more than most of this list, so the day matters here.
Four players, four decks, one campaign: that is what Across the Obelisk adds, and it is the only pick here with real online co-op. Each player drives their own character and their own cards while the party shares a branching world map and a pool of over five hundred upgradeable cards. The cost is pace. A four-handed turn takes as long as four people need to take it, and the 80% Steam score — the lowest of these seven — is largely people who found the solo version slower and more grinding than the Spire's twenty-minute runs. Played as intended, with three other people on a voice call, it is the only game on this list that turns a deckbuilder into an evening with friends rather than an evening alone. Eleven characters means the party composition question arrives before the deck question does, and a group that all pick damage dealers will find out why that matters somewhere in the second zone. Our co-op games list has the broader set if the four-player part is what drew you here.
Monster Train's release trailer, from publisher Good Shepherd's own channel. The three-floor layout is clearest around the middle of it.
Instead of a node map, Roguebook hands you a blank page and ink. You paint the map into existence as you explore, which means the risky-or-safe choice becomes how much of the book you dare uncover before the next fight. Two heroes fight together with one shared deck, split between a front and a back row. With 84% from under five thousand reviews it is the least-played pick here, and the ink economy takes a run or two to click.
Games like Slay the Spire hide a story in the deck
Both of these use the cards to tell you something, which means both of them end. That is a different proposition from a game you keep on the taskbar for a year, and it is the right one if the Spire has started to feel like homework.
Inscryption's first act plays straight, which is the point — it needs you to trust the card game before it stops being one. (Official Steam screenshot)
Daniel Mullins built Inscryption to be played once and then explained to someone else. It opens as a card roguelike with a brutal cost mechanic, where creatures are paid for with other creatures, and then it becomes something that is not a card roguelike at all. That is the trade: this is a finite story with an ending rather than a game you return to for a year, and the endless version arrives afterwards as Kaycee's Mod. It is on PC Game Pass, so a subscription you already hold may settle the question. Our record has it sitting within a few cents of itself for the whole window, which tells you the resellers have no room left to undercut each other.
Two decks is the trick in Griftlands: one for fighting, one for arguing, and most encounters can be resolved with either. Klei wrote a sci-fi debt world around that, and it remembers what you did — someone you spare in the first hour can turn up as a quest later, and someone you killed stays killed. Runs are substantially longer than a Spire climb, which is the reason to pick it or avoid it depending on your evening. Three playable grifters each get their own campaign and their own card sets, and at 94% from fourteen thousand reviews it is the best-reviewed thing Klei has made outside Don't Starve.
Devolver's own reveal trailer for Inscryption. It gives away less than most trailers, which here is a mercy.
Some runs end before Act 1 would
Two picks for the evenings when a full climb is more than you want to commit to — both closer to our short games picks than to a twenty-hour campaign, and one of the two is on the PC Game Pass roster.
Jokers do the work relics do in the Spire, except they multiply each other, which is how Balatro runs end in numbers nobody designed for. (Official Steam screenshot)
Poker hands replace the card pool in Balatro, and jokers replace the relics. It is the purest version of the combo-hunting half of Slay the Spire and has none of the positioning or the map. Runs take twenty minutes and end either in a flat loss or in a score with too many digits. It is on PC Game Pass as well.
Dice, not cards, drive Dicey Dungeons: you roll at the start of each turn and slot the results into equipment that only accepts certain numbers. Six episodes each rewrite the rules for a different character, so the game keeps restarting itself rather than deepening. Terry Cavanagh's art and Chipzel's soundtrack make it the lightest thing here by some margin.
Pick your next ascent
Start with Monster Train. It is the one both the lists and the mechanics agree on: it keeps the map, the relics and the lose-often rhythm, and the three-floor board gives you a genuinely new problem to solve rather than a reskin of the old one. If you want the opposite of that — the combos without the geometry — Balatro is the shorter, sharper answer, and Game Pass may already cover it.
One note from the record: Across the Obelisk sat inside a few cents of the same figure across the whole window, and its own price pattern on our site says the same thing. There is no better day for that one than today.
We wrote this from store pages, published reviews and our own price record, not from playing each game for this piece. Some store links on our game pages are affiliate links, so playze may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.