Fred and Loathing on The Internet

No Plan Survives Contact with the Draw Pile

2026-Jun-28

We will try a double header approach to the blog this time. Two video games. A battle of design choices and gaming ethos. Hashing out the pros and cons of two artistic efforts into one blog post. Very few readers enter. Even fewer will finish!

Both video games being talked about today are pretty new ones. Gee, come to think of it. A review of an old video game would be a novelty for our reputable publication. We’ve touched on old movies, books, and an embarrassingly sized plethora of sitcoms. Among those blog posts, plenty of video games have been talked about. Many as that may be, not one game reviewed was made before the late 2010s. A mental note has been made for the editorial staff. The likely product of this quick rumination will be about some game Nintendo classic available through the Switch 2.

Let’s get back on track to talking about two contemporary video games. The first of today’s two is Warno, a game that had been talked about here on the blog a few months back. Warno has clearly usurped Satisfactory as the video game timesink of choice. Speaking of Satisfactory, the once clear personal favorite of mine on Steam for years. In the past few months I had tried to revisit my factory (which would be my third one since starting to play in late 2023) a few times. Getting started on any project there felt akin to a job related task.

All the romance I once had for arranging inputs and outputs through transit lines has ebbed away. I believe the platonic factory lurking inside my mind is close enough to what I have built in my third factory. There is still some teeming interest in making the current factory more user-mobile. Meaning transit tubes everywhere. Sophisticated ones that use those junction features I could not get working before. It might be fun to forget my layout and explore my previous design choices.

The other title on today's docket is Slay The Spire, a game very unlike any of the ones that merited their own blog post. It’s different enough from even the games that have been mentioned in passing. Although I have played this game at a fraction of a rate as I have with Warno, its sheer novelty has brought it to the forefront of my thoughts. It has swayed my idea of how to proceed with gaming. Warno sucks up a lot of my time. What it has not done is made me want to find another foray into hardcore real-time-strategy games.

Slay the Spire is merely a card game. In theory, it could be played in person with actual cards. I’ve played up to level three of the Spire. The total cards for all that I have seen could fit in an orderly set that could be housed in a conventional board game box. New playable characters or levels would just take more cards. The cards are there to represent battle between the playable character and the bad guys in their way as they climb this titular tower. For what reason, I don’t know. I just play the game.

I have a very obvious feeling that there is a much deeper backstory to Slay the Spire. That is something I only have inklings about because I have not paid much attention to the text printed throughout the game. I tap ‘A’ as fast as possible for non-decision text menus. The shrewd card mechanics is what I had heard was great about this game. Those were immediately apparent upon playing. These inklings about the deeper story beyond the card game come from the art direction. The cards that get played and the recurring bad guys on the road up the spire share common themes.

More of that backstory came through when I was searching up references for the graphic material that would go along with this post. Up until the moment I had searched for the game's playable characters, I did not know the names of the actual characters. I had just blundered through them assuming stereotypes about RPG classes. I figured I would get a fighter, than rogue, than mage. Straight up textbook Diablo classes.

The three that I have unlocked so far are very different play styles. Different enough that starting each character has been more blunderous than I would have expected were this a conventional digital RPG. My heads down, just play-the-cards style of enjoying this game had led me to name the three characters The Default Warrior, The Rogue That Plays Dirty, and The Robot With Wacky Rules. Their actual names pretend to a much more folkloric role playing game status: The Ironclad, The Silent, and The Defect.

Backstory aside, the reason the game is such a success is the card mechanics. This game is an RPG solitaire. You pick a role, you improve upon that role by playing the solitary game of causing negative numbers to the bad guys while you prevent the bad guys from making your own numbers too negative. There are turns that let complex decisions be made unharried. There are a predetermined amount of cards in a draw or discard pile. Sometimes cards are removed from cycling between draw and discard.

There are a million ways to twist the way that happens or the order. That is the core logic of how to play this game. Draw five cards, use them to cause or prevent damage, or aid in the direct cause of attacking or blocking. After each victory, distribute the experience towards a greater plan of improvement needed to meet the increasing difficulty of the Spire. If you don’t plan out your role well, you’ll end up playing a bunch of useless hands.

It takes about thirty to sixty minutes to go as far up the Spire as I usually do. At the moment I’m at a plateau around the bridge between the third boss fight and the beginning of the fourth level. Slay The Spire is much more calming than engaging with Warno. Warno itself has a similar idea about selecting cards so that your selected class can be exploited effectively. It is a very real time game, while Slay The Spire is serenely turn based in comparison.

The other big uncalming distinction that Warno has from Slay The Spire is the inherent call to play it online versus other players. PvP as they say. My six months and one hundred hours of Warno has not given me enough experience to be able to not be consistently in the bottom half of 10vs10 matches. Warno for me is a video game that is at the margins of online enjoyability.

It is becoming an exercise in enjoying something that I know will likely never be as satisfying as I can hope. In theory I could dedicate the time and effort to understand all the right decisions to make given every situation the game can present. To masterly understand one particular NATO or Warsaw Pact army’s strength and weaknesses to masterfully approach all those tactical situations. That theory sounds exhausting. I would more likely predict a trickled down amount of hours where I eke out some enjoyment getting sixth place on my team (on a good match!). Complacent in my nadir of how to maneuver my combined arms. Giving myself a carrot in front of me that promises the next match I will finally deploy my diverse set of combat units without any crucial mistakes.

I have had a few instances of getting the top spot on my team in winning or losing situations. I could not tell you the reasons for those successes, other than my default plan somehow worked in those instances. I assume the reasons for those successes should bear some resemblance to the reasons for my losses. Maybe those times I had smashing victories was just because I was playing scrubs? If I do get another unmitigated victory or get an MVP spot, I’ll make sure to see if the other teams put up similar numbers.

The thought of going into the ranked matches of 1v1 in Warno is the opposite of what I would call enjoyment. Even if I knew I was entering a scoring system with the expectation of nearing the bottom, it would still be excruciating. More than just playing an AI that cheats. I say this now only because I have yet to even try it once. Maybe I could really learn to bomb before a one man audience? The doubts I have about feeling pressure to reach victory does seem like a personal challenge to get over that shit. It’s just a game. And if it is legitimately unpleasant to get so definitely outclassed, then a dozen or so matches should confirm that. It’s a tragedy that all the video games I most enjoy have such high skill curves coupled with a niche audience of stalwart fans.

Enough pontificating about these games. I’ve said all there is to say about how these two games are dominating my hours on Steam. There will likely be some minor grinding on Slay The Spire to see what is the next level. There will be Pyrich victories on Warno because I played too sloppily on the winning side or I played too defensively on the losing side. The first order of business is building my ‘deck’ so that I can do the Sun Tzu thing: ‘know myself’.