The game opened.
A main interface, as ordinary as could be, popped up.
The background was precisely the tall spire from the CG animation and the red clouds floating high in the sky.
Old E expertly slid his mouse, clicked 'Start Game,' and then three class options appeared.
"Huh? Only three classes? Is that it? My casually written code has more than that!"
Compared to other games, the interface of slay the spire was indeed not very good.
It could even be described as extremely simplistic.
Old E, who had initially held high expectations, immediately pulled a long face, his expression of disdain plastered all over it, and the viewers in the live stream burst into laughter.
"Just tell us if you're playing or not."
"Designer: It's a game that came free with the CG, it's good enough that you even get three classes."
"Just for the quality of that animation, at least pretend to play it so the Designer doesn't get sad."
"This interface is too simple; it looks like it wasn't even born from the same mother as the CG."
"It really does seem to have limited content."
"I'm starting to doubt the Designer's sanity."
Amidst the laughter, Old E wasn't idle.
After a quick look at the class descriptions, he ultimately chose the most stable Warrior as his starting class.
Class: Ironclad Warrior
Health: 80/80
Gold: 99
Burning Blood: At the end of combat, restore 6 health.
Description: A soldier remaining from the Ironclad Legion, who sold his soul to gain demonic power, but also suffered the Spire's eternal curse.
Character selected.
A giant whale NPC appeared, offering two initial abilities.
Initial Armor +3 at the start of combat
Damage dealt increased by 1
One leaned towards defense, the other towards offense.
"I'm familiar with this; isn't it just choosing a build?"
Old E had a confident expression: "I'll just pick damage directly; the Warrior has healing, so I'll just rush!"
After confirming, a map resembling a treasure map appeared, marked with several paths and various icons.
Monsters, Elites, Treasures, Merchants, Events, and Rest spots were randomly scattered, connecting from the bottom all the way to the final boss at the very top, looking like layers of a tall spire.
The Warrior's initial deck was very simple.
It only had a few attack and block cards, without even skill effects.
"My goodness, just a few broken cards, what kind of gameplay is this?"
Looking at the Warrior's extremely simplistic starting deck, Old E couldn't help but complain.
One must know that card games on the market today generally come with attack/defense attributes and skill effects.
And the higher the star quality, the stronger the skill attributes.
The gameplay mainly revolved around eliminating cards and defeating enemy heroes.
To put it bluntly, it was about the 'pay-to-win' level of your deck.
The more you paid, the stronger your deck; if you didn't pay, you were worse than a dog.
It could be said that to force players to spend, those game companies had resorted to every possible trick, otherwise, they wouldn't have been jointly boycotted by so many players.
However, this game showed no signs of any pay-to-win mechanics.
It seemed that even the gameplay was different from mainstream card games, which piqued Old E's interest, and he patiently began to play.
First level.
He encountered the lowest-level small monsters at the base of the spire.
Following the prompts, he dragged an attack card to attack the monster and used a defense card to increase his armor to block damage.
It was just the simplest operation.
But after a few rounds of combat, he gradually became interested.
Because this was the first time he had seen such gameplay.
It wasn't just a simple comparison of card attributes, but rather cooperation between cards.
When to attack aggressively and when to defend and wait for an opportunity, all required very deep consideration.
Moreover, as he progressed through the levels, he acquired more and more cards, and their effects became increasingly diverse.
These cards could even form various linkages and combinations with each other, producing unexpected effects.
"Why do I feel like this game isn't that simple?"
At this moment, someone in the live stream finally noticed something unusual.
As soon as this was said, others also reacted immediately.
"Don't even mention it, it looks quite interesting."
"I didn't expect this game to be pretty good?"
"Although the art style is a bit simple, the card types are incredibly rich, and it feels like combining them can form many different builds."
"And those relics with effects, they're different every time, so you can combine at least dozens of playstyles!"
"And this is just one of the classes!"
They were stunned.
After understanding the core gameplay of slay the spire, the audience was completely stunned.
They had thought it was just a poorly made, filler game, but unexpectedly, beneath its ordinary art style, such rich and interesting gameplay was hidden.
It completely refreshed their preconceived notions of card games.
So card games could be played like this!
"Holy crap! What the heck is this!"
Suddenly, an exclamation interrupted everyone's discussion.
In the live stream, Old E clicked on the skull icon marking an elite on the map and encountered a green slime monster.
He was about to attack it with the powerful cards he had drawn, just like before.
But the monster immediately applied over a dozen layers of poison to him, then desperately stacked armor, making his attack cards feel like tickles.
With great difficulty, he finally managed to slay the monster while at critically low health, moving on to the next question mark event.
You fell into a puddle.
But the puddle was full of slime!
You felt the slime seemed to burn you, so you desperately tried to get out of the pit.
After climbing out, you found that your gold seemed to have decreased. You looked back and saw that not only your dropped money was in the puddle, but also a lot of gold dropped by other unfortunate adventurers.
Collect Gold: Gain 66 gold, lose 22 health.
Cross Puddle: Lose 5 health.
???
Looking at his mere 3 remaining health, Old E was full of question marks.
So no matter what he chose, he would die, right?
"Hahahaha... This game is too hilarious!"
"3 health, you'll die no matter which you choose, it can even be like this."
"It could clearly kill you, but it still lets you choose; it's so gentle, I'm crying."
"Old E: Watch me perform a speedrun for you!"
"Game Designer's second kill! Let's see who dares to talk about speedrunning now."
This time, the audience truly burst into laughter.
Especially seeing Old E's bewildered expression, they found it even more amusing; this darn game was too tricky.
"Shit! I don't believe it, one more round!"
At this moment, Old E was like a child addicted to a toy; he immediately quit and restarted, no longer showing any of his initial disdain.
But when he re-selected his initial talents and arrived at the base of the spire again, he found that the map route had changed!
Even the distribution of monster events had changed!
"Huh? The map and monsters are random?"
The audience's eyes lit up, their attention once again drawn to the game.
Watching the streamer play round after round, encountering various monsters and events, trying out all sorts of novel strategies.
Armor stacking, curse builds, burst builds, infinite builds, pressure point builds...
By the time they came to their senses, over three hours had passed, and they didn't feel bored at all.
Only then did they suddenly realize.
This was no mere bonus game.
Its excellent production, rich gameplay, and quality were completely on par with that ridiculously good promotional CG, even surpassing it!
"I can't take it anymore, I'm going to download it and play too!"
Seeing Old E having so much fun, the viewers in the live stream finally couldn't resist; they opened the platform to download the game, eager to experience it for themselves.