May you live in interesting times
Ancient Chinese Curse
It's difficult to tie a bow on what exactly is happening in the world right now. There are places recording hundreds of deaths a day, economies crashing and mass layoffs. In a lot of ways it's too much for me to comprehend, as much as I may strive to. It has created this constant hum of anxiety in my skull, as the world shifts gears with a groan, and me entirely helpless to stop it.
One of the things that I’ve effectively lost is the joy of attending weekly Friday Night Magics. And I feel guilty even bringing that up as a complaint in light of what others are going through - but it still hurts. It was one of the few social events I regularly participated in, and I loved it - from the games, to the people, to the endless banter with mates.
I can’t replace the FNM experience. There is still something small I can offer to the community, though. As the host of a retro gaming podcast, I unsurprisingly play a lot of video games. Not one of them delivers anything that’s exactly like Magic: The Gathering, but a few certainly scratch the same itches. And yes, I am aware of Magic Arena and MODO - but playing the same video game repeatedly on end can grate. Here is an all too brief list of some brilliant games that will hopefully entrance you just like Magic does.
Slay The Spire
If you were to only play one game on this list, it should be Slay the Spire. It's far and away the closest game that exists to single player magic. Each ‘run’ in slay the spire begins with a near-vanilla deck of attacks and blocks, but before too long you can begin assembling nasty combos and synergies that completely break the game wide open.
As a result, it feels like a game of two parts. You have this solid tactical foundation of attacks, blocks, buffs, debuffs and reading enemy intentions. I would liken this to Magic’s design being about creatures, removal, card draw and lands. The game ostensibly revolves around minimising damage taken and deftly weaving around the enemy’s intentions.
But the thing that makes Slay the Spire a joy to play is the way you draft your deck. Every battle won will give you the choice of three cards, with many more opportunities to enhance your deck through shops, campfires and random encounters. A lot of the time you need to be practical and take a middle of the road ‘workhorse’ card. Sometimes you get to prioritise some cool synergies. Rarely, but oh-so rewardingly, you get something that resembles a vintage power level deck.
The roguelike nature of Slay the Spire, as in Binding of Isaac, allows for you to have runs with ridiculous decks because once you finish it all gets reset. It feels like drafting a high powered cube - the storm deck rarely gets there, but when it does you feel like a god (The game literally has multiple different iterations on storm depending on your character, by the way). You’re constantly faced with tough deck building decisions, speculating on what's coming next. And just like in draft, you’ll be most rewarded if you move with the flow of whatever cards are coming your way, instead of trying to force something that’s not available.
It's a challenging game - and it only gets harder when you unlock the more ‘advanced’ classes of Defect and Watcher. It's intensely satisfying to move from figuring out the basics, to beating bosses, and finally slaying the spire - only to realise the hidden potential lurking in every weird card and item the game dangles in front of you. So you throw yourself into the Spire time and time again, getting a bit further in understanding every time.
You can buy Slay The Spire on Steam here!
Into the Breach
One of the things I love about Magic is how insanely impactful each and every decision can feel. Your Thoughtseize target on turn 1, what you name with Meddling Mage, the card you bin or draw with Search For Azcanta - All of these things can cost you the game. There’s a depth to each and every action you take, not just in how impactful they are but also in the calculations behind each one. It's something that strategy games often fail to replicate - they tend to stretch your number of decisions into the thousands, reducing the individual impact of each one.
Into the Breach is much closer to magic in this regard. Casually described as ‘mech chess’, you control only 3 units against a horde of brainless invaders that telegraph their intentions ahead of time. You must use your wits to get maximum total value out of every one of your limited actions to protect the cities and keep your units alive. A single tile off optimal positioning will make or break your chances of success.
Into the Breach takes the strategy/tactics genre and refines it into pure elegance. It's incredibly stripped down, and appears incredibly simple. But as the Vek grow stronger in the later battlefields and you’re forced to use increasingly unconventional tactics to take them down, you begin to appreciate the brilliance of this innocuous little title. There’s almost always a path to victory, as you squint at the screen waiting for a solution to present itself.
Finding the line between keeping your mechs alive and mobile, mitigating enemy attacks, preventing further enemies spawning in, creating in-fighting and knowing when some amount of collateral damage is acceptable is a constant challenge. Moving enemies out of position is often far more effective than trying to directly damage them, as the Vek easily outnumber your small squad.
That’s not even taking into consideration the weird and wonderful squads you unlock as you play. The initial group of units - a tank, an artillery unit and a dreadnaught - is effective but rather vanilla. If you take the time to earn gold, however, you’ll soon have laser based squads or the fairly confusing Blitzkrieg. Each squad takes time to learn and master, as those poor decisions are so often fatal. If you want your decisions to truly matter, try Into The Breach.
You can buy Into The Breach on Steam here!
Stephen’s Sausage Roll
This constitutes a bit of a wildcard recommendation. I think all puzzle games have at least something in common with magic. Many boardstates feel like puzzles to solve, trying to calculate a path to victory. With combo decks in particular, finding the window to ‘go for it’ in the face of hate cards can play out like a literal puzzle, as you count mana sources and calculate probabilities.
In recent years, the highmark for puzzle games has been continually raised. Just last year we got the insanely difficult Baba Is You, and games like The Witness and The Talos Principle weaved philosophical ideas into the fabric of the experience. There is one game that, in my opinion, stands above them all though - Stephen’s Sausage Roll.
It is very difficult to convince people of the truth of this idea. The graphics look like a hazy mess. You would be forgiven for thinking, at first, that the control scheme is some kind of cruel joke. And the asking price of 42 dollars is far beyond what you’d expect from a random indie puzzle game. But, and I mean this sincerely, it's well worth every penny.
From the very first puzzle in the game, Stephen’s Sausage Roll demands you learn something new. The difficulty curve of this game is a series of stilted spikes. At no point are you going through the motions - you are forced to navigate something unfamiliar before you get your eureka moment and feel like a genius.
It's a game with 4 buttons (5 if you include undo) but a hundred mechanics and ideas. Every single puzzle contains something fresh to tangle with, some new quirk that you hadn’t considered before. You will labour away for hours at certain puzzles, until it finally clicks and you feel like a genius. You know those moments in magic when you combine your cards in unorthodox ways to find a win out of nowhere? That’s every single in Stephen’s Sausage Roll.
There are puzzles in this game that when you see them you cannot help but laugh, because they look utterly impossible. There are puzzles which you will conclude are actually impossible, or at least statistically so, until you figure out that final movement. On the surface it's just another Sokoban, a block pushing game - but that hides the craftsmanship of a puzzle game that’s all sausage and no sizzle.
I had planned on adding more games to this list, but I’d rather leave it to the 10/10s than dilute it with merely good games. I feel all three tap into the same parts of my brain that love magic but in different ways. Slay the Spire is all about the drafting, Into the Breach nails the high impact decision making, and Stephen’s Sausage Roll makes me feel smart for solving the puzzles in front of me.
None of them alone can replace Magic. And even all together they can’t quite replace that hole in my heart. But they are all definitely worth your time and attention. If you have any recommendations yourself I’d love to hear them!
I wish you all happy gaming in these interesting times.
