Slay the Spire co-creator advises that 'taking risks is actually the least risky thing you can do,' arguing for the appeal of 'hyper-engaging' games

Casey Yano, co-founder of Slay the Spire developer Mega Crit, quit his job several years ago to work on the deckbuilder that would eventually earn a 92% from PC Gamer and a 97% overwhelmingly positive rating on Steam. It wasn't a smash hit at first, when it launched in early access, but as Slay the Spire picked up attention it eventually became the inspiration for dozens more singleplayer deckbuilding roguelikes. Many of those games have also been successful, but the surprise breakout of this year's Helldivers 2 and its unique approach to a live service shooter prompted PC Gamer's Evan Lahti to ask to what extent developers should be trying to capitalize on whatever's currently trendy.

«If any big companies are listening: Taking risks is actually the least risky thing you can do,» Yano said in a recent PC Gamer roundtable interview on the State of PC Gaming. His argument: «People just want novelty. If you see a strange flavor of ice cream, you're gonna try that ice cream. I want to try the weird ice cream. I'm just saying—the pineapple mint sorbet I had the other day was incredible.»

The roundtable also included Larian's publishing director Michael Douse, who said that «the output of this industry is not defined by trends—I think the output defines the trends, the trends don't define the output.» He conceded that there are now loads of deckbuilders in Slay the Spire's wake, but argued that those will continue even after they're no longer trendy. «For example, the extraction shooter has become established. They're always going to make those for the rest of time now. They're always gonna make deckbuilding games,» he said. 

Earlier in the conversation Yano said that Mega Crit's tiny team hadn't given any thought to creating or popularizing a genre with Slay the Spire. The game was simply born out of his frustration with how slow most card games felt, and that they typically weren't built to be singleplayer. «The expectation for a card game was that it has to be PvP,