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Published Mar 16, 2026, 2:45 PM EDT
Daniel has been playing games for entirely too many years, with his Steam library currently numbering nearly 750 games and counting. When he's not working or watching anime, he's either playing or thinking about games, constantly on the lookout for fascinating new gameplay styles and stories to experience. Daniel has previously written lists for TheGamer, as well as guides for GamerJournalist, and he currently covers tech topics on SlashGear.
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Slay the Spire 2 has only just launched into the very start of its Early Access state. Perhaps unsurprisingly, though, given the performance of its predecessor, it’s already the hottest thing since toasted bread. There’s some kind of secret sauce to this series, and this game especially, that draws you in and never lets go. I angrily swore off of trading card games in middle school, and even I can’t stop playing it.
The downside of getting addicted to a game in Early Access is that its available content is more definitively finite. It’s fun to play runs for their own sake, sure, but once you manage to clear one, there’s not going to be any more notable gameplay wrinkles until the next substantial update, leaving a big Slay the Spire 2-shaped hole in your heart. Luckily, the sheer star power of the first Slay the Spire, as well as that of the roguelike deckbuilder genre in general, has ensured that there is no shortage of other games you can play to temporarily fill that hole, TCG-adjacent or otherwise.
10 Dice A Million
Turbo Yahtzee
Within the pantheon of tabletop gaming, cards arguably rank in equal importance to dice. After all, it is with dice that we simulate probability and scoring. If seeing numbers go up is your favorite part of Slay the Spire 2, you’ll absolutely love Dice A Million.
Dice A Million has a very simple, explicitly-stated mission statement: roll the dice, score a million points. Actually accomplishing this consists of a combination of adding more dice with unique effects to your dice pool, as well as equipping a variety of different rings to your protagonist to modify those effects further.
There isn’t much in the way of set dressing for this game; it’s just rolling dice for its own sake. That said, the sheer number of dice you’ll be rolling at any given moment means that your score will increase exponentially over time, thanks in large part to those wacky effects ranging from multiplying scores to straight-up setting fires on the board.
9 Peglin
Going Goblin Mode
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Red Nexus Games |
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PC, Switch |
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April 2022 |
Part of the fun of the emergent popularity of the roguelike deckbuilder genre is that, with a little creativity, you can create all kinds of previously unthinkable combinations of mechanics and genres. For example, would you have thought a decade or two ago that you could combine RPG combat with Peggle? I sure wouldn’t have, but I guess I’m not the kind of person who could’ve conceived of Peglin.
Peglin has a similar combat-centric design to Slay the Spire 2, but instead of using cards to attack enemies and defend yourself, you’re launching marbles into peg boards. As you bounce off pegs to damage and defeat enemies, you’ll receive additional pegs, marbles, and passive relics, each with their own effects and modifiers on the damage you deal and receive. The Peggle element adds a distinct tinge of both skill and probability into the equation, requiring you to carefully aim your shots in addition to synergizing.
The Steam Store page for Peglin literally describes it as a combination of Peggle and Slay the Spire, so it kind of goes without saying that, if you’ve reached a stopping point with Slay the Spire 2, you could rely on Peglin for a comparable fix, at least until that next content update drops.
8 Omelet You Cook
The Art of Eggs
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Dan Schumacher, Hjalte Tagmose |
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PC |
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February 2026 |
Slay the Spire 2, like many deckbuilders, is a game of synergy, of coordinating cards to find what works and pruning out what doesn’t. You know what else is a game of synergy? Cafeteria omelets. No, seriously, creating the perfect omelet is a delicate procedure, and if you don’t believe me, you’re welcome to try Omelet You Cook.
This exceptionally silly roguelike deckbuilder has you working as a cafeteria chef, exclusively providing omelets to hungry students and staff. Through a combination of power-ups and ingredients, you need to create the highest-scoring omelets to satisfy your customers while accounting for their particular fussy eating habits, like not letting ingredients touch the edges.
Omelet You Cook is a much less cerebral game than Slay the Spire 2, but it has the same basic concept, just with ingredients and helpers instead of cards and relics. It can also be played in both turn-based and real-time formats, just in case you want something with a little more of a hot seat feel.
7 Dicey Dungeons
Roll Dem Bones
Let’s say you like the chaotic “number go up” energy of dice games, but want something a little more in line with Slay the Spire 2’s combat and progression. Well, you could try chucking a fistful of dice at a friend’s head and see if that does anything for you, but failing that, I’d say Dicey Dungeons is your next best option.
Dicey Dungeons uses a class-based starting point for its runs, not dissimilar to the characters and unique abilities of Slay the Spire 2. Every class gets a handful of tiles that you can plug a rolled dice into to trigger various abilities, whether it’s attacking foes, shoring up your defenses, rerolling your dice, triggering items and traps, and more.
Dicey Dungeons is kind of like an inversion of Slay the Spire 2’s core gameplay loop in the way it approaches probability and cause and effect. Rather than playing cards with energy costs to trigger set effects to deal variable damage, the variability is in your dice, while your abilities are static from turn to turn. It’s a different flavor of synergizing with the same end goal.
6 Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers
Blackjack is More Complicated Than I Remember
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Purple Moss Collectors |
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PC |
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August 2024 |
Trading card games, as well as TCG-adjacent games like Slay the Spire 2, can be a little hard to wrap your head around due to the myriad of dense terminology and rules that are emblematic of them. If you want something a teensy bit similar, but still with a hearty helping of micromanaging and metagaming, try Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers.
On the surface, Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers is just roguelike Blackjack. You play against a CPU, hit until you get 21, win points. However, it’s also a battling game, as the points you accrue translate into damage dealt, which also drops to zero if you go bust. As you progress through a run, you add more cards to the deck besides the usual numbered playing cards, which add bizarre values and modifiers to your hand when drawn.
Related
Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers goes a little further than similar deckbuilders, as your opponents have their own decks with their own cards. There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution, so you need to think and plan on the fly to account for your opponent’s own strategies.
5 Balatro
Speaking of traditional card games, if you like the deckbuilding vibes of Slay the Spire 2, but want something a bit lower-impact you can play more casually, there’s a name in deckbuilding just as prolific as Slay the Spire itself: Balatro.
Balatro is a game that, in all likelihood, needs no introduction, but here it is anyway: it’s traditional five-card Poker, but by collecting various Joker cards, you add rule changes and modifiers to the game, all to drastically increase the number of chips you earn from playing a particular hand. Effects can also be applied to the cards in your deck, and extra cards can be added to the usual 52, allowing you to play normally-impossible hands like a five-of-a-kind.
If you want to get into Slay the Spire 2 or similar deckbuilding games, but are new to the genre, Balatro’s a great way to get your feet wet. Poker isn’t that hard to learn, and Balatro gives you a good sense of synergy and foresight before you get into the more intensive stuff.
4 My Card Is Better Than Your Card!
Playground Warfare
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Utu Studios |
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PC |
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October 2025 |
Remember how I said I angrily swore off trading card games back in middle school? It was because everyone I knew spent less time actually playing the games, and more time just waving cards in each other’s faces, highlighting random, arbitrary statistics and elements that somehow made them automatically better. Ironically, it’s that specific approach to playing-but-not-actually-playing cards that serves as the basis of My Card Is Better Than Your Card!
My Card Is Better Than Your Card is a playground card game simulator in which, rather than actually playing a TCG, the goal is to use various stickers and modifiers to soup up your cards as much as possible, then defeat your opponents by making them gasp in envy. You can’t just use every sticker you have, though, because then the card becomes too flashy to actually play, so you have to strike a balance between strength and affordability.
As with Slay the Spire 2, My Card Is Better Than Your Card is also in Early Access. But hey, if that hole in your heart is specifically craving roguelike deckbuilders in Early Access, then it’s the perfect game to fill it!
3 As We Descend
Literal Warfare
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Box Dragon |
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PC |
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May 2025 |
The metatextual identity of Slay the Spire 2 is that you’re using cards to abstract combat tactics for your various Spire-surmounting heroes, same as any tabletop game. In that same vein, cards can be used to simulate all kinds of encounters beyond mere one-on-one combat, including, as we see in As We Descend, full-scale warfare.
As We Descend combines the deckbuilding and energy-management of Slay the Spire with troop and territory management from games like Starcraft, as well as a pinch of the squad-based survival tactics of Darkest Dungeon. You need to recruit soldiers for expeditions, each with their own unique cards for tactics and combat, but you also need to manage a deck and roll dice to empower your city and survive the ravages of time.
As We Descend is another Early Access game at the time of writing, but on the bright side, that does mean it probably won’t steal your attention away from Slay the Spire 2 completely.
2 Inscryption
Victory, But at What Cost?
It’s a bit of a catch-22, trying to find another game to pass the time in between Slay the Spire 2’s updates, because you may just end up with another game you’re invested in cluttering your proverbial table. What might be a better approach is a game that has similar mechanics, but is also designed to be finished in a reasonable timeframe, such as Inscryption.
Inscryption is a combination of a roguelike deckbuilder and a puzzle escape room, with an overarching metatextual story about a streamer finding an abandoned floppy disk buried in the woods. In addition to unlocking new cards as you embark on runs, both failures and successes reveal a little more of the overarching mystery, providing clues to the various puzzles in the cabin, which in turn unlock additional helpful mechanics.
While Inscryption is a roguelike, it’s unlike its contemporaries in that it’s meant to be finished, and will enable you to do so with a bit of smart playing and puzzle acumen. If you’ve been on a losing streak in Slay the Spire 2, it might make for a nice little palate cleanser.
1 Monster Train 2
All Aboard the Pain Train
It’s frustrating when you have that very specific craving for a very specific game, one that just “close enough” can’t quite sate. There are no games exactly like Slay the Spire 2, but if there were one that could get as close as realistically possible without just being the first game, our prime candidate would have to be Monster Train 2.
Monster Train 2’s core deckbuilding, card-battling gameplay is extremely similar to Slay the Spire 2’s, having you build a deck and playing cards based on using and conserving energy. The main difference is that, rather than attacking a spire, the monsters are coming to you. Monster Train 2 combines card-based, turn-based combat with tower defense, having you set up monsters and use abilities on several tiers of play to fight off incoming foes. Enemies come in waves, so you need to be able to stand your ground through multiple consecutive encounters without rest.
As a tower defense game, Monster Train 2’s card system isn’t just about attacking and defending, it’s about infrastructure. Additional cards allow you to modify your train’s rooms and kit out your creatures, which provide extra wrinkles that need to be considered when building a deck.
Next
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