
Is every game of Slay the Spire winnable? - jsnell
https://forgottenarbiter.github.io/Is-Every-Seed-Winnable/
======
aoeusnth1
Jorbs (a popular STS streamer) has said something like:

If random shuffling of your deck can cause you to take 40 damage from
Lagavaulin, and the game is still 100% winnable, then that 40 damage doesn’t
matter at all. At which point the game is just not interesting, because most
of the time you don’t take the 40 damage and the rest of the game is way too
easy and low risk. With procedural generation, in order for most games to be
challenging and interesting, you have to have games in which the game just
stomps you.

~~~
setr
A roguelike (berlin interpretation) can be made always winnable, without this
issue, because their fundamental goal differs from games like Slay the Spire
-- a roguelike's victory condition is to steal the object in the depths, and
escape, and enemy battles are just an aspect of that task; its not key to the
gameplay. Which is why you can have no-kill runs, and non-combat-optimal
builds and be successful. It's also why you can have a monster that spawned
way too early and can one-shot you while rewarding nothing on death, and _you
can decide not to fight it_.

The 40 damage _does matter_ , but you as a player decide as part of your risk
management strategy whether its worth potentially being crippled, or killed,
by such a monster. It also means a roguelike can introduce _unbeatable_
creatures (at least at your current strength), or overly high risk-reward
scenarios, and it doesn't mean the game is actually over.

Slay the Spire on the other hand is a battle simulator -- a series of fights
until you win. You don't get an option in the matter, because there is no
grander goal. Which means the same monster that is a _choice_ in a roguelike,
is simply game over in StS.

Jorbs is right about StS; he is not right about procedural generation. This is
a direct result of the game's mechanics.

~~~
chongli
I’m surprised to hear the Berlin interpretation brought up here. I thought for
the most part that people had moved on.

Anyway, a lot of classic (Berlin) roguelikes put you in situations where it is
impossible to escape combat. If the enemy you’re facing is faster than you and
you have no tools of escape, combat is probably unavoidable.

So there are plenty of situations in a classic roguelike which are simply game
over because you saw a monster (likely out of depth) you had no chance of
beating. It may be unlikely if the game throws lots of escape tools at you,
but there’s always the chance you don’t get any of them on a given seed.

~~~
setr
> I’m surprised to hear the Berlin interpretation brought up here. I thought
> for the most part that people had moved on.

Its primary value for me is to differentiate between roguelikes and
roguelites, where the latter term seems to have been given too much weight and
controversy (roguelike communities trying to hold onto their name too
strongly, as to become unseemly); referring to berlin interpretation seems
like a less sensitive workaround. Roguelite is a dumb name anyways. The
differentiation is still very useful though, because the roguelike genre is a
very interesting one to be able to reference. (and so thoroughly distinct from
roguelites, that the short distance in naming really isn't very appropriate --
similar to NoSQL vs SQL DBs)

> So there are plenty of situations in a classic roguelike which are simply
> game over because you saw a monster (likely out of depth) you had no chance
> of beating. It may be unlikely if the game throws lots of escape tools at
> you, but there’s always the chance you don’t get any of them on a given
> seed.

This is true; the general design trends towards combat encounters (roguelikes
really just being the DnD combat & dungeoneering mechanics ripped out and
pushed on computers, dropping most of the other elements), but that's more out
of design choice than out of any necessity to keep the game "interesting".

That is, you can trivially conceive of interesting situations and mechanisms
that are not directly combat-related, and you can also find examples of them
implemented (like the orb-chasing of DCSS orb spiders, which force an awkward
dance -- the challenge is from limiting positioning, and the damage is what
gives it weight, but it is in no way unavoidable).

Rougelikes aren't interesting because there's always a chance you might end up
in an unavoidable death -- they're interesting because there's always a chance
_you 'll push yourself_ into an unavoidable death.

> It may be unlikely if the game throws lots of escape tools at you, but
> there’s always the chance you don’t get any of them on a given seed.

The core point of my argument is that you could _force_ a minimal set of
escape tools to the player, and the game would still be interesting. The games
aren't actually dependent on having unavoidable threats, and being able to win
each and every encounter, because the goals are different from StS. The threat
can be there, without the unavoidable loss.

That the procedural generation _may_ produce unwinnable games is not a
requirement of procgen games -- it is a just an artifact of the
implementation. But for StS and its kin, I think Jorbs is right -- potentially
unwinnable games may be a requirement of that style of game.

------
KerrickStaley
> 1\. “Can a perfect player win every game of Slay the Spire?” (alternatively,
> “Is there a strategy that achieves a 100% win rate in Slay the Spire?”)

> 2\. “For every seed of Slay the Spire, is there a sequence of decisions that
> results in a win?”

Given that there are only 2^64 seeds, the answer to these questions may
actually be the same. The optimal strategy for a perfect player would likely
involve determining the state of the RNG (which only requires witnessing about
64 bits of RNG output) at which point you know exactly what will happen for
the rest of the game.

I'm not very familiar with Slay the Spire so maybe I'm misunderstanding
though.

~~~
TylerE
Couldn't that be more or less trivially defeated by taking wallclock time as
an input to the RNG?

~~~
b1ur
It could be, but considering the developers made the conscious decision to use
a static seed and show that seed to the player they are probably okay with
that.

------
bitdotdash
Thinking back on all the games I've lost, this analysis is depressing
confirmation that I might just not be that good at this game lol. Super
interesting read though!

~~~
cableshaft
Same. I've played the game for 40 hours and made 40 attempts, and 'won' only 4
times. 2 of them were daily challenges (and don't really count, they include
very rule-breaking things), 1 was Standard for Ironclad, and another was
Standard for Silent. I haven't even attempted Ascension once yet. It took
about 25 tries on Standard before I won my first time, too.

I've even watched a few people's playthroughs and going over which cards are
better than others and combo well together, and my win rate is still terrible.
Just lost again this morning in Act 2 with another Defect run.

Meanwhile this guy is saying the best players are winning 99% of the time on
Standard, and nearly the same on Ascension level 15? Wow.

By the way, for anyone thinking this game isn't really for you, you might want
to give it a chance anyway (watch a video at least). I don't usually care for
Rogue-likes, and I've been pretty tired of Deckbuilders, but I got into this
game hard, pretty much immediately, after putting off trying it for forever
and finally deciding to give it a chance.

One thing that really makes it awesome for me is that you know basically
exactly what the enemies intend to do and how much damage they're going to do
to you, so you can puzzle out how to prepare for it, should you kill this
person who's going to do 18 damage to you, or reduce their strength, or build
up your block to absorb it, or take the hit this round so you can go after
something else, etc. If you've ever played Into The Breach, it feels a lot
like that, but with RPG battles instead of a Tactical map.

~~~
Latty
I have no idea if this will help you in particular (depends on how you play
right now), but something counter-intuitive about deck-building in general
that helped a friend of mine up his win-rate in StS a lot is that you need to
consider the cost of taking a card.

StS lets you not take a card when you are offered one, and often this is the
best play, particularly as you go later into the game and have a deck that is
stacked with powerful cards.

Fundamentally having more cards is bad, because it increases variance in what
you can draw. Obviously taking a good card can be worth that cost, but often
players fall into the trap of assuming the best card of the options given is
worth taking, when really the question should be "does this card beat the
average card in my deck, or does it dilute the power of the deck", because you
are reducing the chance to draw one of the other cards in your deck.

Obviously there are edge cases: sometimes something may reduce the power of
your deck right now, but introduces the chance for later synergy, which may be
worth the cost—especially early on, but in general it is worth considering not
taking the card.

The ideal deck is always the minimum number of cards that allow you to pull
off your win state, everything else is just stopping you getting there (this
is also why cards that allow you to draw cheaply are good, and one of the
reasons why removing cards from your deck is powerful).

~~~
greenshackle2
An important idea is that you're not only drafting to make a generally good
deck, you're drafting to defeat the immediate challenges that are coming up.

If you're in Act 2 and headed for an elite, you have to think, "can my deck
beat book of stabbing? gremlin leader? taskmaster?".

If right now your deck sucks against the book, and you're offered a disarm or
caltrops, it might be worth picking it even if it's doesn't generally make
your deck stronger. Cause otherwise you might get stabbed to death.

On the flip side, Demon Form is a very strong card, but it's practically a
curse for most of Act 1, because it's too costly and slow. So sometimes you
might skip even a strong card if it doesn't help you right now.

~~~
debaserab2
That concept is what has helped me get over the A15-20 hump. It's more
important to draft cards that shore up immediate weaknesses than it is to
draft cards that might pair well with other effects in your deck. Draft for
the short-term, not the long term, because stronger short term victories means
you can pathfind more aggressively and acquire more gold/rewards.

I'd say that's probably the most important "ah-ha" moment where my winrate
really started to significantly improve. That and knowing when to min/max # of
combats while pathfinding.

------
DoofusOfDeath
I'm curious if performing this kind of analysis, or even knowing its
conclusions, makes a game less _fun_.

I enjoy games for several different reasons:

\- The mental challenge of trying to win, and develop winning strategies in
general. Knowing a perfect strategy, or knowing that some games are genuinely
unwinnable, would diminish this. E.g. "Plague, Inc."

\- Immersion in a compelling, fictitious, narrative, epic story. This pleasure
is probably unaffected. E.g. the "Civilization" franchise or "Endless Space
2".

\- The excitement of uncertainty. This could actually be _increased_ by
knowing that some random seeds make a game unwinnable, especially if one can't
know that at the beginning of the game. E.g. "FTL".

~~~
kibwen
It depends on the actual numbers for a given game. If it's possible to prove
that 0.001% of games are unwinnable, I don't think that's going to diminish
anyone's enjoyment of a game.

At 1% unwinnability, I think that almost nobody would notice the existence of
unwinnable games merely by playing, but having the knowledge of the exact
percentage of unwinnable games might start to diminish enjoyment.

Solitaire, where 20% of games are provably unwinnable from the start,
absolutely suffers from this effect, because even when a player loses a
winnable game they will be tempted to blame the game rather than themselves,
fostering resentment.

If a game was provably unwinnable 80% of the time, then that would be either a
damning indictment of its design or an indication that the value of that game
is to be found in some aspect other than winning.

~~~
theptip
Honestly, given how masochistically some gamers chase max-difficulty wins, I
wouldn't be surprised if a game in which only 1% of seeds were winnable would
be appealing to some.

But it would definitely diminish many gamers' enjoyment, as you say.

Dark Souls is an example where some players just aren't interested in the
difficulty (even though the game is winnable), and some players relish it.
Perhaps "win % for the median player" and other populations are more
practically useful lenses for the discussion of general enjoyment.

~~~
implicit
I don't think many people would enjoy that at all.

The appeal of games like Dark Souls (and Slay the Spire!) at high difficulties
arises from the knowledge that you _will_ win if you are clever and observant
enough.

It's the learning process that keeps players coming back to these games, not
the Game Over screen.

------
atum47
I've been thinking about that a lot, about these games that uses procedural
generation. I've been playing a game on Xbox where "random" events occurs and
you have to act accordingly. I've noticed the game wasn't fair or even
winnable. That random event striking me that moment of the game, there's no
way I could be prepared to deal with the situation (frostpunk, I think is the
name of the game). When I released Qubes, my game, I made sure every level was
winnable. So when people write me emails telling the level doesn't have a
solution, I know for a fact that it has, the player just couldn't find yet.
That's a nice article and I appreciate you sharing.

~~~
malloreon
this reminds me of the ~semi-famous Ignacy/Vlaada design stories in board
games.

each are board game designers, and Vlaada was play testing one of Ignacy's
designs:

[https://boardgamesthattellstories.wordpress.com/2013/02/10/t...](https://boardgamesthattellstories.wordpress.com/2013/02/10/the-
lesson/)

~~~
thaumasiotes
Somehow everybody overlooked the obvious solution of splitting the good events
and bad events into separate decks?

That's not at all rare in other games.

~~~
malloreon
the trouble with that solution is that players are aware of the direction of
what they'll get and can make action decisions appropriately. if I know one
deck is the bad one, I'll avoid actions that result in draws to that deck,
unless impossible to avoid.

I think Ignacy wanted there to be ambiguity there.

~~~
thaumasiotes
The game as originally described already forced exactly 5 draws, so that's not
an issue. If you're forcing draws, you can force some good draws and some bad
draws.

You _can_ solve the "players know what's coming" problem easily, and some
games do ("before you begin, take three disasters and two windfalls and
shuffle them together"), but that adds a large logistics overhead that may not
be worth it.

------
LgWoodenBadger
Interesting analysis, even though it contains lots of probably's and maybes
and mights and coulds.

To be fair though, it's not as computable (I guess?) as FreeCell (just 1
unwinnable game?) or Minesweeper.

~~~
thaumasiotes
FreeCell definitely has more than one unwinnable game.

------
Joe-Z-L
Wait , I’m not that good at this game

~~~
hombre_fatal
After playing it for over a year, I had to watch a strategy video last month
to realize that you might want to keep a small deck and not always pick a card
every time you can. Didn't even occur to me.

I'm terrible at strategizing. To this day I can't figure out anyone other than
the Ironclad with that power that grows his strength every turn.

~~~
ssully
I am not very good at card/deck building games, but I assumed they wanted you
to cull your deck when I noticed they make you use gold to do so. After
realizing that, I started trying to keep a lean and focused deck. I only play
casually, and I still haven't won, so my strategy still might not be good!

~~~
Kiro
I thought that was meant to be used on curses (yes, I'm bad at the game).

~~~
chousuke
The basic cards are pretty bad. You can't play your full hand most of the time
anyway, so cutting them makes it more likely that you'll draw the better
cards.

This is also why Snecko Eye (the relic that gives +2 draw every turn and
randomizes card cost) is arguably the best boss relic. Even if you only get to
play one 3 cost card, it's more likely to be the best card in your deck.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> This is also why Snecko Eye (the relic that gives +2 draw every turn and
> randomizes card cost) is arguably the best boss relic. Even if you only get
> to play one 3 cost card, it's more likely to be the best card in your deck.

I can't agree with this. Snecko Eye is very strong, but playing a 3-cost card
will cripple you. It's strong because you draw a lot of cheap cards -- the
lesson of Snecko Eye is that playing several cards is better than playing one
card, even if the cards you got to play were chosen randomly.

~~~
chousuke
That's definitely part of it, but you'll still get the occasional hand full of
3-costs, and all of them not being completely awful is important.

------
Taek
I'm guessing your win rate estimations are super low. For a game with this
much depth, the gap between the best players and optimal play is absolutely
massive.

For intuition around this, look at how much chess has evolved over the past
400 years. Look at the history for speedruns or the ABC challenge for super
mario 64, or look at speedrun histories for other games like golden eye or
super mario odessy.

Just based on the fact that this is a relatively obscure game with a lot of
complex mechanics, I would estimate that with optimal play, the win rate
should be over 99% for all characters. This probably requires the development
of a large number of new techniques and play styles, and probably has many
surprising optimizations that would seem ground-breaking today.

~~~
jorbs_
this game has a bunch of randomness which stops us from knowing where we're
going to end up if we make decisions. it'd be like if super mario 64 had a
bunch of jumps in it where there was a 1/10 chance you died on screen
transition and you couldn't tell where you were meant to jump ahead of time.
if you replay or check the seed ahead of time you can find out and stop dying
to those things, but in practical play there's no obscure mechanic that stops
you from dying because you only had the ability to prepare properly for two
elite fights but ended up fighting the third, or because you were presented
two options for synergistic scaling for the endgame fights but didn't get
offered any more of the one you chose.

they can all get above 50% and watcher can definitely get way higher than
that, but 99% is unthinkable because not enough of the ways you can die are
solvable with the information available in a run.

------
cryptoz
"It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness.
That is life." \- Jean-Luc Picard

Seems relevant. In life you can execute a 'perfect strategy' and still lose,
so it goes in some games too.

------
debaserab2
Wow, the author also made a mod that sends game outputs and receives inputs
from an external program. This is awesome!

[https://github.com/ForgottenArbiter/CommunicationMod](https://github.com/ForgottenArbiter/CommunicationMod)

------
therouwboat
I haven't played slay the spire, but I have been watching happy hobs no hit,
no level-up dark souls trilogy runs and it might be interesting to see people
trying to win "unwinnable" runs.

~~~
brootstrap
If u like hob, dark souls, rpgs... You will love slay the spire. It's so fun
man and was one of my first roguelikes. If you get hooked on a roguelike you
are in for hundreds of hours. EASY!

------
brootstrap
love slay, this is really interesting and fun work i would guess. Game is hard
but after you play a lot, it becomes less hard because you know a lot. A20
still fucks ya hard, not sure i really enjoy it that much. Climbed to A20 with
all 4 chars. Recommend the game!

