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Near Mint is Slay The Spire but you’ve accidentally left your cards in the washing machine

Slay the drier

Fighting a skeleton in roguelike deckbuilder Near Mint.
Image credit: henriforshort

This one’s a very simple build at the moment, but neat enough that I wanted to shout it out. Near Mint is a roguelike deckbuilder where you advance through a tower fighting slightly stronger iterations of the exact same skeleton. Ok, nothing too captivating so far. The twist comes from the cards: someone’s left them in their Oodie pouch, spilt BBQ sauce down it, then stuck it in the wash before taking the deck out. Now, all the cards have split apart into three pieces. It’s name-your-own-price on Itch here, and it’ll only take you a couple minutes to get acquainted, but I’ll explain the gist below. Gist is a good word. Satisfying to say. Gist.

“Oh no!” was my first reaction on playing this. "This seems neat, but these fights are so long my bones are crumbling into instant noodle flavoring, thus completing the circle of life." It was then I realised I’d been a tactless gumball, for I’d neglected to consider the action economy. Also, I’d assumed shields stack, when they actually disappear at the end of each turn. You’ve got three actions each turn, and you drag three card parts together to make a whole card. You can spend multiple actions on a single card for effect multipliers, and cards let you attack, defend, or draw more cards. The third part of each card is a number - usually one or two - that you pair with the actions. Once I started saving these for opportune combinations, everything fell into place.

So say the game page:

Fight your way through an occult dungeon, while building a deck of cards that seem to have been forgotten in the drier...

Your deck is composed only of decaying cards that were split into three parts. No problem! Re-assemble them however you want to create powerful synergies... Or really bad ones.

Each battle will reward you with a new card to add to your deck. But your foes also grow stronger each time. How far will you get?

A thought: How come you peel a banana peel, skin a rabbit skin, shell an egg shell, but do not cap a washing liquid cap, eh? Please, do not answer that. Go click on some cards instead.

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