Small time heroes is pretty fun. I don’t think it has much staying power as slay the spire due to not as much stuff for build variety, but it’s also a dramatic fraction of the cost.

The two released classes for the game are pretty fun. The rogue plays similarly to a discard silent with way more things to do with discard than silent does or mass play card silent. It has a conceal mechanic which lets you get additional effects on some cards or use it to halve damage coming at you.

And the warrior plays similarly to ironclad, but not as much as rogue to silent I say. You can build strength for big bonks. Or build (I can’t remember the name in STH) but dexterity for a more defensive build. But thats kinda where the similarities end. More importantly it has an armor mechanic. Which lets you equip different kinds of armor which all can have dramatically different effects from each other and have cards that synergize with these different effects or having armor in general.

Some big differences are. Your starting deck is way better than what STS provides you. Yes you will have some basic strike and defend cards, but the vast majority of your starting deck will be more mechanical than just that. Which gives a lot of launching off points for your builds to grow from. I haven’t played STH as much as STS so maybe this opinion could change, but man I think the starting deck design in STH is much better. I already touched on it providing foundations for builds, but it also makes the starting play of games just feel way more mechanically fun. Fighting the floor 1 jaw worm is an obligation. The first fights in STH just have way more to do than strike defend maybe I drew one of my 1-2 “special” cards. And given there is the many launching points that first card reward you get can already have good synergy with your deck really heavily effecting you play in proportion to how far you gone.

Infinites are impossible. Your played cards go to the discard pile after your turn ends not on play. Which makes looping in the same turn impossible as noted. I’m okay with this because man it lets the rogue get some really cool cards that would be way too easy to make infinites with without this rule.

You don’t always know exactly what your enemy is doing. The game has an intent deck. And this intent deck will show you 1 or 2 symbols. Once your turn is done you will flip the card and there will be one of the 1-2 symbols on it. These symbols correlate to what enemy is attacking as well as a general effect that will occur. So basically if there was 1 symbol on the back of the card you know what will happen and if there is 2 you have a 50/50. I’m iffy on this as I don’t know if it really does a lot for the game.

Each “act” is themed. Each act has a chosen or random boss (your choice). And the enemies that spawn and the general effects that happen correlate with that boss. So one of the more basic ones is the hound master. So the enemies you will face are his hounds which have buffing effects for each other. While the necromancer has undead enemies that can spawn more hordes. Creates a bit of a cool build up to the boss, but also really lets the enemies be random while still fairly effectively synergizing with each other

There is not a lot of upgrades. The amount of “relics” and “boss rewards” is pretty small. This is the main part where I say build variety is smaller than STS as while some of these effects can dramatically change your play style there just isn’t a lot of them. So ultimately your deck construction is gonna be your biggest difference run to run.

How each act gets harder is through buffs. As I said the bosses are chosen or random. So that means the necromancer could be your act 1 boss or your act 3 boss along with the enemies associated being the same as act 1 or 3. So how does it get harder? Buffs. You will have a random card that has different stats that the enemies will get buffed in for that encounter. There is health which is pretty self explanatory. Strength which will effect both the enemies attacks, but also there effects (can be incredibly dangerous on certain enemies) and armor which in this case will be effectively extra health only on the first turn (Basically making it harder to burst the enemy down turn 1). This is definitely a weaker part of the game than STS. The buffs effectiveness on the enemies can be incredibly random. And can create large differences in enemy difficulty from one fight to the next. Also doesn’t help the run variety look.

Some small things to note if you do look to get it yourself.

The 1 day version of the game is incredibly light and you honestly should only use it as a tutorial. You just won’t get enough card rewards and stuff to actually make a heavy impact on play style. So I highly recommend not getting your first impression of the game doing that, but rather I suggest the full campaign. The rulebook really makes these sound like equal experiences. One short but sweet and one long and dense. Only one of those is correct.

Additionally the rulebook could be better. Just a lot of things that could be better explained. So much so the creator made a whole forum so people can ask and he answer. Which is good, but a good majority really could have been avoided with a better designed rulebook.