The roguelike experts behind Slay the Spire made their first new game in six years in just three weeks, and it's an absolutely chaotic disco deckbuilder

gamesradar.com:

The developer of roguelike hit Slay the Spire has explained how it created its first new game in six years in just three weeks.

Last month, in the wake of game engine Unity's disastrous fee changes, Slay the Spire developer MegaCrit announced that it would be moving engines for its new game, despite having spent "an immense amount of time and effort" working in Unity. Now, in an attempt to get to grips with its new engine, Godot, MegaCrit has released its first new game in six years, a chaotic disco-themed autobattler called Dancing Duellists.

You can download Dancing Duelists for free, and I did exactly that last night. What I found was a game that was clearly born from MegaCrit's work on Slay the Spire, albeit it far faster-paced. It's a deckbuilding autobattler, in which cards play automatically until either you or your opponent reach one of multiple win conditions. I played my first run as a character who thrives on playing as many cards per turn as possible, reducing enemies to zero HP under a barrage of quick moves. I was eventually successful, but I did lose one of my three lives to a heal-spamming, saxophone-playing plant that hit its own win condition - 50 HP - faster than I could whittle it down.

From my limited experience, there's (understandably) less fine-tuning than in Slay the Spire. You have far less control over your deck, as you're forced to pick two cards at the end of each dancing duel, while many other deckbuilders allow you to decide whether or not you want to make any changes to your deck at all. Under the autoplay system, it's also difficult to get a sense of what's happening and why - complexity isn't much of an issue, but the speed at which Dancing Duelists played out meant that it was hard to