Kaya’s Prophecy review for PC

While I understand why an indie game would bill itself as a mash-up of two more popular games – citing those games is a good way of attracting fans of those games to your game – it’s an approach that isn’t without risks. After all, you could just come off as a pale imitation of the more popular games, which doesn’t really help you at all.

That’s the problem facing Kaya’s Prophecy. It bills itself as a mash-up of Slay the Spire and Stacklands, but it doesn’t really add anything to either of those games beyond a tribal motif.

On the one hand, I applaud them for at least mixing together two different types of deckbuilders – just a few months ago I reviewed a game that was basically just a reskinned Slay the Spire, and even if I had fun with it, it was pretty hard to ignore the extent to which it borrowed from StS. So kudos to Kaya’s Prophecy for being a little more than a lazy copy of another game.

But at the same time, you could probably argue that it’s just a slightly-less-lazy copy of two different games. As far as roguelike deckbuilders go, there’s not any real difference beyond Kaya’s Prophecy and Slay the Spire: you have your deck, you get around five cards for every turn, and you can usually play three cards per turn. You have to balance when you want to go on the attack and when you want to be defensive. There are status effects that can stack on top of your attacks. Basically, if you could do it in Slay the Spire, you can do it here, with the notable difference that it’s not nearly as deep or addictive here. It’s fine for what it is, and, like the game I referenced in the last paragraph, I didn’t hate getting the chance to be reminded of Slay the Spire, but that side of the game never feels like more than a carbon copy.

As for the Stacklands comparison…I’ll be honest, I haven’t played Stacklands. But after playing Kaya’s Prophecy and watching gameplay videos of Stacklands, I’m not seeing a huge difference on this front, either. In between battles in Kaya’s Prophecy you’re given a giant board on which to play your cards, and the game is constantly throwing new quests at you that you clear by mixing together cards and building up your village. Again, I haven’t played Stacklands (though it’s now gone straight onto my Wishlist), but based on everything I can see on its Steam page and YouTube, I’m inclined to think that, as was the case with Slay the Spire, Kaya’s Prophecy mostly just copied the core mechanics, added in a capricious deity that forces you to regularly sacrifice your resources to keep it happy, and called it a day.

To be fair, I didn’t hate my time with Kaya’s Prophecy. It doesn’t do anything original, but it also copies other, better games so well that it can’t help but get some reflected glow. But because it doesn’t add anything to either of those well-established formulas, I’d be hard-pressed to recommend it over its influences. Maybe check it out if you’re a fan of Slay the Spire or Stacklands, but don’t expect it to be more than the sum of its influences.

Yogscast Games provided us with a Kaya’s Prophecy PC code for review purposes.

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