18 ms·

An unwinnable seed of Slay the Spire

170 points by dsugarman 5y ago

activitypea 5y ago
Glad to see Slay the Spire here. It was my gateway drug for game theory and similar "decision making" stuff, I think everyone would benefit from playing it at least for a little bit.
tadzik_ 5y ago
Ha, I knew it! A20 Lagavulin on Silent always seems like it's down to whether you managed to get enough poison cards for it.
- shadytrees 5y ago
  Don't discount an updated Neutralize+, which takes the Lagavulin damage down from 20 to 15. Good for the Gremlin Nob fight too.
archi42 5y ago
Ah, yes, the funsies of unwinnable seeds. Either the developers run some sanity checks to (somewhat try to) avoid them, or they are just part of the game(-design). Both approaches have their merits. Even in a simple game as Hanabi [cooperative card game; if you don't know it, look it up!] this is possible. In the basic game mode this requires incredible bad luck (e.g. the three last cards to be drawn are the three copies of the red 1); it's more likely to lose due because the first copy of a card (cards 2 to 4 have two copies each) is discarded and the second copy of that card is then the last card to be drawn (which means followup cards can not be played anymore). So the strategy of strong players involves reducing the number of (useful) cards discarded. But in some of the advanced modes, there are truly "unwinnable" seeds of the randomized deck, no matter the player's luck (e.g. the singular black 1 being among the last few cards to be drawn results in not being able to score the full 25 points). Now a computer implementation could try to avoid most of these "bad" seeds using some heuristics. But one might argue that this isn't true to the spirit of the game and as a player, one should just accept that sometimes there is a chance not to win. It's then up to the player to decide if the game is still exciting, even when losing.
- munificent 5y ago
  > Now a computer implementation could try to avoid most of these "bad" seeds using some heuristics. This is potentially a problem with roguelike games that do random procedural level generation. It's no fun to get dropped into a dungeon where there is literally no path to the exit. Typically, the way they solve it is by having the algorithm for level generation ensure solvability by construction. For example, if you build level by starting with the exit room and randomly attaching new rooms to it, then it's obvious that you can always get to the exit from every room. Maintaining that property while having an interesting level generator that makes fun levels is a challenge.
CyberShadow 5y ago
I tried doing something similar for another game (fully explore and dump the dialogue tree of VA-11 Hall-A), and also encountered the state explosion problem. What helped was a data structure which allows storing very large sets of states, storing all possible outcomes of a program's execution efficiently (or at least more efficiently than naively). It exploits that any particular step in a program's execution reads and writes only a limited set of variables, which means that we can execute that step once only for each set of values the read variables may have, passing through all possibilities for the values of the remaining variables in one go. Perhaps it could be useful here as well. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2241146183 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=22411...
wly_cdgr 5y ago
This puts me in mind me of how the difficulty of the 3x Sentry fight varies so wildly depending on whether you've happened to have had a chance to get Evolve / Cleave / Whirlwind, or especially Fire Breathing.
- taeric 5y ago
  Feel no pain is a great one, too. I do love how there is no guaranteed to help card, per se. If you get Nob instead of sentries, most of these cards are if dubious use.
  - wly_cdgr 5y ago
    Good point, Feel No Pain is very handy for that fight. Fire Breathing still great for Lagavulin if you can also get your hands on a Power Through in time, esp since you have three turns to draw it before it wakes up. Not as much for Nob....unless you can also get your hands on a Reckless Charge. But yeah I'd still prob rather have something like Bludgeon for that fight. Too bad Bludgeon scales like it's falling off a cliff
- aidenn0 5y ago
  The 3x sentry is the most annoying fight in the first act, but rarely the hardest, since it is so predictable.
  - joshuamorton 5y ago
    Interesting, I find lavagulin more annoying and often longer-taking because it requires you to play very safe (and get -str/dex) or take tons of damage in early turns. It's high variance, since if you have a strong suite of powers early you can set up for a while, but that's unusual.
    - wly_cdgr 5y ago
      I generally aim to kill lagavulin before its first attack after its first debuff turn. Are you saying you upgrade the starter Block cards?
robotnikman 5y ago
I love this game, I probably have at least 100 hours on the Android version. Still only was able to beat the Heart though with the defect, got so close with the others but never fully beat it.
- adamnemecek 5y ago
  What's the problem? I have beaten the heart with Defect on ascension 20 quite a few times. Mummified hand is the relic that turns an average run into an amazing run. Combine it with Storm and Heatsinks and you can start doing some serious damage.
  - robotnikman 5y ago
    No problem with the defect, I was able to defeat the heart easily with them using a static discharge build. It was with the others I had issues Got so close with the silent using a poison build (and lucky enough to get snecko skull) but was not able to ramp up damage enough (could have used a few more catalysts I think, only was able to get one) Forgot what I tried with the ironclad and watcher, been a few months since I played those.
TillE 5y ago
Game randomizers (such as those for older Zelda and Metroid games) address this sort of problem with logic to ensure that a seed is solvable. If you need item A to enter dungeon B, item A can't be in that dungeon, for example. This can either be applied as part of the random generation, or as a post-generation verification step which discards the seed if it isn't solvable. I think this sort of thing would be valuable for randomized run-based games like Slay the Spire, not only to ensure consistency, but also to open up greater flexibility for design. Instead of using fuzzy heuristics so that nearly all seeds are solvable, you can construct a greater diversity of scenarios without risking player frustration.
- retbull 5y ago
  I feel like it is pretty indistinguishable in STS if you lost because you made an incorrect decision somewhere or the run is unwinnable. Something like Zelda or Metroid you can reach a point and the game has some kind of obvious solution or key you need. STS has too many solutions to the problems of what you face and no way to go back and recheck things. The fact that it is almost impossible to find an unsolvable STS seed seems to indicate that their approach is pretty good. Player frustration in STS except for the tiny number of runs indicated in this post is entirely skill based.
- yyyk 5y ago
  That's easy because the only check for solvability is item availability, so by setting a dependency chain you can ensure it. We can't do this in StS, since the main obstacle is being able to do enough damage while staying alive, not items per se. Solving that would require simulating battles which is way too expensive due to number of choices.
afpx 5y ago
This is freaking awesome. I have been looking for something like this for months. You're the best, dsugarman.
oohbleh 5y ago
Oh hey, that's me. If any of you folks want to join a search for unwinnable or otherwise interesting seeds, feel free to shoot me an email (see blog)! We just created a discord server for Slay the Spire-related coding!
weedfroglozenge 5y ago
Every round I start in StS is unwinnable :(
- WastingMyTime89 5y ago
  For how good it is, the game does a terrible job teaching you how to play it properly. To win consistently you need to know the enemy patterns, what your next big challenges can counter, what the ? rooms are likely to be and when rare cards are likely to drop. Contrary to what beginners tend to do, it is more important to focus on overcoming your immediate upcoming challenges than focus on your synergies too early (for example you need damages fast at the beginning). Then the game looks easy at ascension level 1. Part of that is obscure knowledge can be acquired losing repeated, part is more obscure and you will only gain reading the wiki or watching streamers. I think that’s inherent to the nature of deck building game and fans of the genre like it this way. I feel ambivalent about it personally but I also have played two hundred enjoyable hours of Slay the Spire over the years.
  - shadytrees 5y ago
    I agree with this: the game appears simple but there are some surprisingly complex interactions, and even pro players consult the wiki/spreadsheet/external resources during their runs. For example, only last month did Jorbs discover something new about how Gold-Plated Cables and Emotion Chip and Loop operate (something about how GPC fires earlier or later than Loop, which affects when you want to take damage during the Heart fight with Beat of Death going); on the last stream, he also ran into War Paint making Snecko Eye worse because it upgraded Dualcast to 0-cost, which means that the Apotheosis he had in his deck was unable to lower the cost of a e.g. 3-cost Dualcast+ (normally, Apothesois lowers a Snecko-randomized energy cost to the correct value when it upgrades a deck mid-fight). Keep in mind that this is someone who has >8000 hours put into this game, and these discoveries are still causing him to update his priors. Great game! Every decision matters!
  - wly_cdgr 5y ago
    No...the game does a wonderful job of not teaching you to play it properly. Figuring out all those things on your own is the whole dang game!
zabzonk 5y ago
- RGamma 5y ago
  If this is the result of going out "too little" (a stretch already IMO) I'd say: get out less! It's the sort of display of curiosity and precision I'm here for - bonus points if it doesn't refer to everyday life.
- andbberger 5y ago
  don't kink shame their hobby
- nextlevelwizard 5y ago
  It is almost as if different people like different things
sio8ohPi 5y ago
Previous discussion of the hunt for such a seed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23910006 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23910006
- dang 5y ago
  Nice! Macroexpanded: Is every game of Slay the Spire winnable? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23910006 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23910006 - July 2020 (139 comments)
tedunangst 5y ago
Some parallels with simpler games like blackjack. There are hands that can't ever be won (dealer has 21). And then there's hands that can only be won with bizarre play, like hitting on 19 to draw a 2 when dealer has 20.
jmcgough 5y ago
Really interesting read - part of the challenge of proving a seed unwinnable is that there is a nightmarishly complex number of possible outcomes arising from small differences in plays, so as said in the article they needed to find a seed that relied on simple reasoning for why it's impossible. I'm curious why cursed key was mentioned in several of these seeds as a Neow trade-in. It's one of the better energy relics, particularly since you won't have a curse from it by the time you fight Lagavulin.
- shawabawa3 5y ago
  Their proof assumed you always had energy to play all your strikes, so cursed key does nothing for their proof
- scott_w 5y ago
  I’m guessing that it’s a relic that isn’t going to give you any extra damage dealing. By Floor 6, if you only have Strikes, having enough energy likely isn’t going to be your problem against Legavullum.
chowells 5y ago
I haven't payed attention to the speed-running scene for this game, so I was caught utterly by surprise by the section on glitches in the game. How does something whose out-of-combat state should be easily modeled with a trivial state machine end up with so many bugs in that portion of the game?
- jmcgough 5y ago
  If you haven't seen the AGDQ 2022 run mentioned in the article, it's extremely entertaining, short, and very worth watching just to see how broken the game is.
- plorkyeran 5y ago
  It is the developers' first game, and probably their first software program of its size of any kind. It would be surprising if they _didn't_ make any design decisions which in retrospect were mistakes. The fact that it's a single-player game also means there's no real need to redesign things once they discovered that what they were doing didn't really work. They successfully fixed the bugs you can hit when you aren't intentionally trying to break the game, and bugs which let you do absurd things when you are trying to arguably aren't even a bad thing.
- orlp 5y ago
  The answer is that it's a single-player game, and that user interfaces suck to write and model. In a multiplayer game you are generally forced to separate game logic from the UI frontend, which is a good practice regardless. But in a single-player game there is nothing forcing you to do so, and it can be (at least in the short term) very convenient to tie in game logic with the user interface code, as seemingly they follow the same state machine. But then new requirements pop up, such as being able to go back to review your choice, or weird slowness/strangeness that allows you to quickly press a button twice, etc.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ufo 5y ago
  Hindsight is 20/20. My impression is that they didn't use a state machine, just callback events that get confused if you click before the animation finishes.

170 points by dsugarman 5y ago

Glad to see Slay the Spire here. It was my gateway drug for game theory and similar "decision making" stuff, I think everyone would benefit from playing it at least for a little bit.

tadzik_ 5y ago

Ha, I knew it! A20 Lagavulin on Silent always seems like it's down to whether you managed to get enough poison cards for it.

shadytrees 5y ago
Don't discount an updated Neutralize+, which takes the Lagavulin damage down from 20 to 15. Good for the Gremlin Nob fight too.

archi42 5y ago

Ah, yes, the funsies of unwinnable seeds. Either the developers run some sanity checks to (somewhat try to) avoid them, or they are just part of the game(-design). Both approaches have their merits. Even in a simple game as Hanabi [cooperative card game; if you don't know it, look it up!] this is possible. In the basic game mode this requires incredible bad luck (e.g. the three last cards to be drawn are the three copies of the red 1); it's more likely to lose due because the first copy of a card (cards 2 to 4 have two copies each) is discarded and the second copy of that card is then the last card to be drawn (which means followup cards can not be played anymore). So the strategy of strong players involves reducing the number of (useful) cards discarded. But in some of the advanced modes, there are truly "unwinnable" seeds of the randomized deck, no matter the player's luck (e.g. the singular black 1 being among the last few cards to be drawn results in not being able to score the full 25 points). Now a computer implementation could try to avoid most of these "bad" seeds using some heuristics. But one might argue that this isn't true to the spirit of the game and as a player, one should just accept that sometimes there is a chance not to win. It's then up to the player to decide if the game is still exciting, even when losing.

munificent 5y ago
> Now a computer implementation could try to avoid most of these "bad" seeds using some heuristics. This is potentially a problem with roguelike games that do random procedural level generation. It's no fun to get dropped into a dungeon where there is literally no path to the exit. Typically, the way they solve it is by having the algorithm for level generation ensure solvability by construction. For example, if you build level by starting with the exit room and randomly attaching new rooms to it, then it's obvious that you can always get to the exit from every room. Maintaining that property while having an interesting level generator that makes fun levels is a challenge.

CyberShadow 5y ago

I tried doing something similar for another game (fully explore and dump the dialogue tree of VA-11 Hall-A), and also encountered the state explosion problem. What helped was a data structure which allows storing very large sets of states, storing all possible outcomes of a program's execution efficiently (or at least more efficiently than naively). It exploits that any particular step in a program's execution reads and writes only a limited set of variables, which means that we can execute that step once only for each set of values the read variables may have, passing through all possibilities for the values of the remaining variables in one go. Perhaps it could be useful here as well. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2241146183 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=22411...

wly_cdgr 5y ago

This puts me in mind me of how the difficulty of the 3x Sentry fight varies so wildly depending on whether you've happened to have had a chance to get Evolve / Cleave / Whirlwind, or especially Fire Breathing.

taeric 5y ago
Feel no pain is a great one, too. I do love how there is no guaranteed to help card, per se. If you get Nob instead of sentries, most of these cards are if dubious use.
- wly_cdgr 5y ago
  Good point, Feel No Pain is very handy for that fight. Fire Breathing still great for Lagavulin if you can also get your hands on a Power Through in time, esp since you have three turns to draw it before it wakes up. Not as much for Nob....unless you can also get your hands on a Reckless Charge. But yeah I'd still prob rather have something like Bludgeon for that fight. Too bad Bludgeon scales like it's falling off a cliff
aidenn0 5y ago
The 3x sentry is the most annoying fight in the first act, but rarely the hardest, since it is so predictable.
- joshuamorton 5y ago
  Interesting, I find lavagulin more annoying and often longer-taking because it requires you to play very safe (and get -str/dex) or take tons of damage in early turns. It's high variance, since if you have a strong suite of powers early you can set up for a while, but that's unusual.
  - wly_cdgr 5y ago
    I generally aim to kill lagavulin before its first attack after its first debuff turn. Are you saying you upgrade the starter Block cards?

robotnikman 5y ago

I love this game, I probably have at least 100 hours on the Android version. Still only was able to beat the Heart though with the defect, got so close with the others but never fully beat it.

adamnemecek 5y ago
What's the problem? I have beaten the heart with Defect on ascension 20 quite a few times. Mummified hand is the relic that turns an average run into an amazing run. Combine it with Storm and Heatsinks and you can start doing some serious damage.
- robotnikman 5y ago
  No problem with the defect, I was able to defeat the heart easily with them using a static discharge build. It was with the others I had issues Got so close with the silent using a poison build (and lucky enough to get snecko skull) but was not able to ramp up damage enough (could have used a few more catalysts I think, only was able to get one) Forgot what I tried with the ironclad and watcher, been a few months since I played those.

TillE 5y ago

Game randomizers (such as those for older Zelda and Metroid games) address this sort of problem with logic to ensure that a seed is solvable. If you need item A to enter dungeon B, item A can't be in that dungeon, for example. This can either be applied as part of the random generation, or as a post-generation verification step which discards the seed if it isn't solvable. I think this sort of thing would be valuable for randomized run-based games like Slay the Spire, not only to ensure consistency, but also to open up greater flexibility for design. Instead of using fuzzy heuristics so that nearly all seeds are solvable, you can construct a greater diversity of scenarios without risking player frustration.

retbull 5y ago
I feel like it is pretty indistinguishable in STS if you lost because you made an incorrect decision somewhere or the run is unwinnable. Something like Zelda or Metroid you can reach a point and the game has some kind of obvious solution or key you need. STS has too many solutions to the problems of what you face and no way to go back and recheck things. The fact that it is almost impossible to find an unsolvable STS seed seems to indicate that their approach is pretty good. Player frustration in STS except for the tiny number of runs indicated in this post is entirely skill based.
yyyk 5y ago
That's easy because the only check for solvability is item availability, so by setting a dependency chain you can ensure it. We can't do this in StS, since the main obstacle is being able to do enough damage while staying alive, not items per se. Solving that would require simulating battles which is way too expensive due to number of choices.

afpx 5y ago

This is freaking awesome. I have been looking for something like this for months. You're the best, dsugarman.

oohbleh 5y ago

Oh hey, that's me. If any of you folks want to join a search for unwinnable or otherwise interesting seeds, feel free to shoot me an email (see blog)! We just created a discord server for Slay the Spire-related coding!

weedfroglozenge 5y ago

Every round I start in StS is unwinnable :(

WastingMyTime89 5y ago
For how good it is, the game does a terrible job teaching you how to play it properly. To win consistently you need to know the enemy patterns, what your next big challenges can counter, what the ? rooms are likely to be and when rare cards are likely to drop. Contrary to what beginners tend to do, it is more important to focus on overcoming your immediate upcoming challenges than focus on your synergies too early (for example you need damages fast at the beginning). Then the game looks easy at ascension level 1. Part of that is obscure knowledge can be acquired losing repeated, part is more obscure and you will only gain reading the wiki or watching streamers. I think that’s inherent to the nature of deck building game and fans of the genre like it this way. I feel ambivalent about it personally but I also have played two hundred enjoyable hours of Slay the Spire over the years.
- shadytrees 5y ago
  I agree with this: the game appears simple but there are some surprisingly complex interactions, and even pro players consult the wiki/spreadsheet/external resources during their runs. For example, only last month did Jorbs discover something new about how Gold-Plated Cables and Emotion Chip and Loop operate (something about how GPC fires earlier or later than Loop, which affects when you want to take damage during the Heart fight with Beat of Death going); on the last stream, he also ran into War Paint making Snecko Eye worse because it upgraded Dualcast to 0-cost, which means that the Apotheosis he had in his deck was unable to lower the cost of a e.g. 3-cost Dualcast+ (normally, Apothesois lowers a Snecko-randomized energy cost to the correct value when it upgrades a deck mid-fight). Keep in mind that this is someone who has >8000 hours put into this game, and these discoveries are still causing him to update his priors. Great game! Every decision matters!
- wly_cdgr 5y ago
  No...the game does a wonderful job of not teaching you to play it properly. Figuring out all those things on your own is the whole dang game!

zabzonk 5y ago

RGamma 5y ago
If this is the result of going out "too little" (a stretch already IMO) I'd say: get out less! It's the sort of display of curiosity and precision I'm here for - bonus points if it doesn't refer to everyday life.
andbberger 5y ago
don't kink shame their hobby
nextlevelwizard 5y ago
It is almost as if different people like different things

sio8ohPi 5y ago

Previous discussion of the hunt for such a seed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23910006 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23910006

dang 5y ago
Nice! Macroexpanded: Is every game of Slay the Spire winnable? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23910006 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23910006 - July 2020 (139 comments)

tedunangst 5y ago

Some parallels with simpler games like blackjack. There are hands that can't ever be won (dealer has 21). And then there's hands that can only be won with bizarre play, like hitting on 19 to draw a 2 when dealer has 20.

jmcgough 5y ago

Really interesting read - part of the challenge of proving a seed unwinnable is that there is a nightmarishly complex number of possible outcomes arising from small differences in plays, so as said in the article they needed to find a seed that relied on simple reasoning for why it's impossible. I'm curious why cursed key was mentioned in several of these seeds as a Neow trade-in. It's one of the better energy relics, particularly since you won't have a curse from it by the time you fight Lagavulin.

shawabawa3 5y ago
Their proof assumed you always had energy to play all your strikes, so cursed key does nothing for their proof
scott_w 5y ago
I’m guessing that it’s a relic that isn’t going to give you any extra damage dealing. By Floor 6, if you only have Strikes, having enough energy likely isn’t going to be your problem against Legavullum.

chowells 5y ago

I haven't payed attention to the speed-running scene for this game, so I was caught utterly by surprise by the section on glitches in the game. How does something whose out-of-combat state should be easily modeled with a trivial state machine end up with so many bugs in that portion of the game?

jmcgough 5y ago
If you haven't seen the AGDQ 2022 run mentioned in the article, it's extremely entertaining, short, and very worth watching just to see how broken the game is.
plorkyeran 5y ago
It is the developers' first game, and probably their first software program of its size of any kind. It would be surprising if they _didn't_ make any design decisions which in retrospect were mistakes. The fact that it's a single-player game also means there's no real need to redesign things once they discovered that what they were doing didn't really work. They successfully fixed the bugs you can hit when you aren't intentionally trying to break the game, and bugs which let you do absurd things when you are trying to arguably aren't even a bad thing.
orlp 5y ago
The answer is that it's a single-player game, and that user interfaces suck to write and model. In a multiplayer game you are generally forced to separate game logic from the UI frontend, which is a good practice regardless. But in a single-player game there is nothing forcing you to do so, and it can be (at least in the short term) very convenient to tie in game logic with the user interface code, as seemingly they follow the same state machine. But then new requirements pop up, such as being able to go back to review your choice, or weird slowness/strangeness that allows you to quickly press a button twice, etc.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ufo 5y ago
Hindsight is 20/20. My impression is that they didn't use a state machine, just callback events that get confused if you click before the animation finishes.