Slay the Spire established a shape that a lot of games now share: you climb, you draft one card from three after every fight, you choose a path on a map, you buy from a shop, and a boss ends the act. Three games on Weekly Arcade are built on it. All three are free, run in a browser tab, need no account to play and work offline once loaded.
3 that come close
- Scarwrit Every card remembers.
What it shares. The direct match, and the only turn-based card battler here. You pick a Binding, descend fifteen floors, draw five cards a turn and spend three Focus, draft one card from three between fights, buy Seals at a shop called the Scriptorium, choose your path, and fell three bosses to clear a run. Guard vanishes at the start of your next turn, so it has the same spend-it-now block that the subject does.
How it differs. The collection is permanent, which the subject deliberately does not do. Cards that help fell a boss earn an upgrade printed on them forever, and dying writes a scar on a card you choose - a scar count that can never exceed a card upgrade count, so it cannot spiral. There is also a Daily Seeded Run where every player in the world gets the identical deck, map and card offers.
- Gearloom Weave the machine. The machine pays.
What it shares. Keeps the draft-and-commit structure and the escalating pressure - one part from three every round, placed permanently, with a quota that climbs 28 per cent a round - and rewards seeing two picks ahead in exactly the way a Spire deck does.
How it differs. There are no cards and no combat. Nothing attacks you; the failure state is missing a quota. It is an engine-builder, so the thing you are assembling is a board of 58 possible parts wired by orthogonal adjacency rather than a deck.
- Solitaire Roguelite Klondike, with Jokers that break the rules.
What it shares. A deck, a shop between rounds and a build that comes from stacked purchases, on top of a card game you already know. Jokers arrive in common, rare and epic tiers and change the rules rather than the odds, and eight daily modifiers reshape a run before it starts.
How it differs. The fights are missing - the game underneath is Klondike solitaire against a ten-minute clock, not turn-based combat against enemies with intents. There is no map to route through and no boss.
The parts of Slay the Spire people mean
Asked what they want from a game like it, most people name one of four things, and they point at different games.
The deck that gets built during the run, rather than before it, is the part Scarwrit and Solitaire Roguelite both keep. The enemy intents - knowing what is coming next turn and blocking exactly that much - are specific to a turn-based battler, and Scarwrit is the only game here with them.
The map with branching paths is a Scarwrit feature too. The shop as the place where a run is actually decided is in all three.
- Deck drafted during the run - Scarwrit, Solitaire Roguelite.
- Turn-based fights with blocking - Scarwrit.
- A branching path to route through - Scarwrit.
- A shop that defines the build - all three.
What a browser tab changes
A Spire run is long. These are not, and that is deliberate rather than a shortcoming: Scarwrit is fifteen floors and Solitaire Roguelite is on a ten-minute timer, which makes them games you can finish a run of on a phone between other things.
The trade is depth of build. A pool of 108 cards and 28 Seals is a lot for a browser game and not a lot next to the subject, so a Scarwrit run resolves in fewer decisions. What it adds back is the permanence: your cards carry their upgrades and scars from run to run, so the thing that deepens over weeks is your collection rather than a single run.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a free browser version of Slay the Spire?
No. Slay the Spire is a commercial game with no free browser port. Scarwrit is a free browser deckbuilder built on the same shape - draft one card from three, route a map, fight three bosses - rather than a version of it.
Which is the closest to Slay the Spire?
Scarwrit. It is the only turn-based card battler here: fifteen floors, three bosses, five cards drawn and three Focus spent per turn, a draft after every fight and a shop between them.
Do any of them have permanent progression?
Scarwrit does, and it is the main way it departs from the subject: a card that helps fell a boss earns a permanent upgrade printed on it, and dying writes a permanent scar on a card you pick. Solitaire Roguelite has prestige unlocks bought with the currency of finished runs.
Can I play on a phone?
Yes. Scarwrit is portrait-first and playable one-handed, and all three run in a mobile browser with no download, no ads and no in-app purchases.