Spire’s End Review: Lessons in Episodic Storytelling

“It was unusually dark before the moon was swallowed in red. Crimson light circled the dark orb like a bloodshot raven’s eye. The ground shook and something unimaginable drilled its way out of the earth.”

That’s the first thing you read when you step into the world of Spire’s End, from Favad Games.

Everything about the game envelops you in this grim story, from the black & white illustrations, to the bold graphic design. 

The Spire's End Experience

From the outset you are thrust into a brutal world, forced to survive and make the best choices you can in the face of relentless danger.

Everything about the game enchanted me the first time I encountered it. Here was something different: a solo, card-driven choose-your-own-adventure with a simple, dice-based combat system to solve encounters.

Of course, I remember loving those books as a kid, and of course I played D&D. 

Spire’s End nailed the combination, though, and did it with style.

I played the game a dozen or more times, enjoying the exploration of this world. The first time you play is by far the best, everything is new. Still, finding different paths in a game like this is a lot of fun.

I always had one nagging thought, though:

“This is not the type of game I would ever create.” 

The Average Joe Hero Perspective

What I enjoy about Spire’s End echoes what I loved about playing D&D: the feeling that you are actively shaping the story.

One of the main tenets I set when I launched Average Joe Hero was that players should always feel like they are in the middle of the narrative, taking part in a larger story. I’ve largely considered keeping the story a background reason for the game to be played because this kept the game play itself fluid and changeable.

Building the story directly into the game, as Spire’s End does so well, is a deliberate tradeoff, favoring narrative control at the expense of broader player choice and, by extension, long-term re-playability.

That said, there is a perspective that made the game more compelling for me, and reinforced its strengths.

The shift in perspective that made Spire’s End click for me was thinking of it not as a branching adventure, but as the first issue of a graphic novel you explore from inside the protagonist’s head.

The story feels more like disjointed pieces of memory the reader reassembles card by card. It’s a very visual way of storytelling, despite the heavy reliance on text. 

It’s the kind of narrative experience that will feel immediately familiar to readers of graphic novels: moody, episodic, and visually driven. That makes them an ideal target audience for the game.

How AJH Would Do Spire's End

I would love to tackle a project like this, but I have to consider the ways I would do it in the Average Joe Hero way.

If I were to approach a project like this through Average Joe Hero, I’d make different tradeoffs, leaning more heavily on digital systems to let player decisions ripple forward in ways physical cards can’t. That doesn’t make one approach better than the other. It simply reflects a different set of priorities.

There are strengths and weaknesses to both approaches, but it does not diminish in the least how much I enjoyed playing Spire’s End.

I’m not related to the Favad Games, I’ve never met anyone from the company, and no one asked me for my opinion. 

I think it’s important to help other indie game companies succeed. The more people who become aware of fun games, the larger the audience we all have.

To that end, help me help to grow the community that loves indie games by supporting companies like Favad Games. Go purchase Spire’s End, and leave reviews for them. Supporting thoughtful indie projects like this expands what games can be, and gives all of us more room to experiment.