Slay the Spire: Porting a Roguelike Phenomenon

Slay the Spire, a roguelike deck-builder by MegaCrit, ported to PS4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, iOS, and Android by Sickhead Games

Title: Slay the Spire
Original Release: 2019
Developer: Mega Crit
Publisher: Humble Games
Platforms: PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, iOS, Android
Engine: libGDX

Slay the Spire is the roguelike deck-builder from Mega Crit that helped define an entire genre: a procedurally generated climb up a spire, fought entirely through card-based combat, with hundreds of synergies to discover across four playable characters. It left Steam Early Access in January 2019 to near-universal acclaim, and Sickhead handled ports to five separate platforms over the following years.

The challenge was the codebase itself. Slay the Spire was built with libGDX, a Java-based framework, and most consoles and mobile devices don’t support Java natively. Our solution was to translate the entire codebase to C#, then run it through BRUTE, our in-house cross-compiler originally developed for XNA and MonoGame titles, to complete the migration. It sounds wild, but Java and C# handle memory in similar enough that this route avoided the problems of a direct C++ conversion and gave us a smooth testing and update process across every platform.

The console ports landed on PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One within a few months of each other in 2019. iOS followed in mid-2020 and Android in early 2021, each requiring its own adaptation of the UI and input model for touchscreen play while keeping the underlying systems identical to every other version.


Sickhead Games is the leading game porting studio, bringing Unity, Unreal, Godot, and custom engine titles to console and handheld including PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, Android, and iOS. From codebase assessment to post-launch support, we're trusted by solo indies and major publishers alike, including Humble Games, Sony Interactive, Nintendo, Annapurna, Good Games, ConcernedApe, MegaCrit, 17-Bit, Maddy Makes Games, Zachtronics, Keen Software House, Thomas Happ, Pocketwatch Games, EXOK, Young Horses, Taito, Jaleco, and Microsoft. We've shipped over 100 releases, among them Stardew Valley, Slay the Spire, Axiom Verge, Space Engineers, and Celeste. We specialize in bringing retro masterpieces, indie darlings, and PC classics to modern audiences like Grandia, Enclave, and Jaleco Sports titles.