Kaya's Prophecy Review

Kaya’s Prophecy does not shy away from its influences, positioning itself as a mash-up of Slay the Spire and Stacklands. However, by explicitly naming them, it does open itself up to direct comparisons. While it may not reach the highs of Slay the Spire, the comparisons are not at all disastrous for Kaya’s Prophecy, which manages to blend the village management mechanics quite well with the card-based battles. 

Publisher: Yogscast Games

Developer: Jérémie & Thibaut

Platform: Played on PC (Steam)

Availability: Released on April 10, 2025 on Steam.

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Developed by Jérémie & Thibaut, Kaya’s Prophecy starts off with the destruction of a nearby village by a malevolent god. As the sole survivor of the event, you must rebuild the village and repopulate, all while checking off the boxes the game gives you in your checklist. There is a story here, but it’s not particularly substantial — you just get snippets here and there after major checkpoints, as well as dialogue between the villagers and whichever boss you encounter at the end of the area.

Once that basic plot groundwork is laid down, the game hits the ground running, putting you into the village management portion of the game. Building up your village requires you collect and stack cards to craft recipes you either buy or find, which in turn allows you to check off the list of objectives to progress further. Items you don’t need or have too many of can be turned into Evil Blood, which can then be turned into booster packs to provide you with another set of resources or locations that you can use to craft what you need. The RNG nature of these booster packs adds a bit of tension, as each day in the village is on a timer and you need a specific number of food items in a day to appease the god who torments you. This may lead to frustration early in the game, but by the later stages of a run, you’ll have more resources and food than you know what to do with.

Explorable locations can be purchased from an in-game shop once it is crafted, and this is where the game brings in the Slay the Spire aspects all the marketing alludes to. Starting on a map with multiple pathways, you work your way through card battles and randomized events to collect resources which can be brought back to the village to help in advancement. Some resources are only available through the exploration and card battling portion of the game, so venturing out is necessary — it is also the most fun aspect of the experience. I love these card battler games, so there’s just going to be some bias there, but Kaya’s Prophecy nails the battles, even if they’re on the easier end.

The attractive art and clear visual indicators make Kaya's Prophecy easy on the eyes.

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Each battle consists of your exploring villager taking on 1-3 enemies using hands of cards dealt to you 5 at a time. Your villager has 3 energy, which can then be spent to use those cards, with each card having a specific cost tied to it. Card types are split between armor cards, utility cards, and attack cards. Attack cards do damage to enemies, armor cards give your villager armor to resist attacks, and utility cards do things like draw additional cards, heal, or give your villager additional energy to use on a given turn. While this is extremely similar to Slay the Spire, this game differs in the fact that armor is carried over between rounds and it is not as difficult.

Building your deck in Kaya’s Prophecy is extremely easy and I would say a mostly passive endeavor. You gain powerful cards through equipment you craft within the village sections of the gameplay and you can occasionally swap out abilities here and there when you traverse through locations. Not a ton of customization, but you do get noticeably more powerful as you advance — to the point where later stages of combat feel mostly inconsequential.

The art style is simple-but-effective, with easy to read icons and text, and pleasant backgrounds and UI elements. It clearly draws major inspiration from aboriginal cultures, using similar body paints and even leaning into the Australia/Oceania connection by using cassowaries as recurring entities on the currency and other iconography. Whether those cultures are well represented is not really something I can speak on, but I do not feel like there’s any hint of negativity in the portrayal. However, the stylings being so obviously drawn from traditional aboriginal imagery was immediately obvious to me, a random American across the planet, so I do wonder how this lands with people within those cultures or spaces.

I’m not sure that I would consider Kaya’s Prophecy the most original game — it is blatantly and intentionally not so. However, the concepts and ideas it draws from Slay the Spire and Stacklands are well executed, with great balance between the two disparate gameplay sections. While the two elements themselves are quite different from one another, they are married beautifully together, with each feeding into the other to create a fun, varied experience.

Verdict

Despite not being wholly original by design, Kaya’s Prophecy succeeds in marrying the two disparate ideas of card battler and village management. A simple, yet distinct art style, combined with timeless deck building mechanics makes for an endearing and addictive experience.

Image Credits: Yogscast Games

Disclosure: I received a free review copy of this product from the publisher.