Slay the Spire - Anailis Dorta & Bruce Brenneise: Art in Board Games #76
Slay the Spire is a phenomenal hit. The video game has sold an estimated 3 million copies and has been adapted into a board game, which is already rated in the top 50 best board games ever on Board Game Geek.
Slay the Spire is a deck-building dungeon crawler with unique art direction to create a fully original world. In this board game art interview, Anailis Dorta and Bruce Brenneise share how they illustrated this award-winning game. From surreal backdrops to detailed card designs, the duo discusses worldbuilding, collaboration, and staying true to the game’s visual identity.
In Slay the Spire, you play as characters climbing a mysterious tower, encountering strange creatures, discovering relics, and crafting a deck of cards to help you overcome powerful bosses. As soon as I tried it, I was addicted.
Since its release, Slay the Spire has grown into a phenomenal hit. The video game has sold an estimated 3 million copies, and last year, it was adapted into a board game, which is already rated among the top 50 best board games on Board Game Geek.
This interview has been five years in the making. Back in 2020, I was obsessed with the Slay the Spire video game, playing it on Steam, Switch, and my phone. I originally reached out to artists Anailis Dorta and Bruce Brenneise at the end of January 2020 to begin our interview, then a little thing called the pandemic occurred.
Five years later, I was still curious to know about Slay the Spire. Thankfully, artists Anailis and Bruce were kind enough to join me (once more) to chat about their work. Enjoy our conversation!
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Thanks for talking to me again after all these years, Anailis and Bruce! Could you tell us a bit about yourselves?
Anailis: Hello! I’m a game artist who has worked on multiple projects for different platforms, including console, PC, mobile, AR, VR, and film. I mainly contribute to the 2D and UI roles, but have filled different titles depending on the job. I was born in Cuba and immigrated to the United States as a kid. I went to college on the West Coast and currently reside in the PNW. Outside of making art for a living, I enjoy annoying my cat, traveling with my partner in search of great coffee, and playing roller derby with my friends.
Bruce: Hi! I'm an award-winning illustrator and game background artist. Most of my work thus far has been for various tabletop RPGs and games, including Magic: The Gathering, Dungeons & Dragons, and Numenera. I grew up in rural Michigan, graduated from the University of Michigan with a focus in scientific illustration, lived and traveled in China for six years, and then moved to Seattle with my wife and son. I still live in that area, albeit on the outskirts, since that’s far more affordable. Aside from art, I love reading sci-fi/fantasy/horror novels, traveling, and following geopolitical news.
Have you always wanted to be an artist?
Anailis: I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember! A moment that made me think, “This is serious now”, is when I got accepted into an art magnet high school. This was the first time I got my hands on a digital tablet and started creating full-on illustrations. After high school, I left to study Game Art in California. I honestly thought — Hey, I like playing video games, so I’ll probably like working on them too! In college, I was taking figure drawing classes, character/environment design classes, concept art for games, vis-dev for animation, storyboarding, UI, 3D — you name it. I was exposed to many aspects of the industry and had amazing teachers who helped me along the way!
Bruce: I've been drawing since I was a small child, and I was lucky to grow up in a family that encouraged art as a viable career option. My grandfather, Harry Baerg, was also a professional illustrator. I remember reading the art books of Michael Whelan and Keith Parkinson and gravitating to the sort of art they were doing. Graduating from art school, however, felt like hitting a brick wall. It hadn't really prepared me for the sort of entertainment industry work I was interested in. I decided to go teach in China and scratch that travel itch I've always had. Although it was a detour from my professional art career, I think it's had a huge impact on the inspiration and approach I take to art now, so that I wouldn't change a thing about that decision.
What is your process when creating art? Are you more digital or analog?
Anailis: I would say the process for creating art depends on what I’m doing. I would say I am an impatient person who doesn't like to spend too much time doing the same thing, so I rarely go the route of seeing where the idea takes me. I pretty much always have a plan coming into something, and if I’m stumped on a piece, I will ask my coworkers for ideas to springboard off of.
When I was working on STS, my general process for the cards or events was to come up with 2-3 sketches based on the card name or description. If I felt some of the ideas were not strong enough on their own, I would jump into a timeboxed research to get more inspiration, whether that was a different pose altogether or thinking of a more intricate design.
Now, if I were taking on something new, I would always look into research and mood boards first. A good rule of thumb for me is to think about what the final piece I want to make is and deconstruct it from there, and that will fill my research. I will always look at antique or historical objects, clothing, machinery, etc., on which the final subject is based, as that is the base on which you can build your ideas.
Bruce: My process for creating art is changing these days. Most of my experience is with digital art: I was an early adopter back in my college days. Now I’m getting back into traditional painting, starting with a lot of tonal sketches and acrylic paintings for MTG and D&D. Given how much of our daily lives are consumed by screens, it’s been nice to get away from them while I work. Either way, the process always starts similarly from researching references, trying out compositions with thumbnail sketches, and then committing to a direction and exploring what that fully looks like.
What do you think makes great art?
Anailis: What I enjoy most about art is that whatever anyone draws always carries a piece of them. Whether it's the thickness of a line stroke, brush stroke, colors, subject matter, points of references, etc. Almost every piece carries pieces of different inspirations that inspired us. A Lot of the shapes and colors in my work are inspired by games that I LOVED growing up (in my case, that was Beyond Good and Evil, Kya: Dark Lineage, the Sly Cooper Series, and Okage: Shadow King).
Artist-wise, Alexandria Neonakis is an artist I’ve always admired since college because her work is so varied and does a lot of UI and concept work, which was what I was mainly doing at the time. Devon Cady-lee Is also someone who’s work I followed during my college years. I love the shapes they pull out of their pieces!
Bruce: Michael Whelan and Keith Parkinson were two of the great fantasy artists who specifically inspired me. Mian Situ and Piotr Jablonsky are two others who consistently drop my jaw. Take a look at their portfolios for a window into what I like. What I enjoy most in art is intentionality, narrative, elegant mark-making, impactful color/mood, and a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. That said, art can have many different purposes and intentions, thus there are many ways to be great.
How did you get involved in making Slay the Spire?
Anailis: I had recently graduated from college and would consistently check through some of Reddit’s game-dev subreddits to take on quick freelances. Casey and Anthony made a post looking for an artist on the site to create the art style for the cards in Slay The Spire. I was initially interested because the game was very far along compared to the usual posts on the subreddit, and it immediately looked like a tangible project. That same day (or the day after), I sent them the test art.
Bruce: When living in downtown Seattle, I attended an indie game dev get-together at a coffee shop practically down the street from me. I think everyone else there was a designer or programmer. I happened to sit at a table next to the two guys that formed Megacrit. I showed off my portfolio, they showed off their VERY early prototype of Slay the Spire, and we struck up a good conversation.
I think they were particularly interested in getting feedback from me because I hadn't played any deck-builder games. I left them a business card and didn't hear anything further for about half a year. Then I met them at another indie dev meetup. Anthony approached me about doing backgrounds and promo art for them. They were one of my earliest clients, so it was a pretty exciting moment!
Since I met them at such an early phase of the project, there wasn't really an indication that this would be any different than a million other would-be indie games. It was only playing the Alpha builds of the game as it developed that I understood they had something special.
One cool thing about being such an early contributor was getting to give feedback on many other aspects of the game. When they started a brainstorming session to come up with the name of a game about 'killing a tower', I gave them a list of about ten options, including 'Slay the Spire'.
Slay the Spire is set in an original fantasy world. What inspired your art?
Anailis: Casey Yano (game developer) had already created a bunch of the enemies and other artworks for the game that easily set the tone and inspired much of the art (you can see this especially in the event illustrations). I would say that the inspiration was already there, mood and idea-wise.
Based on the initial art test I did, we hit the style and continued in that direction. The events and illustrations for the character select and some promo illustrations allowed me to add a lot more detail and play with a different style. Different aspects of the game had a variety of styles, but because we all played into similar moods and shapes, it brought many aspects together.
Bruce: Casey Yano (game developer) provided rough concepts and explanations of what he and Anthony wanted for the visual content of the game. A good example would be The City, where the background represents the implied hierarchy between palaces for those who can fly and stony hovels clustered at their bases.
I don’t really recall what they had to say for the intended overall look of the game, if there was any particular inspiration we were aiming towards on that. Because it started as a shoestring operation by folks who’d never published a game before, there wasn’t a style bible or a basis of cohesion from the start, other than not wanting to ape a AAA look/feel that everyone else seemed to be going for.
This was more experimental to begin with, for sure. If things narrowed down at all, it was later in the process when it was clear there’d be at least two other people contributing art, so I had to find points of similarity with what they were doing.
Do you have a favorite piece from your work on Slay the Spire?
Anailis: Card-wise, Ironclad’s Rage is probably one of my favourite pieces. Promo-wise, I really enjoyed creating the Watcher and Defect promotional artwork since it was a nice break from all the cards I was doing at the time, haha.
Bruce: The background art for The Beyond, probably. I really enjoy the organic, melting, bony architecture forms. Another one I’m particularly proud of is the throne the Collector sits on. I wish we could have made each boss room a bit more unique like we did with that one.
How is illustrating game art different from creating for other media?
Anailis: I would say that it generally depends on the project and the tasks needed to determine how collaborative something is. In my experience, I find the entertainment industry to be a lot more involved/ collaborative because things are actively being worked on alongside you and could require things to get cut or reworked. You are also working with your fellow co-workers and getting feedback on pieces!
Whenever I’ve done something more purely illustrative that I’m being brought into at the end of the project, while there is still some feedback, it’s a lot more to the point and requires less collaboration. And to that I would add that it doesn’t mean one is easier than the other, but rather each project will require different things from the artist.
Bruce: Every product type places limitations on the art used for it. Games prioritize gameplay, naturally, so they have to take into account where and how the characters will move within the space, as well as the contrast (readability) as they do. I don’t think we expected the game to port to every conceivable platform early on, so worrying about how well the art works in other formats wasn’t necessarily a thing when it was made.
Has the success of Slay the Spire influenced your work in any way?
Anailis: It has influenced my work by making me feel more confident about my choices or directions on where to take a piece or how saturated I can make it >:), haha.
Bruce: Slay the Spire came very early in my career. When I think about the art for it, I’d say it’s an early glimpse of various tendencies that became more fully realized as my work evolved. It continues to be among my most popular artworks, if I can judge by selling prints and playmats on my website and interacting with fans at conventions. It certainly provided momentum that I’ve been able to take into my career moving forward. During StS development, I remember discussing my hope to someday work on MTG. Anthony and Casey are fans of that game as well and encouraged me. When I finally did work on Magic, it probably didn’t hurt my chances that StS was very popular internally at Wizards of the Coast.
While we’re on the subject, Bruce, what were the highlights of working on Magic: The Gathering?
Bruce: I was hired by Magic specifically for my ability to design weird and alien places, as I’d previously demonstrated with my work in Numenera and StS. My first cards were a cycle of alien worlds in the Unfinity set. I’m probably best known for one of those cards, a total solar eclipse as seen from outer space: Godless Shrine. The thing about illustrating for MTG is that each card is like this perfect little artifact in itself, so it becomes very hard to pick favorites among them.
The card where I had the most freedom of imagination, though, was probably my reprint of Fabled Passage. The brief just called for a portal in a ruined alien cityscape. Everything else about it, from the dominant colors to the design of the world, was up to me. You don’t often see that level of creative freedom with an established game product like Magic.
What are you reading, listening to, or looking at to fuel your work?
Anailis: A few years back I was taking workshops from fellow artists that I admired but lately participating in game jams with my coworkers or my partner (who is a 3D artist and fellow game dev) has brought me so much joy and has been my art outlet outside of work these past few years! Outside of that, I've really taken a step back from the computer and enjoy being outside, seeing the sun, and playing roller derby so that I’m not always sitting in this dang computer chair!
Bruce: These days I read a lot of horror (particularly anything by Grady Hendrix), and listen to a lot of synthwave like Gunship or The Midnight while I’m working on art. I suppose there’s a common retro connection between all those things as well as some of the art heroes I mentioned earlier.
Finally, where can we see more of your work?
Anailis: You can find my portfolio work at Ikazilla.com and game jams at https://ikazilla.itch.io/ :-)
Bruce: You can enjoy all my best art at brucebrenneise.com, or catch my latest released pieces on Bluesky.
Thanks to Anailis Dorta and Bruce Brenneise for sharing their artwork with me and board game publisher Contention Games for sharing the Slay the Spire board game product photography.