// The game
An Aztec roguelike deckbuilder
An Aztec deck builder: turn-based card combat, a branching map, and the gods of the Five Suns.
Xalli — hand-painted in the style of the ancient codices.
What it is
Xalli is a roguelike deckbuilding game set in Aztec mythology, painted by hand in the style of the ancient codices. Every run builds a deck from scratch, climbs a branching map, and ends against one of the gods.
The loop will be familiar if you have played Slay the Spire or Monster Train: draw a hand, spend energy, read what the enemy has telegraphed for next turn, and decide whether to block it or race it. What is different is everything around that loop.
What the Aztec setting actually changes
The setting is not a reskin. It drives the systems:
- Lineages. You bind your deck to the old lineages — Jaguar, Eagle, Cipactli, Frog and Mictlan. Each opens a different card pool and a different way to win.
- The Five Suns. The cosmology is the run structure — each act ends against a god, not a generic boss.
- Cooking. Food you prepare between fights carries into the next one, so camp decisions matter as much as card picks.
- Faction totems. Long-term commitments that reshape a run rather than a flat stat bonus.
- Multiple enemies. Many fights are against a group, so targeting and area effects are real decisions.
Hand-painted, not generated
Every card, enemy and event is painted by hand in a codex style — the flat colour, heavy outline and glyph vocabulary of Mexica manuscripts, rather than the airbrushed fantasy look most deckbuilders use.
- Genre
- Roguelike deckbuilder
- Setting
- Aztec / Mexica mythology
- Platforms
- Android, iOS, Steam
- Languages
- English, Mexican Spanish
- Players
- Single player
- Studio
- webtribe, Vienna
Questions
Is Xalli like Slay the Spire?
Yes, in the loop: turn-based card combat, telegraphed enemy intents, relics and a branching map. It differs in setting and in the systems built on it — five lineages, cooking between fights, faction totems, and fights against several enemies at once.
What platforms is it on?
Android, iOS and Steam. Xalli is built phone-first for one-handed portrait play, and runs on PC as well.
Is there another Aztec roguelike deckbuilder?
One other, and it is a different animal: Untraveled Lands: Chantico is a survival-crafting card game framed as a 1930s expedition, with a Mesoamerican backdrop rather than a story set inside the mythology. Worth playing, doing its own thing. Xalli plays from inside the myth, keeps the pure Slay the Spire run structure, and is built phone-first. The other Aztec-set games — Aztech: Forgotten Gods, Aztez, Ecumene Aztec, Aztaka — are all action games.
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