How well can AI play Slay the Spire?

Frontier AI models have rapidly improved at playing Slay the Spire, a difficult strategy game with randomness and hidden information that has long resisted machine learning approaches. In just six months, these models progressed from struggling to win at base difficulty to achieving over 90% win rates at that level, and some can now beat the game's maximum difficulty settings, though still far below the performance of top human players. Researchers created a new benchmark called SpireClimb to consistently measure how well AI systems can play both Slay the Spire and its sequel using visual computer-use interfaces, which tests both game-playing ability and the emerging capability of AI systems to use computers autonomously. This matters because these improvements demonstrate rapid advances in AI capabilities across general game-playing, computer use, and planning abilities over a short timeframe.