Slay The Spire 2, One Month Later

On March 5, developer Mega Crit released Slay the Spire 2, the long-awaited sequel to the 2019 roguelike deckbuilder Slay the Spire, into early access on Steam. Considering how beloved the first game is, most assumed that the sequel would be, at the very least, a moderate success. And yet I don’t think anyone could have possibly predicted exactly how popular it would ultimately prove to be.

However, it’s not all been smooth sailing for Mega Crit in the past 40-ish days. Between momentarily crashing the Steam storefront and getting review bombed for announcing optional work-in-progress balance changes, Slay the Spire 2 has encountered a few bumps in the road during its early access journey—and that’s to say nothing of the headlines the game made before its release.

Considering the original Slay the Spire’s humble origins, it’s been oddly difficult to keep up with it all, so you’d be forgiven for missing a story or two along the way. With that in mind, here’s a roundup of every pothole and Steam-charts-shaped incline Slay the Spire 2 has bumped into so far, including the ones it hit just before release.

In unity with other Unity devs, Mega Crit ditches Unity for Godot

All right, I know I said “just before,” but there’s one three-year-old detail you’ll need to know to have context for certain things down the line. Back in 2023, Mega Crit announced that it was going to essentially scrap two years of work on Slay the Spire 2 and port it over to a new engine.

On September 12, 2023, Unity Technologies proclaimed that games developed using its engine, Unity, would be subject to “runtime fees.” In short, any games made in Unity post-January 2024 would be hit with monthly, per-installation royalty fees. The outrage amongst developers was immediate, but Mega Crit took things a step further than some with a response that was borderline instantaneous.

In a post on X a mere 24 hours after Unity’s announcement, Mega Crit stated it had already begun “migrating to a new engine.” That engine, we would eventually learn, was Godot. Even though Unity eventually revised its runtime fees plan on September 22, 2023, and later scrapped them altogether in 2024, the damage had already been done. “We have never made a public statement before,” reads the end of Mega Crit’s statement. “That is how badly you fucked up.”

Slay the Spire 2’s release date announcement terrifies every indie roguelike game coming out in March

After almost six years of development and an engine swap midway, Mega Crit revealed on February 5 of this year that Slay the Spire 2 would be released into early access on March 5. The announcement was met with universal excitement, even from devs that had to move their own roguelike deckbuilders out of the way of its release date splash zone.

This affected several indie games set to drop in early March, such as 58BLADES’s Handmancers, Algorocks’ Mini Tank Mayhem, and ThunderRam’s Grimslair, but most of them had a little fun with it along the way. On the plus side, it seems their decisions weren’t made in vain, because on March 5…

Slay the Spire 2 hits over 400,000 concurrent players at launch (and momentarily breaks Steam)

The hype behind Slay the Spire 2 became immediately obvious following its release date trailer in February, but even the devs at Mega Crit have since stated that they were blindsided by its success on release day.

Within the first 24 hours of releasing on Steam, Slay the Spire 2 peaked at 430,456 concurrent players on March 6. It would then break this concurrent player count record for another two days in a row, eventually reaching an all-time peak of 574,638 on March 8. That ranks it above the all-time peaks of some of the biggest games on Steam, such as Arc Raiders, Terraria, Helldivers 2, and Valheim.

Oh, and, much like Hollow Knight: Silksong, it briefly caused Steam to stop working when it was released, due to the combined efforts of every Slay the Spire 2 fan rushing to purchase the game at once.

After Slay the Spire 2 breaks Steam, Slay the Spire 2 players break Slay the Spire 2

Slay the Spire 2 is an early access game, which means you should expect to run into some bugs during the course of your playthrough. Throughout the last six weeks, players have uncovered a wealth of silly exploits in the game, including one that lets you completely randomize your starting deck by using Neow’s New Leaf relic.

Mega Crit has started patching a bunch of these exploits out pretty quickly, such as one that let players “have their HP increased above 999,999,999.” The funniest part of that exploit is that pulling it off rewarded players by…having their health loop back around to 1 HP.

Alongside this balance patch, Mega Crit also announced the public beta testing branch for Slay the Spire 2 on March 13. Before patches go live to all players, you can opt in to try out changes ahead of time by playing the version of the game in the beta testing branch. This is completely optional, which surely means that players wouldn’t, for example, review bomb Slay the Spire 2 for any balance changes introduced in the beta testing branch, right?

Slay the Spire 2 is review-bombed for balance changes introduced in the beta testing branch

On March 19, Mega Crit updated the public beta branch and introduced patch v0.100.0, which the devs described as “the first BIG post-launch patch.” All in all, I think it made some great changes, but a couple of balancing reworks were upsetting enough for some that they decided to review-bomb the game.

In the space of 24 hours, Slay the Spire 2 dropped from a 97-percent rating on Steam all the way to an 83-percent rating. Most of these reviews have yet to be removed from Steam, and it’s currently sitting at an 81-percent rating on the storefront.

Mega Crit reverts the nerfs that led to Slay the Spire 2 getting review bombed

The especially silly thing about all of those negative reviews still being live is that the changes they were railing against no longer exist.

On March 27, Mega Crit released a new public beta patch that completely reversed all of the changes people hated about the first patch, including a nerf to Silent’s Prepared card. While the blowback Mega Crit received was ridiculous, the devs’ decision to revert the nerfs has fans worried that future balancing could be influenced by further review bombing down the line.

Mega Crit announces that new characters and gameplay modes are on the way

During an interview with PC Gamer on April 2, Mega Crit co-founder Casey Yano revealed that the team is hard at work on a bunch of new content for Slay the Spire 2. This includes, but isn’t limited to, a new character or characters and even new modes.

While Yano didn’t reveal any info about the newly teased characters, he was relatively forthcoming about the new gameplay modes they’re planning. “The first one is a mode that is meant for people who want to play in a very competitive fashion,” Yano stated. “The second is for people who want to have the Slay the Spire experience, but do not have the time to do so. And the third is ‘What if there were other ways to interact with people, socially or in a multiplayer-like setting, with the current systems that exist today?’”

Godot announces that Mega Crit has become a ‘Corporate Platinum’-level sponsor

From here, you’re pretty much up to date, which is why it’s nice to round things off with a feel-good entry. On April 10, the official Godot Engine Bluesky account announced that Mega Crit had been officially upgraded to Corporate Platinum level.

That’s a fancy way of saying that Mega Crit has chosen to increase the yearly donations it sends to the free and open-source engine that powers their game. The minimum you have to donate each year to reach Corporate Platinum status is $42,000, which makes it extra funny that Mega Crit has chosen to willingly donate tens of thousands of dollars to Godot every year instead of paying Unity their proposed runtime fees back in 2023. Mega Crit’s “you fucked up” statement to Unity really has aged like fine wine, huh?