I put an embarrassing number of hours into Slay the Spire 1. Not speedrunning. Not breaking the game with infinite combos. Just a dad on the couch after the kids are in bed, grinding one more run before sleep.

Slay the Spire 2 is here in early access and it feels exactly like that. Coming home.

What’s New (The Big Stuff)

If you played the original, StS2 is going to feel instantly familiar. Same core loop: build a deck, climb the spire, fight a boss, probably die, learn something, try again.

But Mega Crit didn’t just reskin it. There’s real depth added here.

Enchantments are the biggest mechanical change. In StS1, you could upgrade a card once at a rest site. Done. In StS2, Enchantments permanently modify cards for the rest of your run with effects like “Corrupted” that fundamentally change how a card behaves. It adds a whole new decision layer to every rest site and shop visit.

Alternate Acts are coming (some are already in). When you enter a new act, you might get one of two completely different environments with different enemies, events, and bosses. Same run structure, but the variety is going to be massive once this is fully built out.

Five characters instead of four, with two brand new faces alongside returning favorites.

The New Characters

The Necrobinder is a lich who fights alongside a skeletal companion named Orly. Orly tanks damage before it hits you, but you have to manage his health too. She also has the “Doom” mechanic, which instant-kills enemies once their health drops to their Doom value. It’s a completely different way to think about damage. Instead of “how do I kill this thing fast,” it’s “how do I stack Doom and survive until it triggers.”

The Necrobinder runs are wild. Sometimes Orly carries you. Sometimes you’re scrambling to keep him alive while everything falls apart. It’s chaotic and fun.

The Regent uses a star resource system on top of energy, letting you play more powerful cards by spending stars. It adds a resource management puzzle that the other characters don’t have.

Both are genuinely different playstyles, not just reskins of existing archetypes. Mega Crit clearly put the work in.

That said, I always come back to The Silent. She’s my comfort pick. Poison, shivs, discard synergies. I know her kit inside and out from hundreds of StS1 runs, and the StS2 version feels like a natural evolution. Same identity, new toys.

The Godot Move

Here’s the tech nerd angle. Slay the Spire 1 was built on LibGDX, a Java-based framework. It worked, but it had performance quirks and compatibility headaches on some systems.

For the sequel, Mega Crit originally started building in Unity. Two years into development, Unity dropped their infamous per-install pricing policy in late 2023. Even after Unity backtracked and the CEO resigned, Mega Crit said “nah” and migrated the entire project to Godot.

That’s a bold move. Two years of work, scrapped and rebuilt on a different engine.

But it makes sense. Godot is open-source, lightweight, and doesn’t have a corporation that might change the rules on you mid-project. It handles the complex animations and (upcoming) co-op networking better than LibGDX ever could. And it sends a message to the indie dev community: you don’t have to be locked into a proprietary engine.

The game runs smooth. Load times are fast. The visual upgrade from StS1 is noticeable without being overdone. Godot earned its stripes here.

The Balance Patch Drama

I’d be leaving something out if I didn’t mention the recent patch controversy. Mega Crit pushed a balance update that nerfed infinite combos, reworked some key cards (including Silent’s Prepared skill), and buffed the final boss Doormaker in ways that frustrated a lot of the community.

The loudest complaints came from players who had optimized around infinite loops and specific card synergies. When those got nerfed, the review bombs followed.

Here’s my honest take: I don’t care.

Not in a dismissive way. I get why competitive players and streamers are frustrated. If your identity in the game is breaking it with perfectly optimized combos, and a patch takes that away, that stings.

But I’m not that player. I’m a dad who gets maybe an hour of gaming after bedtime. I’m not chasing Ascension 20 heart kills. I’m playing a run, making decisions, seeing what happens. Sometimes I win. Sometimes Doormaker eats my best card and I lose. Both are fine.

The core of what makes Slay the Spire great hasn’t changed: interesting decisions every single turn. The balance will keep shifting through early access. That’s the point of early access.

The Genuine Geek Take

Slay the Spire 2 is the rare sequel that understands what made the original special and builds on it without overcomplicating things.

It’s still the perfect “one more run” game. It still respects your time. A run is 45 minutes to an hour. You can pause anytime. There’s no daily login reward trying to manipulate you. No battle pass. No microtransactions. Just a good game that costs money once and then leaves you alone to enjoy it.

For a busy parent who games in stolen moments after the house goes quiet, that’s everything.

The Necrobinder is a blast. The Enchantment system adds real depth. The Godot migration was the right call technically and ethically. And The Silent is still my girl.

If you played StS1, you already know if you want this. You do. Go get it.

If you never played the original, start there. It’s cheap, it’s brilliant, and when you inevitably put 200 hours into it, StS2 will be waiting.

Slay the Spire 2 is available in Early Access on Steam.