Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Slay the Spire 2 is more Slay the Spire. And it rules. It’s absolutely the same core game, down to the point that the game suggests skipping the tutorial if they see you’ve already got 1,200 hours in StS. You pick a character / deck, you chart a path through 3 acts by picking hallway-fights / mini-bosses / mystery-rooms / shops, you build a deck of cards, you get artifacts as rewards that change how the game plays. You Slay the Spire… or you don’t, and try again.

Ok so none of that changed, it’s all there. Here’s a partial list of what has changed so far:

  • Complete Review / Balance Patch of returning Cards and Artifacts - Most iconic stuff from Ironclad, Silent, and Defect are returning largely unchanged, but everything has undergone a major revision, with some cards cut, some cards replaced, etc.

  • Two all-new playable characters - Regent and Necrobinder are the new characters and their play-styles are pretty wildly unlike the returning ones. Regent has a second energy source that doesn’t reset between turns and has a playstyle around generating and using these stars. Necrobinder has a summoned familiar, which simultaneously works like block that doesn’t expire, and can be used as a scaling source of attack power.

  • New Keywords & Enchantments - Cards do new stuff! There are some new keywords, like some Silent cards now have “Sly”, which makes a card play for free if you discard it. Cards can also now be enchanted a variety of ways, most notably there’s a very cool event that lets you tag “Clone” on a card, and then at rest areas you can just casually duplicate all clone cards. So if you need a deck full of 400 copies of Perfect Strike+, go hog wild.

  • All-New Act Themes, Enemies, & Bosses - It’s all new. It rules. The enemies are yucky and weird, the act settings are all new. There’s a whoooole lot of worms. Worms of all varieties.

  • New Unlock Progress System - Unlocking all your kit in StS was painfully slow, and based entirely on making a progress bar go up for each character by playing. That old system is still there, but now there’s also a whole mess of other goal-based ways to get unlocks, like “Play a game as Ironclad” or “Get to Act 3 as Silent” or whatever. Achieving these feats gives you some cool art, a little nugget of lore (?!?!), and a collection of Things like new cards, new artifacts, new potions, etc. It feels more directed, and ensures that most games you’ll unlock something even if you don’t win outright.

  • New art across-the-board - Much of it is still placeholder, but it’s StS-style MS Paint placeholder art that will eventually become beloved Beta Art. They also introduced some sweet new full-art cards for certain special upgraded cards.

  • Multiplayer (?!!) - I have not engaged with this yet… but somehow there’s multiplayer.

It’s really wonderful. It’s technically in Early Access, but it’s just like it was with StS. The game is completely playable right now. The main things that appear incomplete are 100% of the art (it’s mostly there), further balancing (they’re actively iterating on this right now), and whatever the “final” act will consist of. So like, StS before the keys and Act 4 were implemented.

Game rules, highly recommended, even right now during Early Access.