Slay The Spire 2 announced, entering early access in 2025

No one can see the future, but I've a fairly good sense of where at least 300 hours of my life will go next year. Slay The Spire II was announced during today's Triple-i Initiative stream, returning to the towering fantasy city where Steam says I've spent more than 300 hours building decks and battling monsters. While the announcement doesn't reveal much about the sequel, Slay The Spire is still my favourite roguelikelike deck-builder, so that's just grand.

2019's Slay The Spire is a roguelikelike deck-builder where you play a warrior cursed to repeatedly ascend the floors of a vast vertical city in an attempt to destroy its beating heart, encountering (and usually fighting) all sorts of weirdos and monsters along the way but inevitably reawakening back at the bottom. So off you go, picking your character/class, getting into battles built on hugely satisfying maths, gaining and upgrading cards, making decisions in events, scoring powerful relics, and trying not to die. Our Slay The Spire review called it "a miracle of design" and even today we'll tell you it's one of the best PC games to play right now. It's been hugely influential on many of the roguelikelike games that have followed, clearly either following its example (you see that Spire map everywhere, for starters) or reacting against it.

As for the sequel, with only a cinematic trailer to go on right now, there's not much to say. Presumably it mostly works the same way. It seems we're getting a new playable character, some sort of flamboyant skeleton with a scythe. I am a little sorry to not see my favourite murderbot, the Defect, though I do notice the Merchant is selling the Defect's Claw card so maybe that's a wee tease. Or maybe just a tiny treat for fans. The original game did add two extra characters across its own early access period, the Defect and the Watcher, so these three might not be all.

I will say the trailer's grim tone does not remotely match my sense of the first game. I like that Slay The Spire is playful, weird, subversive, and a little silly. But this is only a cinematic trailer and might not reflect the actual game. A little hypeful and unhelpful Triple-a marketing excess here with your Triple-i.

Update: Oh hooray, its Steam page is up now and yes that looks far more like the Spire I know and love. Apparently the new character is the Necrobinder, a "wandering lich" who "calls upon her trusty left hand, Osty in combat". Splendid. The devs add that they've switched to a new engine and they're "bringing in modern features, incorporating all-new visuals, and expanding moddability."