- 8 minutes ago
PC Gamer tested their mettle in the great climbing of the Spire to bring you a behind the scenes look at the sequel to the ultimate roguelike deckbuilder.
Craft a unique deck, encounter bizarre creatures, and discover relics of immense power in Slay the Spire 2!
Craft a unique deck, encounter bizarre creatures, and discover relics of immense power in Slay the Spire 2!
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00:28On a
00:29It's incredibly humbling and awesome that we're number one. I remember a distinct moment when I was walking down the
00:36street with my wife when we first started working on Slay the Spire and I was saying how great it
00:40would be if we sold enough copies that quitting my software job wasn't just the worst financial decision in the
00:45world and now here we are and it's it's just like mind-blowing.
00:50Why did we start working on Slay the Spire 2? I guess it felt a bit like unfinished business in
00:55a way. Some of the ports were still not out at the time. There were some limitations with the engine.
01:00We didn't think the game was going to be so big to put it frank. So we figured maybe a
01:04sequel is a good place.
01:06I've definitely thought about what makes Slay the Spire so compelling to people and how I can make it better
01:12in Slay the Spire 2. The thing that makes games in a particular card game so engaging is that they're
01:18a series of discrete meaningful choices.
01:21Usually they're pretty comprehensible like you're not overwhelmed with just this infinite array of things and you can say okay
01:27if I do this it's going to have this impact and if I do this it's going to have this
01:31impact and distilling down on that strong distinct choice that the player can look back on and be like oh
01:37I messed up here. That's like the key of deck builders and why they work so well.
01:41Every choice you make is like hard. That's kind of like the essence I think of deck builders is having
01:46every single choice be quite difficult. You choose a card generally about three cards per turn and so each of
01:52those choices if they're not difficult you're going to just feel like you're just pushing buttons.
01:55I think there's a sentiment that if you do things that require you to use your brain you get tired
02:02but I feel like it's the other way around. If you do things that stimulate you more often I feel
02:06like the muscle in which you can use to like think about hard decisions gets better and better and then
02:11you kind of crave it over time. Kind of like getting addicted to like exercise. If you have stimulating choices
02:17I think it actually gives you more energy.
02:19Complexity is really important to Slay the Spire. I think part of the secret sauce of why it works is
02:25that we're able to manage complexity such that there's different layers of complexity in Spire but they don't overwhelm the
02:32player and as you get better you can interface with different levels of it.
02:36So as you start at Slay the Spire you're often just focusing on the card choosing which card to add
02:40to your deck playing the combat and then as you get better you're looking at kind of more of a
02:44high level or like okay how am I going to path up this map to better manage my risk reward
02:49handle things like that.
02:50With Slay the Spire 2 we want to add more complexity for returning players but also we don't want to
02:56overwhelm so that new players can't enjoy the game at all and kind of managing this has been interesting and
03:02I think we've got it just right.
03:04If you're new to deck builders we tend to put a lot of tutorials in that detect when you're confused
03:08so we really try to gently guide people into playing the game but you know it's okay.
03:13I think if the game launches pretty popular you should be able to have some friends that help you too.
03:20Designing cards has always been kind of my wheelhouse. I grew up playing Magic so I've always been like super
03:24involved in card games.
03:25We have way more cards than Slay the Spire 2 and that introduces a whole new bunch of challenges because
03:31every card you add to the game adds more room for interactions with other cards, more ways for the player
03:37to break things and just in general like it blows up the play space.
03:41One of the big differences between Slay the Spire 1 and 2 is that we have grown our team up
03:46and actually scale up so we can make kind of just a bigger game overall.
03:50The art is way more polished, there's more animations, more visual effects, there's more characters, more events, more relics, more
03:56cards.
03:57Returning characters have totally different card pools with new cards as well.
04:01In addition, we've tried to expand out some of the play space for what you can do with cards and
04:06other things in this game, so you can apply enchantments to your cards to modify them and make them more
04:11powerful.
04:12Enemies can also mess with your cards in ways they couldn't before.
04:15You also have new quest events where you can engage with the event system in a different way than you
04:21could in Slay the Spire 1.
04:22So lots of little things that I think add up to a much bigger whole.
04:26In addition to writing significantly more lore, with Slay the Spire 2 we have a whole new mechanic based around
04:32the lore and I don't want to say how it works or anything, but we call it the timeline and
04:38it's going to give the players just way more information about the game world, the actors in it, and just
04:44everything about it.
04:45Just everything is kind of bigger than it was in Slay the Spire 1.
04:50I think in a given week, Anthony will give us maybe like 20 to 30 different changes, again, ranging from
04:57tweaking numbers or even just cutting cards altogether, adding new ones.
05:02I think over the course of the game, let's say every character has 60 cards, I think they've gone through
05:06at least 100, 200 versions, like actually design cards that have been cut or remade over the course of the
05:13last, say, three, four years.
05:15The analogy that I always use for game design and in particular card game design is that it's kind of
05:20like you're a butcher, you generate like thousands, tens of thousands of different ideas and then you look at them
05:26all and then you go, these are bad and you just cut them all away and there's this constant culling
05:31process and then the ones you do keep, then you're usually changing all of those and refining them.
05:35Very rarely is there just this golden idea you keep from start to finish, those are incredibly rare and most
05:41of it is like this incredibly destructive process and that's what I think makes game development so interesting and different
05:47than other creative mediums.
05:51The Necrobinder is the newest character we've revealed information on for Slay of the Spire 2 and she's got several
05:57different archetypes she can go into, one is built around summoning, she has a minion she can summon called Osti
06:03and she can have him attack and build up defenses on him so that he can take hits for her.
06:07So Necrobinder is supposed to be a more complex character compared to the Ironclad in Silent. She has a pet,
06:14she has a pet hand named Osti, it's a big hand. Osti gets bigger and bigger the more HP it
06:20has, which is very funny so I highly recommend making Osti huge.
06:24Another is she can doom enemies, which has kind of a risk reward nature to it because the enemies will
06:29still get to attack you on the turn that they're going to die.
06:32She has a souls based mechanic where she's drawing tons and tons of cards, it's kind of hard and slow
06:37to get going.
06:37And she's got also lots of other little archetypes that she can kind of blend into the other ones and
06:42I think she's our most complicated character to play so far and I think Slay of Spire 1 players will
06:47really enjoy her.
06:52When we're describing sort of the aesthetic of Slay of Spire and Slay of Spire 2, it really is, I
06:58don't know a better way to describe it except grim dark with whimsy in it.
07:02Like you will kind of meet these really horrifying monsters or like, you know, eldritch horrors in a way and
07:10then you'll also do an event where there's like a goblin there wearing a suit that wants to spin a
07:14wheel with you.
07:15So I think it's a very unique balance of aesthetics in there that you're trying to, you know, make a
07:20serious fantasy world, but have some fun with it and have some weirdness injected into it.
07:26I'm not sure why, but I feel like our artists really enjoy making cute things or gross things.
07:33So there's a lot of oozy things and a lot of, a lot of cute enemies and that's okay. You
07:39know, I don't think Slay of Spire has to be Gothic blood flying everywhere, ripping hearts out.
07:44We are working on a sequel to a game that kind of has an established visual style that people I
07:49think really attached to. I think players attached to it because this is a game that some people, you know,
07:54play for hundreds of hours and they remember it so fondly.
07:58And we want to be able to provide them like a recognizable space, but also upgrade it in a way
08:04that it does look new. It does look fresh. It does look like a sequel.
08:08You don't want to be playing through a game over and over and over again and seeing kind of the
08:14same or very similar designs like back to back to back to back. Like you want, like there has to
08:20be a breadth of content there.
08:21I think I really enjoy that concept of variety a lot. It's not even just replayability, but it's being able
08:28to come back to the game and say, I don't know what's going to happen this time.
08:33Like I'm going to play the silent. Am I going to do a shiv deck? Am I going to do
08:37a poison deck? Like what enemies am I going to see? And on the map, how is that going to
08:42change? Like what kind of stuff I aim to go for?
08:45And I think what's really fun about those as a player is the way that that system works can really
08:51encourage you to play a game in a way you maybe wouldn't think to otherwise.
08:56Like you're almost like funneled into different ways of playing. And there's not necessarily like a way that you're just
09:02going to go for the meta every single time you play because you're going to be given different circumstances to
09:07adapt to.
09:11I definitely had some hesitation with working on a sequel because oftentimes they don't hit as hard or you're kind
09:17of like, why was a sequel made?
09:18To me, actually, that made it kind of interesting because trying to figure out new twists that you can do
09:23while still keeping kind of the same core formula or keeping the fans happy was actually an interesting question that
09:28I was kind of interested to dive into.
09:29One of the things I've really enjoyed with Slay of Spire 2 and has already come through is I found
09:34plenty of new ways to make players really suffer when they play.
09:37We've made a couple events in particular that have really divided playtesters and some of them love it because of
09:44how awful it is to players.
09:45Definitely watch out for the bridge. I'm looking forward to seeing the screenshots and the complaints of all the players
09:50whose runs were just ruined by it.
09:52I'm happy we're launching into Early Access. For Slay of Spire 1, Early Access was a huge boon. We constantly
09:58pushed out updates. Our players loved it.
10:01That kind of direct feedback allows us to improve the game at an incredible speed.
10:05I think we have a pretty good conversation with our players. I think we pay very close attention to what
10:11people find interesting or delightful.
10:13Or even if they don't like something, we try to figure out how we can flip that around and make
10:18them happy.
10:19And I think continuing to do that, this kind of back and forth conversation of just working on the game
10:24and then getting feedback is very compelling for us.
10:27And so I think Early Access is maybe the only type of development where you can do that. I guess
10:32you can call it live service and do something similar.
10:35But games that are not finished have a quality where more things can change than a game that is finished
10:41and is live service.
10:42And maybe that's kind of the allure of calling it Early Access versus like a game that is done and
10:48we're pushing updates.
10:49It's good for us to try to figure out how players feel the first time they play the game.
10:54And also we want to know what their relationship with the game is after they play like a hundred hours
10:58or sometimes even like a thousand hours.
11:01And the reason I think people feel compelled to play a lot of hours might be because we're trickling in
11:05content all the time.
11:06There are a lot of bosses already, there are a lot of enemies, there are a lot of events, probably
11:11more than the first game just on Early Access launch.
11:14And I think we also kind of set a quality bar internally.
11:18And you know, we try to relax those expectations internally all the time and we fail.
11:23And so the quality bar just goes higher and higher and we just want the content to be better and
11:28better and the game becomes more and more interesting.
11:35I feel like Slay the Spire is the chicken noodle soup of video games.
11:39Like it's not exciting, but I hope people like our soup.
11:45Slay the Spire 2 launches March 2026, wishlisted now on Steam.
11:48Alright guys, let's be 22 hours back then.
11:53Alright, let's go back at the game.