Slay the Spire 2 developers at Mega Crit doubled down on their stance against aggressive monetization in their games. “We’re microtransaction haters,” Casey Yano, STS developer and co-founder of Mega Crit, told Destructoid, adding that, still, “a lot of our players threaten to buy all and any cosmetics we may ever release.”
Yano explained that Mega Crit’s focus for Slay the Spire 2 remains the same as in the original title. “We really want players to experience all of the same content as discussion of game content and balance is sort of our lifeblood.” When I asked him if the new game’s balance would be as good as in Slay the Spire, he playfully replied, “Is STS1 really that balanced though? Either way, we work towards balance all the time. Considerably more so than the first game as we’re more familiar with our tools (which have been improved too).”
You’ll be able to mod Slay the Spire 2, too
Mods are an important, albeit optional, part of the Slay the Spire experience on PC, with fan-made content like the Downfall mod with bosses as playable characters becoming an official expansion of the STS board game. Casey has confirmed player content will be even more prominent in the sequel.
“Both in STS 1 and STS 2, you can replace entire swathes of code, so you can kind of do anything,” he said. “A lot of our focus this time around is reducing friction, so players have more resources and easier entry points to work with mods.” It’s unclear if Slay the Spire 2 will get a mod tool, though.
Still, that doesn’t mean Mega Crit will relegate early access content updates to modders, despite this early version on Slay the Spire 2 “missing so much content,” as Yano said. “At the moment, I’m not entirely sure what we’ll update often throughout early access. Hopefully pure content. The good stuff.”
Yano adds that he can’t make any promises about how Slay the Spire 2 will be updated, as his team works on it reactively. “If we update too often or make too many aggressive balance changes, progress and accomplishments may feel less impactful,” he explained.
Slay the Spire nerds, rejoice
If you have countless hours of gameplay in the original Slay the Spire, maybe even over 1,000 hours as I do, Mega Crit’s adding features to STS 2 you’ll likely want to use, such as a win streak tracker.
“I think we track streaks in STS 2 on a per-character basis so you can be a bit more competitive—against your past even,” Yano said after I asked him about the potential for a competitive feature in Slay the Spire 2, aside from Daily Runs. “But these kinds of things can be spoofed pretty easily. We don’t have plans for an involved anti-cheat as it’s invasive. At some level, it’ll have to be merit-based, but we’re launching in early access, so maybe new methods and technologies may come about.”
Out of curiosity, I asked whether Yano thinks a computer or artificial intelligence will someday solve Slay the Spire and beat any winnable seed, as mods that add AI gameplay assistants in the original game are bad. “I don’t care if an AI solves Slay the Spire because the joy is in playing the game and experiencing the content,” Yano replied. “Chess is largely solved by really sophisticated algorithms, but making mistakes is fun; maybe just as fun as making great choices and seeing them play out.”
Finally, Yano also explained how Mega Crit sees alternate Slay the Spire modes in the sequel, like Daily Runs and Endless Mode, which are not as widely discussed online as the core mode. “Things like the Daily Runs, Custom, and Endless mode were more to satiate questions like ‘but what if a run kept going forever?’ and ‘how would randomized rules shake up STS?'” Yano explained.
Slay the Spire 2 releases in early access on March 5 at 12pm CT on Steam.
