New Slay the Spire 2 patch gives players a pat on the back with Badges, "little reminders to let you know what was unique about each run"

Once you've gone through about a million (and counting) Slay the Spire 2 runs, successive bouts in the hit roguelike can get a little fuzzy. Developer Mega Crit is now trying to make each run stand out a tad more with a new Slay the Spire 2 patch that gives players a kind of pat on the back after each playthrough.

"This patch brings in some structural work for a system called Badges," the developer says in its latest patch notes. "Badges may appear at the end of a run, noting various things that happened during a run like defeating a boss without losing HP, beating the game quickly, specific easter eggs, or pointing out that you forgot to spend your gold. They're meant as little reminders to let you know what was unique about each adventure."

For now, patch v0.102.0 is only available on the game's Steam Beta Branch and Badges will only show up to cap off a run. But Mega Crit says the new sort-of-achievement system will at some point be integrated into "your run history and stats screen" as part of the developer's ongoing effort to "make runs feel distinct and improve scoring."

As you might expect, the Slay the Spire 2 patch also brings with it many a bug fix, balance tweak, and UI rework. I'm particularly fond of the change that adds "distinct speech bubble colors" for all monsters - just a good sprinkling of personality.

Notably, Mega Crit has also reworked The Blade of Ink as "an experiment with generating Enchanted cards mid combat." It's a sizeable change, so it wants folks to give feedback on "if Enchantments are best left to things like Events and Relics" or not."

The last time Mega Crit toyed with the hit game's balance, Slay the Spire 2 was practically bombarded with negative user reviews aimed at changes that made infinite loops much harder to grab a hold of. Studio co-founder Casey Yano was pretty level-headed about the negative feedback, however, especially coming from fans in China who might have a more "restricted communication channel compared to other players." Here's hoping this patch goes over better.

Slay the Spire 2 dev teases 3 new modes: something "very competitive," one for players who don't "have the time" for "the Slay the Spire experience," and a new multiplayer setting