Slay the Spire 2 feels a lot like the original hit roguelike deckbuilder, but among the new cards and classes, it did make an enormous change: multiplayer. And studio Mega Crit, as co-founder Casey Yano tells PC Gamer, is already feeling out some other new game modes that could be equally impactful.
Right now, we have standard (and Ascension), daily, and custom runs, obviously with multiplayer slotted in. Yano teases "three specific things that I have in mind" for new modes, which he generally keeps close to his chest to avoid spoilers and, seemingly, to avoid setting hopes too high for modes that may not materialize at all, in these exact forms, or anytime soon.
"The first one is a mode that kind of is meant for people who want to play in a very competitive fashion," he begins. I'd speculate that this could be a higher-difficulty mode, or some sort of ranked or scored mode where your actions are judged and weighted, or something else entirely.
"The second one is for people who want to have the Slay the Spire experience, but [don't] have the time to do so," Yano continues. This, to me, sounds like some sort of speed format – a way to draft and progress faster than a normal run, cutting down on the number of decisions and pushing you through more structured challenges. Several custom modifiers and daily challenges already veer close to this, so I could see Mega Crit expanding it. Even as someone who's happy to sit down and slay the spire for hours, I'd be keen to try this out.
"And the third one is, what if there were other ways to interact with people socially or in a multiplayer kind of setting with the current systems that exist today?" Yan concludes. "Those, to me, are the three different types of ways to interact with Slay the Spire that don't exist right now. So maybe we'll find a way to do that, or maybe having those modes dilutes the core experience and might not make it at all."
Overdoing it with new modes is something Yano is cautious of: "We don't want to just make a bunch of things and be like, 'Here's 25 game modes.' And if we know that only two of them are fun, I just despise the idea of having 23 worthless buttons on the screen. That's a very big no-no for me." I don't think I'd ever complain as long as I can always sit down on my own and grind Ascension clears for every class, but I can imagine the clutter Yano describes becoming intrusive.
