Slay the Spire 2 is full of funky critters and threatening beasts, but some of the roguelike game's most memorable bosses take inspiration from places you'd least expect - Valve's Deadlock and Studio Ghibli's Princess Mononoke, to name a few.

In a recent newsletter mostly addressing changes made in Slay the Spire 2's last major update, Mega Crit co-founder and developer Casey Yano took the opportunity to also answer a few of the community's burning questions, like, how do you pronounce Nonupeipe? (No nu pay peh). And is the Doormaker referencing the Worm web series? (No no).

The Doormaker boss was so hated in Slay the Spire 2, the developers outright threw it in the bin and replaced it with the Aeonglass boss instead, but the origin of its name is pretty interesting no matter how reviled it was over on the game's Steam reviews.

"Doormaker isn't a Worm reference, I was playing too much Deadlock," Yano writes. Spending time in Valve's still-in-testing hero shooter Deadlock - probably with the portal-ing hero, The Doorman - likely led to the roguelike's Doormaker or, at least, its name.

When also asked if the Ceremonial Beast was a reference to survival game Valheim, Yano reveals the "original was based on the Forest Spirit from Princess Mononoke." Big, magical, horned deer thing? Checks out. "The initial concept drawing was a bit solemn and grotesque. Marlowe updated the creature to be more regal and spirity! But I can see a resemblance, I'm a big fan of Valheim actually! I believe it was the first boss design for Slay the Spire 2 (designed in 2021)."

Elsewhere in this month's newsletter, Mega Crit delved into the game's new Steam Workshop compatibility. While Slay the Spire 2's had mod support from its early access launch date, the dev "purposefully haven't been advertising mod support" because it knew the feature "still needed some work." Steam Workshop has now been enabled because the team have "deemed mod support mature enough" as of the game's last patch.

Slay the Spire 2 patches are half as frequent as the first game's because doing weekly updates "was a lot of work so it really sucked"

Slay the Spire 2 maker Mega Crit has come to its senses and acknowledged that, yes, its RNG didn't work as intended - and we can all thank the one rabid player who spent eight hours and 6,600 words to make it happen. Bless you, trooper.

Mega Crit's Early Access roguelike sequel has been a huge success and a big driver of passionate fan debate in recent weeks, partly inspired by the game's various beta branch patches, which have now hit the main game proper.

The Slay the Spire 2 studio today dropped off the game's second major update to all players in the main branch of Steam, calling it "4 patches in 1." Alongside changes beta branch players are already familiar with, this new update also has "big changes that will be totally new for everyone."

One of the biggest improvements is a total RNG rework. As we reported recently, Slay the Spire 2 fanatic Tckmn convincingly proved the game's randomness is rigged over the course of an eight-hour stream and a 6,600-word essay. Their argument was that "knowing the first output of one of the game's RNGs gives information that helps predict the first output of all of the others."

"It turns out that everyone complaining about receiving Debt too often from Neow's Bones was right! We did, in fact, have some unusual RNG problems," Mega Crit admits in its latest patch notes. "Huge shoutout to Tckmn for doing the research - their eight-hour descent into madness was an entertaining watch, and we wouldn't have caught the issue without it."

Mega Crit then gets into the nitty-gritty details of how its run seeds worked and how it accidentally "allowed players to predict outcomes given knowledge of unrelated parts of the game." An RNG rework was necessary, the studio says, because the player base would likely prioritize unfun pattern memorization as soon as they got a whiff of the exploit. "Rest assured that your suffering is now truly random," it threatens and/or assures.

Steam Workshop support is the other brand-new-to-everyone feature included in the update, which streamlines the process of downloading and managing mods. Meanwhile, the Bestiary and fresh Aeonglass boss are escaping beta branch prison.

Slay the Spire 2 has almost 80,000 negative Steam reviews – nearly 14 times more than the first game received in 9 years

A dedicated Slay the Spire 2 fan popped the hood on the game to inspect its inner workings, and soon emerged from its underbelly, face and fingers smeared with grease, with a head-turning report: the RNG is rigged. Kind of.

As PCGamesN spotted, Slay the Spire 2 mathematician Tckmn streamed and explained – in some 6,600 words – how he accidentally discovered correlated RNG in developer Mega Crit's hit roguelike deckbuilder.

The core claim is simple: certain events in Slay the Spire 2 influence and tell you about the outcomes of other events, many of which have a deceptively small pool of outcomes with unequal weighting. Or in Tckmn's words: "Knowing the first output of one of the game's RNGs gives information that helps predict the first output of all of the others."

Pertinently, this is described as a much bigger problem in Slay the Spire 2 compared to the original because the sequel apparently has a much narrower range of checks for outcomes.

This is similar in concept to the game's seed system. Each seed delivers a predetermined series of encounters, but you're still able to make branching decisions within that seed – the path you take, the cards you play in what order, the items you buy, and so on. Tckmn convincingly argues that there's almost a sub-seed of sorts that quietly creates runs where, as a very crude example, Outcome A in Event 1 indicates Outcome A is also highly likely in Event 2, even if Outcome B appears equally likely.

The relics you choose from at the start of a run help explain this. Tckmn reckons that the Neow relic Neow's Bones, which gives you a random curse card, has a 54% chance of giving the Debt curse in the Underdocks map, but a flat 0% chance of the same curse in Overgrowth, the other Act 1 map. Instead, Neow's Bones in Overgrowth massively favors the Writhe curse at 73%.

The same logic applies to the Neow capsules that give you other random relics. In Underdocks, Tckmn found that the large capsule had a 23.75% chance of giving you Precarious Shears; in Overgrowth, that drops to 1.35%.

This is a pretty clear-cut example of how this knowledge could warp your decisions and strategies. If you're choosing an RNG event hoping for a specific outcome, that desired outcome may actually be incredibly rare behind the scenes, which makes that RNG event less appealing.

"All of these give some information about all the others," Tckmn says of a remarkably long list of RNG events, including the Act 1 map, the last card you draw in your first combat, the first card you generate in combat, and whether your first fight rewards you with a potion. This can even impact which enemies the Defect's default lightning orb will 'randomly' hit, it seems (75% chance to aim left in the first fight of Underdocks, if you're wondering).

Tckmn says he only discovered this after building a tool that could search for seeds containing specific combinations of cards and events. Adding Overgrowth as a condition totally warped the otherwise normal search results, and that sent him down this rabbit hole.

With this in mind, Tckmn makes a "plea to the developers" at Mega Crit. "Of course, I do think that [correlated RNG] in Spire 2 is a bug and ought to be fixed, and I think it would be pretty bad for the game if it wasn't," he says. "However, I am confident that Mega Crit will address this issue. For one thing, Spire 2 is still in Early Access, much earlier in its development cycle than when CRNG was discovered in Spire 1."

Assuming that every assumption here is true, this isn't game-breaking or anything – obviously, Slay the Spire 2 is and has been fun – but could skew RNG in an unintuitive way. Tckmn suggests the fix is simple, and even mocked up some simple "drop-in" code that could apparently address it by decoupling that correlation. I would love to read Mega Crit's response to all this, in part to confirm how much of it is intended.

Slay the Spire 2 patch adds a crowd-pleasing buff as fans say one card just became "busted," while Mega Crit rolls out bug fixes galore.

After Epic Games spoke heavily about generative AI ahead of yesterday's State of Unreal presentation, Vampire Survivors dev Poncle says it's "reviewing" the Fortnite crossover that was announced during the event.

Earlier this week, Epic Games released a video titled "A Look At Epic’s Art Concepting Process," where it openly admitted that it is using generative AI during the development of Fortnite skins and assets. The video itself features the artists designing concepts for Fortnite before using a Photoshop tool to generate details and speed up the process. Unsurprisingly the video also features a lot of moments where the AI hallucinates and the artist needs to go back and fix the error, which – in the wake of Epic laying off over 1,000 employees earlier this year, and the general cost of everything due to global ram shortages from it being wasted on AI slop farms – feels especially tone-deaf.

A day later, during the State of Unreal presentation, new crossovers coming to Fortnite were announced, specifically Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, Control Resonant, Phantom Blade Zero, and Vampire Survivors. However, mere hours later, the Poncle account took to a Reddit post about the collaboration to say the following: "Following today's news about gen AI usage by Epic to create all sorts of game assets, including Fortnite characters, we're currently 'reviewing' our collaboration with Fortnite. We'll let you know if anything moves forward."

From the wording, I don't know that the collab is canceled entirely. Rather, it seems Poncle is looking into whether AI was used to create Vampire Survivors content in the game. Earlier this year, the developers of Phantom Blade Zero spoke out against AI usage, too, and while there hasn't been a similar comment from S-Game, I can see Epic's open use of generative AI tools being a hurdle for some collaborations in the future.

Why so many game developers don't want to use generative AI

Yet another Hades 2 hotfix has dropped out of nowhere this month – on PC, with a console release soon-to-come – but this one simply squashes bugs that accidentally made a few boons more useful than the Balance Gods at Supergiant Games intended.

The two boons that fell victim to Hades 2's latest hotfix are Hermes' Tall Order and Medea's Suffering on Sight (which is more a curse than a boon, but I digress). Tall Order was seemingly giving some players a big damage buff even before they gathered eight of the same element during a run, a surprisingly useful bug that's now been taken away.

Supergiant Games also fixed Medea's curse to stop it from dealing damage to enemies who were already lingering in new locations. Instead, it now works as intended: incoming foes will take between 1 to 999 damage while existing foes remain at full health.

Elsewhere in the hotfix, you'll no longer randomly find Artemis singing beside the Crossroads Cauldron. She's forever destined to sit next to the river to chirp her tunes, poor Artemis. And Dire Auto-Seekers are no longer "immune to being stunned if their armor was depleted in their defensive mode," the developer writes in its patch notes.

Hades 2's last hotfix was surprisingly big and even added features we've been waiting for since the roguelike hit Steam Early Access, but it also introduced at least one unintended issue "causing command inputs to sometimes not queue up as you cleared an encounter." That's seemingly been cleaned up, too, along with other unnamed "minor fixes."

Supergiant Games has now mostly moved on from its godly roguelike, it seems, as the studio was recently hiring for whatever comes next. Should Cronos allow the time to come, I'll definitely be tuning in to whatever the team dreams up next, whether it's in the form of a Hades 3 or another entirely original game.

230 runs later, Hades 2's ranking system has me feeling cheated out of a huge missed opportunity.

Even with chunky headphones on, the desperate clack-clack-clack as I jab at an Xbox d-pad playing through the Chivalware demo is a constant drumbeat. This room in Paris is filled with high-end gaming PCs, and even with windows open, it's a desperate heat. As the last demo in a day filled with them, fellow players slowly abandon their posts and trickle out. Yet, I don't notice I'm the final one left in the room until I die at the end of a particularly lengthy roguelike run, glued to the intense action and so many biomes deep I'd been half-expecting a PR to cut me off anyway. Chivalware has the juice.

Clearly inspired by Mega Man Battle Network, any player of Capcom's real-time RPG series will be familiar with the constant maneuvering responsible for my d-pad twiddling in Chivalware. This roguelike takes the concept of summoning weapons on a grid that also contains enemies up a notch, having the tiles double as a color-matching grid. Chain together matches and you'll charge up your battery to spend on attacks, the most recent of your three colors dictating the weapon type you have in hand. Flub a match, and your energy is depleted, leaving you vulnerable to enemy attacks.

Caught in the net

Make no mistake, you will need to dodge for your tiny, armored little life – enemy attacks come thick and fast, though are telegraphed just clearly enough to leave you cursing yourself for making silly mistakes. The benefit of the tiled arena is that each square is clearly defined, meaning each enemy type's unique set of attack patterns are pinged red, leaving you to weave through and around them like you're doing an MMORPG raid boss.

Early on, dodging these attacks is simple enough. A slow moving projectile may track across a single line, or another may sword-slash a couple of squares in front of it at once. These grow more complex, with bigger foes sometimes having sequenced waves of attacks you need to actually time your way through, and bosses that have screen-filling attacks that get tighter with each phase.

Put them all together, and even those easier enemies can turn up the heat alongside larger ones, making me weigh up which to attack and clear off the board in real-time as I weave to stay alive. A mecha scorpion's laser turret targets the whole of my side of the battlefield in a zig-zag barrage, as I try to avoid the imminent explosion from a burrowing Dune-like room. Add in shields that make some enemies immune to certain color attacks, and it's like playing Tetris while doing Five Finger Fillet. Even Aliens' Bishop would struggle with that.

Like the best roguelike games, it's not just the enemies that get stronger. Your Disk Knight can equip new floppy disks that alter their properties. New weapons – swords, guns, hammers, and more – are the most obvious, all of which come with vastly different attacks and battery usage requirements that also have me quickly calculating which I should be aiming to summon to deal with the situation in front of me. These range from attacks from combos that reward using a large chunk of battery to get off more powerful final strikes, to ones that you can charge up to dish out more damage if you get enough breathing room. One grenade launcher gets me out of a lot of scrapes, but if I'm startled before I can charge it up enough the blast radius also includes my poor Disk Knight.

Chivalware also features numerous per-run buffs and passive abilities that, in typical roguelike fashion, feel like they court the edge of being game-breaking as you imagine potential builds. Some might reward you for sticking with the same weapon type for a while, or for swapping it in and out as much as possible, with lots of room to debuff enemies. One quirky power I don't have enough time to master even transforms me into a hulking werewolf at the cost of a bespoke rage meter, able to dish out huge damage with my claws but only directly in front of me, and only for a brief moment. This roguelike has the right mix of moreishness. The Chivalware Steam demo is already calling for me to hop back in to try it again – though I'm worried about spending too much time matching blocks and mashing enemies before its full release Q4 2024.

Chivalware's retro flavor has me itching to get back to the best GBA games. Plus, in the similarly old-school Mina the Hollower review we say that "classic Zelda vibes channel Bloodborne to create one of my new retro-style favorites"

Thunder Lotus, the indie team behind emotionally-charged management sim Spiritfarer, is gearing up to release its roguelike, 33 Immortals – a game we finally have a release date for thanks to a new Summer Game Fest reveal.

During tonight's Day of the Devs showcase, we were graced with many a good sneak peek and teaser – 33 Immortals included. In case you've not heard of it, it's a unique new game from Spiritfarer dev Thunder Lotus… although it honestly looks nothing like its tear-jerking predecessor. It feels like some unholy (in the best way) blend of Hades, World of Warcraft, and Diablo 4, with all the action a title could possibly pack in.

If you're out of the loop, Thunder Lotus describes the game it's been working on "for the past seven years" as a title in which you "jump straight into the action through instant matchmaking." There's "no waiting around" here, which means it's constant combat and chaos – just how I like it.

"You tear through hordes of enemies sent by God to punish you and rebel against the wrath of God together." And, if you prefer to go it solo, you can choose how you want to experience 33 Immortals.

Alone or with up to three friends – because, as the devs put it, "In 33 Immortals, everything is about cooperation." You'll probably die a lot, but that's all right, it's how you get stronger. I'd wager the roguelike loop will keep us all coming back for more, as the genre tends to do.

The overarching theme is nice, too. Much like Hades is inspired by Greek mythology, 33 Immortals draws from Dante Alighieri's literary masterpiece, the Divine Comedy. I'm a big fan of the aesthetic here as well – which isn't all that surprising, considering how visually beautiful (and moving) Spiritfarer was.

There's not long left to wait now for it, either: 33 Immortals is set to release this summer on June 10. That leaves just a few days until we can hop in and tackle Gods with other players.

If you're sold on the new Thunder Lotus title just as I am, you can check its demo out for free on Steam – just don't get too hooked.

Wondering what other new games we'll see during this year's big showcases? Browse through our Summer Game Fest 2026 predictions to find out what we think.

The latest Slay the Spire 2 patch is a bad one if you've been lying about how much you've been playing the roguelike. Besides that, there's a blend of nerfs, buffs and fixes to prepare some internal changes within the game.

To start, Vakuu's been changed a little, per the patch notes. Before, when the Ancient would quote how many times you've visited them, it'd be a random number. Now, it's accurate, leaving no question about the amount of times you've randomly landed on him through the deckbuilding gauntlet. For many of us, this won't change anything, but if you've been boasting to your friends, or your viewers as a streamer, Vakuu will reveal all.

Otherwise, in the bugs department, local saves aren't erased by cloud ones if you've got Steam Cloud switched off, and music doesn't restart right when you kick off a run, amongst many other things.

In a small, but quite good alteration, progress involving mods that either don't work properly or have been removed isn't erased. That's one I can easily imagine being infuriating if it was left long enough.

As far as balancing goes, Monarch's Gaze now costs one less energy to use, Juggernaut's been buffed by one point, and Skulking Colony's been buffed as well, making this the latest in a growing line of changes to that card. Players are immediately enamored by how useful Monarch's Gaze has become.

"The Monarch's Gaze buff legit made me so happy," says a commenter on Reddit. "I love that card and now I can take it without cratering my run."

The previous cost proved somewhat prohibitive to people's choices. "Now I might actually consider picking Monarch's Gaze! One energy upgraded for a really powerful defensive effect, especially on multihit regent, is actually busted," another Redditor adds.

This patch has been rolled out, so you can check out how it all feels at your leisure.

Slay the Spire 2 review bomb didn't actually affect sales that much, Steam expert says, even though "in any other case you would say this game is dead."

After receiving its second bigger patch mid-April, Hades 2 returns to the limelight with a new hotfix that addresses a plethora of issues – and adds a couple of nice new features.

Just in case you missed it, Supergiant Games launched Patch 2 on April 14, adding bonus content and bettering players' quality of life in-game. It was quite a hefty update, all things considered – but the indie developer clearly isn't done polishing up its roguelike sequel just yet.

Yesterday, the studio dropped a smaller (albeit significant in its own right) hotfix that tackles a good few bugs, and as it writes itself, includes "various additional fixes."

Some of these have been a long time comin' – take the Mystery Seeds, for example. Now, Supergiant Games says it's "added an inventory hint for Mystery Seeds about where they can be found." No longer will we need to question whether we'll get the seeds we want or something else at a digging spot, like Nightshade.

There's also a new death animation for the Hellifish, which is a fun little addition, and plenty of tweaks.

From improved visuals to fixed interactions, the hotfix targets just about everything – it's a surprisingly all-encompassing patch, considering that it's not one of the "major" releases for the game post-launch.

Heck, it makes our chances against bosses a bit better, too, resolving disappearing barriers in one of the most difficult fights in the game, for instance.

Enemies won't randomly get boosts they weren't supposed to receive, either, and so on. In a game (roguelike, might I add) as challenging as Hades 2 can be, these adjustments aren't just for naught… they can mean the difference between clearing an area and having to redo so much.

I'd recommend giving the full patch notes from Supergiant Games a read if you're hoping to dive back in – as it seems commenters certainly are.

As one person puts it, "Every hotfix makes me come back and see what new things I can do." Here's hoping the next big patch gives us even more incentive to play again.

Read through our Hades 2 review to learn more about what might just be one of the past few years' most impressive new games yet.

Mewgenics leads Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel recall when the game went from being a Pokemon-esque title to a tactical RPG.

A long development is something that's becoming more common in the industry as ballooning budgets and tech become a factor. It's almost easy to forget that for series' like Gears of War the first three games all released within five years, kicking off in 2006 and ending in 2011, while the next entry in the series Gears of War: E-Day will probably end up releasing around seven years after Gears 5 released. But not many can step up to Mewgenics, which was first announced in 2012 and finally released earlier this year.

However, the original Mewgenics and the new game are a different beast. The original game was shown at PAX Seattle 2013 "I think we only had one functional minigame, the cat fights, which was this Pokemon-esque turn-based combat game" McMillen recalls, speaking to Edge. McMillen's Team Meat coworker Tommy Refenes had lost interest in the game in favor of working on Super Meat Boy Forever, with McMillen leaving the developer in 2017.

"I was still pitching it to Tommy before I left. I was trying to wrap it in a genre that I thought he would be excited about." McMillen explains, with him recalling a version closer to the devious platformer icon Spelunky. Mewgenics co-creator Glaiel adds "I remember suggesting back then: 'Why not try Final Fantasy Tactics-style combat instead of Pokemon combat?'"

He explained, "they’re on the same tree, kind of, but you can do a lot more with the positioning stuff." McMillen adds, "Yeah. One has depth, and the other has the illusion of depth." Of course, the thousands of EV and IV fanatics will likely take umbrage with the implication Pokemon doesn't have depth, I get his point. Pokemon is solely about the attacks when you get into battle, while Tactical RPGs have the extra layer of positioning and taking into account yours and your enemies ranges.

Thankfully, the Final Fantasy Tactics-inspired version is what the duo went with for the game, and ended up releasing one of the highest-rated games of 2026, which currently sits atop my game of the year list with the strength of a cat wrestling one of those mouse on a stick toys.

After Slay the Spire 2 negative review spike, Mewgenics lead says releasing balance patches is scary

The latest update for Slay the Spire 2 is here, and several enemies have received alterations. On top of that, there are some general quality-of-life changes, and smatterings of bugfixes and new animations - and a couple of tweaks not listed in Mega Crit's news post.

Aeonglass, the latest boss to be added to the roguelike deckbuilder, has had its abilities tweaked, as well as its Wither and Withering Presence adjusted. Ramming Speed's been taken away from Haunted Ship, leaving them to switch between Swipe and Stomp.

The order of attack for Punch Construct is now Ready into Fast Punch into Strong Punch, and it now leaves opponents with Frail as opposed to Weak. Skulking Colony's gotten a couple of buffs: their HP is up to 75(80), and Hardened Shell's more powerful too. On the flipside, it no longer gets Block and its Smash is gone. Infested Prism's gotten a full rework, but there's no mention of the extent of the changes.

In terms of broader changes, the biggie is that if you've put Vulnerable on an enemy, it doesn't decrease if you take an extra turn. The same is true for other ailments, like Frail, Intangible, and the like.

Four of Ironcad's cards have been buffed: Drum of Battle; Howl From Beyond; Entrench; and Unrelenting. Necrobinder's got one buff, to Death March, and one nerf, Debilitate, while the colorless card Fasten no offers slightly less Block.

Some changes aren't listed by Mega Crit, like those to Astral Pulse. It now does 6(8) damage to all enemies, and players are a little befuddled about this being left off the list. "Did they cut completely the card change section?" a fan asks on Reddit. "Regent Astral Pulse got reworked and Scare isn't explained ."

Despite this, Aeonglass is one of the bigger facets resonating within the community. "Aeonglass is much stronger, that's good But the damage output is wayy too high," one fan says in response on Twitter. "Aeonglass might be worse than doormaker," another adds.

As Slay the Spire 2 continues its run in early access, expect more changes, big and small, in the coming months. Even ones the devs don't directly tell you about.

Slay the Spire 2 review bomb didn't actually affect sales that much, Steam expert says, even though "in any other case you would say this game is dead"

Following Balatro's explosive debut, there have been almost too many deckbuilding roguelikes hoping to snatch a piece of the pie for themselves. Even Krafton (the corporate owner of Subnautica 2, PUBG, and Hi-Fi Rush) received a couple of hundred pitches from devs chasing Balatro's coattails.

Speaking to Rock Paper Shotgun at the Digital Dragons conference, Krafton executive Victor Lee says that the average "trend cycle in gaming is just getting shorter and shorter," and advised prospective devs against mindlessly following the Next Big Thing since it'll probably fall out of favor in a year or so.

"I've had maybe 250 roguelike deckbuilders [pitched] in the last 12 months," he adds. "I don't know how to choose. Would you? Like, they're all Balatros with different cards. I don't know how to choose one."

Balatro-likes aren't unique in that respect, however - just look at all the 'friendslop' co-op games that spawned off the back of Peak or the social horror games that stalked out the shadows after Lethal Company.

Lee reckons chasing a fresh Steam trend, no matter the genre, would be fine if devs could pump their games out in a month. "I might even fund it." But for most in-development games that won't be ready for another year or two, there's no guarantee any trend will still be piping hot by the time the project comes out.

"So if you're spending a very small amount of money, taking a very small amount of risk to get something out there very quickly, to see what happens - great," Lee says. "If you're betting your life on a very low risk, low barrier-to-entry genre, really think about how many people actually play that, right? Really think about how big that space is. And again, it was friendslop last year - this year, I don't know what it is right now."

He's not necessarily against working with the developers of a roguelike deckbuilder, either, but Lee's more concerned with whether devs are making a game to chase a trend or making a game out of passion since the latter will probably yield better results. "I would rather work with, you know, RPG players who have only played RPGs and they want to make their RPG and that's going to deliver in 2029," he explains, adding that even if RPGs aren't super hot by then, at least he can be confident the group of RPG fanatics will build something that speaks to other RPG fanatics.

Not sick of roguelikes just yet? Check out the best roguelikes to play right now.

Comfortably one of the biggest hits of the year so far, Slay the Spire 2 launched to a massive spike of over 573,000 concurrent players on Steam. Though the community's remained steady, reviews on Steam have nose-dived in a way that's surprised developer Mega Crit, but one analyst doesn't think such things ultimately moved the needle in terms of sales.

During a talk at Digital Dragons attended by GamesRadar+, Tom Kaczmarczyk, the founder and CEO of games analysis firm IndieBI, discussed the importance of player scores on Valve's store. "The social proof of having a game which is mostly positive instead of overwhelmingly positive, but has 1,000 reviews instead of 600, I think the 1,000 is gonna perform better," he begins.

"We've seen the extreme cases of review bombing for good reasons, like Slay the Spire 2, and the impact on actual sales," Kaczmarcyk argues. "Slay the Spire 2 had issues where the community in China, huge player base, they didn't like some of the updates on the changes, and they roasted [it]."

It's true much of the negativity came on the back of the game's updates and patches. Being a roguelike deckbuilder in early access, Slay the Spire 2 is a constant work-in-progress as the devs make alterations, rebalance cards and features, and then add more as time goes on. Some of these will go down better than others. Players in China, where leaving reactive reviews like this is a more popular (and, due to online restrictions, arguably necessary) approach, were just especially against some changes.

But Kaczmarcyk believes the game will simply endure, even though this sort of review dive may have been a death knell for other releases: "The review score dropped to the floor, to a point where in any other case you would say this game is dead, it's unplayable. Clearly, nobody likes it."

Even "sales in China did not fall that much," he concludes.

Since the first game had a healthy lifespan of several years, I'd err on the side of enjoying the game, early access foibles and Steam reviews aside. It's the successor to the king of deckbuilders, and it's commanding the throne so far. And for a game like this, the tide is always just one nerf, buff, or new class away from turning.

I beat Slay the Spire 2 Ascension 10 with all classes, and I have one question for Mega Crit after the new patch.

Steam has released a new update to the store, overhauling the tag system with new additions and some removals.

In a post to the Steam community page, Valve details the update, saying, "These changes are made with the goal of helping players identify the games that best fit their interests, and helping Steam generate appropriate recommendations."

This update adds 17 new tags to the storefront and removes 28 from rotation, with new additions finally getting genres like the Bullet Heaven, which Vampire Survivors popularised, and Desktop Companion, which refers to games that won't take up much of your screen. There are some specific ones, too, like Wolves, Poker, Samurai, and Capybaras, for descriptions of things that are in the game.

The removals took the biggest hit with 28 going away, with Valve explaining, "The set that we've removed today are done so because they no longer serve a good purpose for establishing connections between games or describing unique and useful elements of content in the game. Many of these tags have alternative options on Steam that better describe the content, and already have a high degree of overlap in application." These include the NSFW and Mature tags that are a bit too vague when specific tags like Gore, Sexual Content, and Violent exist.

Alongside these ones, Valve deems "subjective" like Well-Written and Masterpiece, and tags that refer to specific IP, like Lego, Dungeons & Dragons, and Warhammer 40K, which would be applied to games that aren't in those. Plus Valve has renamed and merged a few, tags, with Unforgiving going into difficult and Clicker being replaced with incremental.

While Vampire Survivors wasn't the first game in its genre, its massive success definitely inspired a lot more of that ilk to appear, including last year's standout Megabonk. And now the creators can celebrate that the genre has been canonized by Gaben himself (or, rather, the Valve employees who handle Steam tags).

Hope you saved room after Slay the Spire 2, because the Vampire Survivors deckbuilder is already Overwhelmingly Positive on Steam after 4,000 reviews

The end of last month saw the arrival of Saros, the grim sci-fi follow-up to Returnal from Housemarque. Another tough-as-nails roguelike, some sales data reveals it's not launched quite as strongly as its predecessor, but that's partly due to the current lay of the land.

On Twitter, Rhys Elliott, head of market analysis at Alinea Analytics, gives a bit of insight into the game's performance thus far. He estimates it's sold over 300,000 copies in two weeks, almost a third of which were pre-orders, generating over $22 million in revenue.

According to the firm's numbers, it's lagging behind Returnal, but although that may sound negative given there are now 11-times the amount of PlayStation 5s in the world, the console's library offers a great deal of variety now compared to 2021. "When Returnal hit in April 2021, less than six months after the PS5 launch, those early PS5 adopters (the ones who inherently buy a lot of new games at full price) were dying for something to play," he writes.

"Returnal was the first big first-party PlayStation release since launch, and it made amazing use of the unique DualSense haptics and spatial audio," Elliott explains. "Many core PS5 players flocked to it almost by default."

Now, some five years into the system's life, there's a laundry list of great blockbuster releases. Several arrived within the last 12 months, in fact. Saros "launched not too long after Crimson Desert, Resident Evil Requiem, Hades 2 on PS5, Pragmata, and a whole bunch of rad 2026 games," he points out.

Elliott notes that Saros "is a more niche" game compared to Ghost of Yotei or a new God of War. It's not an established IP or an open-world action-adventure. It's stylish but frequently grueling, and even having Rahul Kohli in the lead role doesn't make that an easier sell to many players.

These returns are still disappointing, Elliott says, and "it will struggle to break even" against the purported budget exceeding $76 million. If there's one saving grace, however, it's that Saros has already outsold Marathon on PS5. Gotta take your victories where you can, whether selling video games or battling aliens on Carcosa.

Saros trophy list includes an unexpected tribute to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

I famously find it hard to nitpick things I love, and Hades 2 is no exception. Try as I might to resist the rose-tinted veil that falls over Melinoe's journey every time I boot the game up on my Steam Deck, I'm still firmly under its thrall after many hundreds of hours spent at the Crossroads. I was aghast when my colleague and fellow Greek mythology fanatic gave the new game 4.5 stars in his Hades 2 review. How could something I love so much in all of its godly, witchy, titanic power be anything short of perfection?

Such was my (admittedly black and white) way of thinking until Hades 2's console launch update. Reading the patch notes, the shimmering shroud of pure blind devotion settling over my eyelids once more, I prepared myself for greatness. An update! I love those things! I'm going to love this one so much! And for the most part, I did. From Dream Dives to expanded relationships, Hades 2 is still one of my favorite games I've ever played. But it also has one glaring post-game letdown that feels, after all the wonderful ways the game builds on elements of Hades 1, like a very big oversight.

Grind is not life

I'm pretty deep in my post-game Hades 2 experience at this point. Mel's great task has been completed, order has been restored to the House of Hades, and all that's left to do is tie up a few loose ends and decorate the Crossroads to my immortal heart's content.

Between tending to the last remaining tasks on my Fated List of Minor Prophecies, an interesting discussion arises with Headmistress Hecate. She mentions something about the goddess Nyx – queen of the night, child of Chaos, and mother of a handful of my deific beaus (don't judge me, everyone is hot and I am weak-willed) – and how I might curry her favor by raising my notoriety as a shade-slayer. I fail to see how 230 runs isn't notorious enough for the great primordial goddess, but I intend to be an excellent daughter-in-law thrice over. So, I head over to the cauldron to perform the only new incantation available to me.

Now, I'm able to head to the Spirit Mixer in the taverna, upon whom I can bestow Kudos (one of my many, many in-game currencies, earned by selling unwanted reagents) and other ingredients in order to earn ranks. Each spending spree increases my notoriety, earning me a special little badge on every victory screen after completing a successful run up to the Surface or down to Tartarus. I also get a polite round of applause from the watering hole's denizens upon each rank-up; think of Melinoe as something of a Bard, regaling pint-slingers with grueling tales of battle while they toast her continued good health.

But here's the thing: after pumping pretty much all of my Kudos into my rank, rising straight to the top of the starter Wraith category in one fell swoop, nothing actually happens. I run out to do a quick Pitch Black Stone challenge, hoping that I'll get some new dialogue about my escapades to share with Hecate – or, dare I dream it, with Nyx herself – upon my return. Instead, I get the usual smattering of generic chats with my fellow Crossroad-dwellers.

Unseen victories

Maybe it was my fault for getting too swept up in things. The first Hades had postgame rankings, too, and they also had no actual gameplay function save for putting some of your hard-won resources to use once all other avenues were exhausted. It was nothing more than a prestige system – a totally private one, given that both Hades games are single-player ventures. But I really expected developer Supergiant to have expanded it for Hades 2, and doubly so due to the fact that Nyx herself was mentioned in tandem to it.

As one of my favorite Hades characters ever, her elusive presence in Hades 2 compared to her co-starring role in the first game means my ears prick up whenever she is mentioned. When Hecate suggested that Nyx herself might take note of my exploits through raising my rank, I thought it was a tacit hint from Supergiant that doing so might make her appear in the Crossroads. I've come across her in Chaos' domain after entering their portals out on a run, but if she's ever appeared at the Crossroads itself following the game's true ending, I've probably forgotten already (see: 230 runs total).

It made perfect sense to me for this to be a significant post-game story node, considering the game already expands upon so many of the original's systems. Hades 2's familiars enhance the resource collection mechanics, for example, while arcana upgrades refine the Mirror of Night's build creation, Fear upgrades Heat for tougher challenge modifiers, and Hades 2 has a wider range of gods and boon-givers in general.

So it's a little demoralizing that the Nyx namedrop might have been nothing more than a contextual hook with no post-game story implications. In theory, it gives Melinoe a reason to strive for higher rankings and not give up the fight just because it's technically over. But what if we could see more of Nyx and her children's interactions as she encourages them to aid our cause? What if she became a secret boon-giver herself? What if we got literally anything for all that resource-dumping?

Well, I guess there is one tiny reward, if you can call it that. I've learned that Nyx does have some unique dialogue that triggers once you reach the upper echelons of Unseen (the highest rankings band) but I hope you'll forgive me for not chomping at the bit for a throwaway piece of acknowledgement. Her words are kind, but it doesn't change the fact that my rank feels little more than a pat on the back I have embarrassingly given myself. Truthfully, I regret parting with all those precious resources when they could have gone into my interior design habit instead. (Hey, Odysseus could always use a new rug.)

Hades 2 is one of the best roguelikes of all-time, but there's plenty more to choose from.

A big Slay the Spire 2 patch just hit the beta branch of Mega Crit's hit roguelike deckbuilder, affirming its new biweekly patch schedule and completely doing away with the notorious Doormaker boss. After polishing off my Ascension 10 clears mere hours before the patch hit, a different section of the patch notes raised my eyebrow. I have just one question for Mega Crit: do you want Regent to die?

The latest patch notes are relatively light on card balance changes compared to previous updates, but I'm perplexed by some of the few changes that made it in. In particular, the Regent class had five cards retouched – two nerfs, two buffs, and a rework. Both of the nerfs were to block cards, which feels incredibly strange to me because, at least based on my own runs and conversations with fellow slayers, Regent is already struggling with block compared to the other classes.

Two of Regent's limited block cards were nerfed. Bulwark, an uncommon card, and Patter, a common, now grant one less block apiece. It's a small change, but a confounding one. I can't be the only one who was expecting to see Regent get more block, not less.

You can argue that Regent also got a block buff via the rework to Sword Sage, a rare Power card that now adds Replay to your Sovereign Blade instead of just making it hit twice. This new wording favorably interacts with the uncommon Power card Parry to give you double the block when you play the sword. The problem is that we're talking about a rare Power playing off an uncommon Power that revolves around a generated attack that you only have one copy of, and that sums up the challenge with Regent.

Regent is demonstrably capable of clearing everything in Slay the Spire 2, and he can produce some of the strongest synergies if you really get going. That said, I've found him to be the least consistent of the five classes, and that's largely because of his block economy (though it could also just be my play style or skill issue). Maybe that's Mega Crit's intent: Regent is the glass cannon. But this is fundamentally a game about dealing and blocking damage, so limited block doesn't feel like a compelling identity unless it's paired with uniquely high damage potential, but right now it just feels like Regent has to fly to get where the other classes can walk.

The common block options for Regent are pretty poor, and he has limited access to weaken to reduce damage as well. The nerfed block card Patter is only good when you have multi-hit attacks to pair with it, Glitterstream does too little for two mana, Gather Light is solid, Cosmic Indifference is a good card but has low block, and Cloak of Stars is very good but obviously uses up stars. His uncommons are great but, outside the newly nerfed Bulwark, also situational, with Reflect and Particle Wall chewing through stars, and Manifest Authority granting low block in isolation. Likewise, his block Powers – Pillar of Creation, Parry, and Child of the Stars – all work off of other cards. He can generate a lot of colorless cards, and some of those might provide block (which actually won me my A10 run), but that's pure RNG.

Meanwhile, old classes like Ironclad, The Silent, and Defect are rolling in strong block cards that don't ask anything extra of you. Shrug it Off is just good. Leg Sweep is just good. Leap, Charge Battery, and Boost Away are all just plain good, and common, block cards. Fellow newcomer Necrobinder has access to powerful weakening effects, some excellent common blocks, and the enormous power of effectively banking block by powering up her summoned companion Osty.

Regent feels right in the middle of the other four classes. Maybe that's the point, and actually good design? He's got a little bit of everything, but it's inordinately hard to get enough of anything? I don't think this is a game-breaker, but it feels like Regent wants just one more good, neutral block card, so I'm a little surprised to see Mega Crit weaken the few options he does have. I guess this is the fun of an early access game: rolling with the punches, figuring out how to offset weaknesses, and, uh, having a 21% lower win rate on Regent than Ironclad and Necrobinder.

Steam stats for Slay the Spire 2's engine Godot show "strong signs of exponential growth."

For weeks, many Slay the Spire 2 players have complained to developer Mega Crit about the Act 3 boss Doormaker. The game's Steam review score plummeted, largely due to reviews from Chinese users, as Doormaker hate crept into feedback. How can Mega Crit make the boss fun and balanced, even though it was apparently already "slightly weaker" than the other Act 3 bosses by many metrics? It was already reworked once, after all.

Mega Crit had another idea, per today's Slay the Spire 2 patch notes: get rid of it.

Yes, the Doormaker is gone. Dead. Deleted. Poof! In his place stands a new Act 3 boss, Aeonglass. This all-new boss has different mechanics and a stack of three status-preventing Artifact. Why?

"While Doormaker had interesting micro decisions in the fight, he was over the complexity threshold of what we want and had lingering issues," Mega Crit says in the patch notes. "We decided that starting over fresh will let us hit what we actually want for an Act 3 boss."

Aeonglass seems to have two gimmicks. Firstly, Withering Presence. For every four non-status cards you play, Aeonglass will add a one-mana junk status card called Wither to your hand, slowly polluting your deck unless you find a way to exhaust these statuses, or have the mana to exhaust them by playing them. Wither status cards have retain and deal two damage to you at the end of your turn if kept in your hand.

Additionally, not unlike the giant stack of debuffs you get from the Queen, Aeonglass will reduce your strength and dexterity by three on every other turn – not cumulatively, just for that turn. So, you'll have a harder time dealing and blocking damage on half of your turns.

The new boss is substantially simpler, and seemingly a bit weaker, than Doormaker. I haven't fought Aeonglass yet (tragically, I am at work), but I did finish clearing Ascension 10 with all five classes just hours before this patch hit, so I have plenty of experience with Doormaker. Doormaker's ability to completely shut down certain archetypes and force you to delay playing specific cards to avoid exhausting them has vanished, making Act 3 a lot less threatening.

Aeonglass does demand different strengths from your deck, however, so perhaps I'm underestimating it. I suspect Ironclad, who can readily exhaust cards in his hand and has good access to extra mana, will have the easiest time with it. Then again, Ironclad arguably has the easiest time with just about everything.

Steam stats for Slay the Spire 2's engine Godot show "strong signs of exponential growth."

Slay the Spire 2 maker Mega Crit has stopped patching its hit roguelike every single week because an update cadence that frequent understandably sucks for everyone involved, according to the indie dev.

As Mega Crit pushed yet another patch into Steam's beta branch earlier today, the studio took some time to address its slightly slower-than-usual release timings. Rather than enjoying weekly patches, as the first Slay the Spire did, the sequel now gets patched every two weeks instead.

But don't worry, fortnightly patches are an effort to pump out (hopefully) better updates that don't burn the devs to to ash. Plus, Mega Crit hopes it gives beta players more time with changes and the devs more time to act on feedback to those changes. A win-win scenario if all goes well.

"As you've probably noticed, we're moving to patch every 2 weeks rather than weekly as outlined in our Early Access Disclaimer," Mega Crit writes in a new Steam blog post. "This may be a bit surprising as the first game patched weekly, but it was a lot of work so it really sucked."

"Anyways, the 2-week cadence should make it less hectic for us, allowing bigger changes and more time working and polishing stuff before it goes out. It also allows more time for beta players to absorb and give feedback on changes," the studio adds.

Slay the Spire 2's Steam reviews absolutely plummeted last month following the game's first major update (largely due to posts from the game's big Chinese audience), which basically sent a bunch of changes from beta patches marching into the game's main branch. Many of the reviews lobbed complained about how tough it had gotten to assemble satisfying runs or long combos. Hopefully, Mega Crit's slower patch strategy can allow more time for gathering useful criticism and avoid another flood of red reviews.

Slay the Spire 2 "may not be perfectly balanced yet," Half-Life writer and Valve veteran Erik Wolpaw says, but with 1,500 hours in the first game he has no doubt Mega Crit will pull it off

Slay the Spire 2 is, quite handily, the most popular game ever made with the Godot engine, but the engine's operators say it was already comfortably on the rise.

In a new report on Godot's stats going into 2026, lead rendering maintainer Clay John examines the engine's rise in popularity through a couple of lenses. Some of the data is "a little messy," he admits, in its reliance on downloads from sites and sources like Github, Steam, and Google Play. But even with some "fragmentation," the trends are pretty consistent: Godot is gaining installs, downloads, and users.

Steam, via SteamDB, provides "the most exciting statistic," John says. "The data is approximate, and it can change when SteamDB updates their algorithm, but the overall picture stays the same. The number of Godot games being released on Steam is exhibiting strong signs of exponential growth!"

In 2023, 375 Godot-made games were released on Steam. One of them was Brotato, a top-down roguelike shooter that, before Slay the Spire 2 came along, held the crown of biggest Godot game on Steam.

In 2024, 819 Godot games hit Steam. Among them was Halls of Torment, another roguelike featuring a zillion enemies, which was the biggest Godot release of its year (by Steam peak players).

And in 2025, that figure jumped up to 1,229 Godot games released on Steam.

"It is amazing that many people are adopting the engine and using it, but as a person on the technical side of things, I also want to see that users are successfully using the engine to make their games," John says.

Godot has empowered hit games on Steam for years, but nothing has hit as hard as Slay the Spire 2. The deckbuilding roguelike – boy, roguelikes love Godot, huh – was originally made with Unity before the engine's abrupt fee changes pissed off developer Mega Crit so hard that it pivoted the entire project. In a 2023 post, Mega Crit said to Unity: "We have never made a public statement before. That is how badly you fucked up."

Slay the Spire 2 launched this year on March 5, and with a Steam peak of 574,638 players, it's not only miles ahead of Godot runner-up Brotato's 38,905 player peak, it's one of the biggest games of the entire year. It had the 20th biggest launch in Steam history, putting it in the same realm as mega-hits like Hollow Knight: Silksong and above games like Terraria and the Call of Duty hub (which is notably less Steam-reliant than most games). It's also one of the best games of 2026 so far, though a surge of negative reviews largely written by Chinese Steam users has tempered its rating on Steam.

Few things put eyes on a game engine like breakout hits using that engine, and Slay the Spire 2 demonstrated louder than ever that you can convert a project from Unity to Godot and use the engine to deliver a feature-rich, readily update-able, enormously deep game – which includes multiplayer, a major addition over the original Slay the Spire.

John lays out how Godot was already gaining ground as a free and open-source alternative to engines like Unity and Unreal, which still dominate the market. The Slay the Spire 2 effect may take a while to kick in given development time lag, but I wouldn't be surprised if it kickstarts the biggest wave of Godot games yet.

After Slay the Spire 2 update led to negative Steam review spike, Mewgenics lead jokes releasing balance patches for popular games is "the scariest thing a human can experience."

Hades developer Supergiant Games has shouted out a fan-made mod for Hades 2 which ports the original game into its sequel.

A developer who goes by the name NikkelM released the Zagreus' Journey mod for Hades 2, a mod which adds every region, enemy, and boss from the original Hades and allows you to play through it as the second game's protagonist Melinoe, with new NPC encounters and other content added while they're at it. It was first released late last year, but just got its 1.0 launch a few days ago.

It's an impressive mod, and quelling any fears, NikkelM also explains: "This mod does not, and never will, use generative AI for any art, voice or music. All voicelines are from the original game, and art was custom created by talented community artist burn."

While mods are a commonplace thing for games nowadays, most don't come with trailers that look almost official thanks to their production value, so it's only natural that this one caught the eyes of fans. Unexpectedly however, it's received a blessing from the original developers, too. The Supergiant Games Twitter account shares the mod, saying: "We're blown away by this user-created mod for the PC version of Hades II, which lets you play through the original game's encounters as Melinoe."

Zagreus' Journey looks so official that many fans have been shocked, too, with one reply saying, "it's user created? I saw this trailer yesterday and thought it was official." They speculate that Supergiant reposting it was a way of making it clear that it isn't. Elsewhere, commenters on the trailer say, "I hope the devs see this and contact you to make this an official dlc because with this is so good," with more asking for a way to bring the mod to console versions of the game.

I never got around to finishing Hades 2, but with the little glimpses of Asphodel you sometimes get in that game, I actually somewhat expected this to be a surprise hidden in the game somewhere, so it's cool to see someone take the idea and run with it.

Hades 2 developer is hiring for "what's next" after its 2 roguelike juggernauts, but fans can't decide if they want a threequel.

Adrenaline levels in Saros are some of the most important and under-explained mechanics in the game. Adrenaline levels build up as you progress through combat without taking damage, granting you a series of buffs and perks, then resetting once you take a hit and forcing you to start all over again. Consequently you're encouraged to play carefully and do everything you can to avoid getting hit, but what actually do the adrenaline levels do, and are the perks worth playing so cautiously?

What do Adrenaline levels in Saros do?

There are five Adrenaline Levels in Saros before you max them out, each one of which grants a new perk or buff that stacks on top of the previous ones until you have all five.

1. Power Boost: Increased power absorption rate
2. Infrared Boost: Marks enemies through walls with a red glowing effect
3. Melee Boost: Increased melee damage
4. Repair Boost: Increased health restoration from Aether
5. Power Boost+: Further increase to power absorption rate

I should be clear here that Saros doesn't explicitly state what the effects are beyond the initial labelling of the five adrenaline levels, so what's above is a result of me testing these mechanics in the game and comparing accordingly.

How to raise Adrenaline levels in Saros

To raise your Adrenaline levels in Saros, you need to deal damage to enemies and pick up Lucenite (as well as periodic pickups that can improve your Adrenaline specifically).

Lucenite is very easy to find, dropped by all enemies when killed as well as found around the game. However, the Armor Matrix upgrade system will allow you to enhance the speed at which Adrenaline is increased through Lucenite collection, with multiple nodes with that purpose.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

Supergiant Games is officially ramping up for its first project after Hades 2, but there's no consensus among fans on whether it should be Hades 3.

The beloved indie game maker recently posted a graphics and animation engineer job opening at the studio, asking prospective developers to "come build what's next after Hades 2." As far as we can tell, this is the first concrete mention of the studio working on a new project since wrapping up Hades 2's 1.0 launch and its recent Xbox and PlayStation ports.

In a blog post published at the time of Hades 2's full release last year, the developer said it wasn't really sure what it would work on next outside of hotfixes, patches, and as we came to learn, ports for the roguelike sequel. "Beyond that, it's too early to say what's next for our team! We'll likely take some time to reflect and recharge," the developer wrote back in September 2025.

Plans for the future appear to be a little more concrete now, at least inside the studio, but fans are less certain. "Please NOT Hades 3," one player writes on social media, hoping the studio goes back to the non-roguelike action games it cut its teeth on, like Transistor and Pyre.

Another fan says, "Hopefully a Hades 3." (Whiplash much?) They also link to a Wikipedia page about Macaria, a very mysterious mythological figure who's said to have been Hades' daughter... based on one single source. I'm sure the myth remixers at Supergiant would have a field day with the concept of the daughter of the underworld who's essentially been scrubbed from the record books.

Other fan theories involve a co-op game featuring Zagreus and Melinoe, a prequel game starring the titular Hades during the Titan War, or a kart racer. I'd take it.

Days before the sequel launched in full, studio director Amir Rao explained that the team actually hadn't discussed plans for Hades 3 much at all because it wasn't a "preordained" inevitability: "It's not something we secretly know right now or anything like that."

Hades 2 lead doesn't think about the roguelike's legacy much because he just wants "to make things that don't get forgotten right away."

Saros is putting so much pressure on my controller's right-trigger that it will likely turn into diamond before the credits roll. Surviving in this sci-fi shooter demands dividing your attention between dodging bullets, flinging them back, and hoping you don't back-pedal off a ledge. Yet – fitting to developer Housemarque's cosmic horror leanings – I can't resist sneaking glances at the forbidden knowledge that the planet of Carcosa teases in my peripheral.

Pillars of stone-carved hands reach for eclipsed heavens, while silver gates gleam incongruously in ancient alien ruins. Below, mineshafts carved by would-be colonizers sprawl into futuristic vaults. What does it all mean? Your guess is as good as mine – I'm only a few bosses into Saros at time of writing – but Carcosa feels skeletal yet still autophagic; devouring itself to excess.

With the back-to-back release of Returnal and now Saros, Housemarque has become one of the greatest modern storytellers in cosmic horror and weird fiction. Combined with its knack for compulsive arcade action and using looping roguelike conventions as narrative tools, few AAA studios seem as comfortable in their own skin as this PlayStation-owned developer.

Hoping to get a clearer sense of Housemarque's eclectic identity, I caught up with Saros' creative director Gregory Louden and art director Simone Silvestri. Certain shared influences go some way toward explaining the studio's arcade-arcademia formula – the works of H.P. Lovecraft and esoteric short story collection The King in Yellow were particular inspirations for Saros – but in truth, Housemarque's biggest inspiration is… Housemarque.

The Silver Key

Saros carries everything from Returnal but the name. Both games task the player with exploring a hostile alien planet, sidestepping bulbous neon bullets and steadily finding better gear before dying and starting another run anew. Both are roguelike-Metroidvanias, and while these conventions are remarkably fun as standalone elements, they're also used smartly to drip-feed gripping existential stories.

For most developers, making such a fluid continuation in Saros would warrant simpler signposting – IE 'Returnal 2' – but I get the sense that Housemarque prefers the freedom to play around with past ideas without boxing itself in. In doing so, the studio has honed its identity with each iteration – something Louden touches upon while explaining where Housemarque's signature weirdness comes from.

"The number one reference for Housemarque games are other Housemarque games. That was true of Returnal – when I joined, our biggest reference was Nex Machina. And it's true of people I've introduced to Saros, our biggest reference is Returnal. So there is almost this self-perpetuating reverence of our past, to really want to stay true to our DNA.

"The other thing is, we like to be bold," Louden continues. "In a lot of ways, we try to do something the Housemarque way. When I was the narrative director and the cinematic director on Returnal, as much as we love other games, we wanted to do it our way. We wanted to do a game where characters are discovered, not told. We wanted to have rules like 'play, don't show'. We love big cinematics and have them in Returnal and Saros, but they're always about reward. We want you to play a lot of it. This ethos that we follow is to try to create something really bold and exciting for players to get lost in, [with] this sort of reverence for what we've done. That way we stay true to our past, but we're also innovating and bold and trying to stand out in the future as well."

For Silvestri, who joined Housemarque after Returnal, the studio's interest in cosmic horror is the reason he joined Housemarque. "It's the last real frontier of human curiosity, right?"

In that regard, Saros doesn't disappoint. The game's story follows search efforts for a lost colony on Carcosa, a planet covered in the ruins of an ancient civilization and wracked by supernatural eclipses which corrupt life on the surface.

"When I started and Greg told me about the eclipse, I was like 'Yeah, we're going to cook with this one,'" recalls Silvestri. Heading into Returnal's follow-up, Housemarque wanted to recapture the same atmosphere, but couldn't "repeat the same tricks" – which meant no repeating color palette and taking a "much bolder" approach, for starters. Yet across all disciplines, both Silvestri and Louden say, there was a drive to not just meet that challenge but exceed it at an individual level.

"One thing I always say about art in Housemarque is that we live on the fringe," says Silvestri. "We have this spectrum of minimalistic to extreme, and we always tend to go towards the extreme side. One of our pillars was called radical escalation, which means whenever you're in doubt, go for maximum impact. Then, when you put the eclipse on, go [for] even more. We always try to find the maximum expression of the concept that we have. If it doesn't work, can we make it more extreme? And if you can't, then it means it's probably not the right thing in the game. But usually there's many more levels to go.

"I think our artists are so comfortable in this space, which is very unique to us, and it's very inspired by the narrative that we have," he adds. "The kind of stories that we tell are very old and different and rare – I would say fringe as well – and to me, that's really precious. It means I can give my best. And I have partners in gameplay and narrative who want to be as weird as I want to be. That's a legit term that we use!"

At a mechanical layer, Louden carried forward lessons learned from Returnal to ensure Saros could be enjoyed by more players without making compromises. A good example is in the game's opening run, which plunges you into the deep end against a boss you're unlikely to survive. Saros gets into the action far quicker – a delight for returning fans with itchy trigger-fingers – but compensates with the option to earn permanent upgrades at your hub. These upgrades take some time to feel powerful, with more dramatic boons locked to higher tiers of an unlock tree, but create a net for struggling players to still take something from dying.

"We wanted to allow more people to experience this game," says Louden. "And for people that haven't played a Housemarque game, this is a great one to start with."

Not-so tattered mantle

Indeed, 'come back stronger' is more than just Saros' tagline. It's been a "vision statement" for the team throughout development, Louden stresses, and I see it in action every time I'm stuck – each death offering a chance to grow, or less generously, callusing my head as I bang it repeatedly against the same boss fight.

It's a smart evolution of Returnal's own spin on the roguelike loop, which slowly eked out its mysterious story with each run. Saros is similarly well-paced, both as a story and roguelike. Upgrades and new areas unfurl often enough to keep the game fresh, while its story makes each run feel like coming back for another bite of a baited hook. It's the product of "iteration and a lot of playtesting," says Louden, who feels the result makes Saros hard to categorize as a roguelike. "As much as we love the genre, we almost feel like we're creating our own voice," he adds. "The only game that's quite similar is Returnal."

Louden and Silvestri have a tendency to make Saros sound more like a collaborator than creation. There's an undeniably intimate relationship between the studio and its games, and there lies Housemarque's true identity: a studio confident in its own artistry and ideas.

"It's a constant dance between what you think will work, and then what works," says Louden on the development process. "The game will tell you if it works. We just listen to the game."

Saros aims for bite-sized 30-minute runs, and the cool-off makes you "ready for another", its game designer tells me

Now that Saros is about to come out for everyone, there's some discussion going around about the overall difficulty, especially compared to its predecessor, Returnal. A higher-up at PlayStation is here to quell any concerns, maintaining that the sci-fi roguelike remains approachable despite its tricky parts.

On Twitter, a user posted about how hard Saros is, pointing out that once you get past the game's second boss, you unlock bonuses you can toggle on and off to tailor the experience more to your preferences. Mihir Sheth, senior product developer director at PlayStation Studios, piggybacks on this sentiment to send a broader message.

"Housemarque made this game with care and consideration for many types of players while preserving challenge," he states. "There is more in your hands for how to play... but if this video game looks cool to you, then IT IS FOR YOU."

Speaking without having played Saros yet, Returnal had a pretty harsh difficulty curve in my experience. It's not the hardest roguelike I've ever played, but it was punishing at times, and completing it required a couple of breaks to psyche myself back up before jumping back into the wilds of Atropos.

Saros seems like more of the same, but with the added perk of the aforementioned modifiers and greater weapon choice. These include strengthening your defenses and giving you resistance to enemy infections. Those would've certainly made Returnal more bearable, and I can already see myself making ample use of them.

But to Sheth's central point, Saros is a massive release, one of the PlayStation 5's biggest of the year, and if it piques your interest whatsoever, you should consider giving it a go. Even if it's just to support Rahul Kohli as the lead character.

Saros Metacritic score makes it one of the best games of the year, putting the cosmic roguelike right behind Resident Evil Requiem and Pokemon Pokopia

Mewgenics co-creator Tyler Glaiel has spoken about the stress attached to releasing balance patches for popular games.

Over on Twitter, Glaiel says: "People be like 'The scariest thing a human can experience is drowning'. They clearly have never had to release a balance patch for a popular game on Steam."

This is in reference to the latest Mewgenics patch released onto the game's beta branch on Steam. The patch has been pretty well received for elements like the Mage buffs, but a nerf to the Mutation stat has been a sticking point for some, as the meta has been to create a big, mutated, inbred army of cats so far. Plus, the Hunter's somewhat overpowered Scattershot skill has been nerfed as its upgraded version no longer exempts allies.

Of course, Glaiel's fear is somewhat understandable, we've literally just seen Slay the Spire 2 plummet to 66% positive lifetime Steam reviews after its first major update earlier this month, as fans' negative reaction to some of the changes have been a widespread issue among the community – even if the devs don't really agree with some of the criticism levelled toward some of its bosses.

Granted, I've played 120-odd hours of Mewgenics and haven't really bothered to go for meta builds or min-max my stats in any way. Sure, it's cool that these in-depth breeding mechanics are in there, and it's undoubtedly super impressive stuff, but I'm just happy building up my cat army and rolling with the punches. Unless something is super busted, I don't really see the issue with changes like this to single-player games.

Slay the Spire 2 won't get an endless mode, but creator says "maybe a modder" can "make it work."

Saros is out soon for most and out already for some, with different editions of the game having different release times and release dates accordingly. If you bought the deluxe edition it'll be playable for you right now, but those who bought the standard edition will have to wait until April 30, as we'll lay out below. We'll make clear the different release times for Saros, broken down by region and time zone accordingly.

Release times and date for Saros Standard Edition

If you pre-ordered the Standard Edition of Saros, you can expect to play it in your region / time zone at the following times and dates:

• PDT (US West Coast): 9 P.M., Wednesday, April 29, 2026
• EDT (US East Coast): 12 A.M., Thursday, April 30, 2026
• BST (UK): 12 A.M. BST, Thursday, April 30, 2026
• CEST (West Europe): 12 A.M., Thursday, April 30, 2026
• JST (Japan): 12 A.M., Thursday, April 30, 2026

It's worth clarifying that with these being digital preorders, for most players these games go live on the PlayStation Store at midnight for your local time zone, rather than simultaneous releases across the globe. You can also pre-load the game if you pre-order, with it taking 83.5GB of storage space.

Deluxe Edition and Early Access Release times and date

If you purchased the Deluxe Edition of Saros, it should be available to play right now, as the Deluxe Edition includes 48 hours of early access to the game, effectively allowing you to play it two days prior to the standard release in your region. If you haven't bought the game yet, buying the Deluxe Edition should allow you to play it immediately (at least, once it's downloaded).

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Slay the Spire 2 has been wildly successful so far – notwithstanding the piles of negative reviews that every balance change for the early access game seems to garner – but the developers at Mega Crit initially didn't want to make a sequel at all. Instead, they'd hoped to just keep updating the original with new features and tweaks, but that started to look pretty unrealistic when their publisher shut down.

"In a Reddit comment a long time ago, I was like, 'We're not going to make a sequel! Why would we do that? We'll just update the first one,'" as Slay the Spire co-creator Casey Yano says in Edge Magazine issue #423. "But I guess we were a little naive."

I've been unable to track down that specific Reddit comment from Yano, but it's easy to see how a small indie studio, flush with the unexpected success of a breakout hit, might consider just continuing to update it forever. After all, that strategy has worked for the likes of Terraria, Stardew Valley, and No Man's Sky – why not Slay the Spire?

It seems a big part of the issue is Humble Games, the now-defunct publishing arm of Humble Bundle. Humble Games handled Slay the Spire's console and mobile ports, but when the label shut down in 2024, those versions of Slay the Spire were suddenly in some form of limbo. Yano doesn't go into the specifics of the status of Humble's Slay the Spire ports here, but it seems there's quite a roadblock in place.

"We couldn't just work more on Slay the Spire 1, because its future was very murky," Yano explains. On top of the issues with the console and mobile ports, there's also all the existing PC mods to consider. If Mega Crit wanted to make any real additions to the Slay the Spire formula, "then it would have to be a sequel."

Slay the Spire 2's fate twisted again when Mega Crit literally flipped a coin to decide on its next project. Years later, the king of roguelike card games is back in rare form, with what feels like the entirety of the first game remolded and expanded. We've got new classes, cards, relics, and enemies, but ask any Ironclad, Silent, or Defect player and they'll tell you Slay the Spire 2 very much feels like home.

Slay the Spire 2 almost had fewer new cards because of the co-creator's love for Dark Souls, but testers "were not jiving with that at all."

Slay the Spire 2 has been on my mind, and my thumbs, a lot lately. I've been playing it for work, my hourly playtime is well into triple digits, and it's time we had an honest conversation about something. Sometimes, this game is genuinely, heartbreakingly unfair.

I can already hear the cries of skill issue, deriding me for having the temerity to get annoyed at a roguelite, but hear me out. This game, at its base difficulty but especially once you start getting into ascensions, is extremely reliant on your builds.

Whether you're putting together a cloned Claw build for The Defect that can shred through enemies once it gets going or a poison build for The Silent, you need to go into the game with a handful of possible builds in mind. By the time you've completed Act 1, you need to have a focused build that you're working towards. Playing cards haphazardly will do nothing but get your character killed.

Play your hand

But you can only do so much to prep. The cards that you get are randomly pulled from those that you've unlocked, which means that as the game progresses and you unlock more cards, you dilute your pool of possible cards. This means that you get two things: more flexibility and more opportunity to be dashed upon the rocks by random chance.

This dualistic nature runs all the way through Slay the Spire 2 like a seam of fool's gold. You will never know high highs and low lows like you do in Slay the Spire 2, a game that manages to oscillate between being as frustrating as smashing your thumb with a hammer to being as joyous as an angelic choir.

If you can nail a build down, when the whims of the game's random chance grants you just the right cards at just the right time, you can punch your way through the Spire. Just yesterday, I had a ridiculously good Necrobinder build where everything came together. Osty was as strong as an Ox(ty) and Squeeze ended the fight with the Queen in a skeletal handful of rounds. Then I decided to try and do the same with The Defect and was showered with cards for all different kinds of build, meaning fewer synergies and fewer opportunities to hand out beatdowns. That poor little robot died in Act 2, I'm sad to say.

After so many hours in both the original Slay the Spire and its sequel, I've got to the point that if I don't get a few cards into a build by the time I'm halfway through Act 1, I restart. That's probably really bad on my part, honestly, but the game encourages this kind of perfectionism.

The most obvious point of comparison for this is Balatro, another roguelite deckbuilder that can get fiendishly difficult. However, the greater variety of decks, increased build possibilities that are more apparent, and the greater frequency with which you visit the shop, and thus have more options to add to your deck, tame that perfectionist feeling quite significantly.

Slay the Spire 2, however, has few shops spread across capacious acts and random card rewards for beating enemy encounters. Sure, you can skip card rewards, but that risks you being ill equipped for the elites that you need to fight to get relics. You see how this perfectionist streak is baked into the game?

Deathtones

I love Slay the Spire 2. But I also hate Slay the Spire 2. Its basic design requires a precision on your part that is then thrown into disarray by the random chance that is inherent in the game, which feels significantly more severe than it does in other roguelites, even other build-focused ones like Vampire Survivors.

Fundamentally, there will always be an element of luck in roguelikes and roguelites. That's part of what defines the genre, but some are harsher than others, and Slay the Spire 2 sits firmly on the harsh end, despite its massive popularity perhaps making it seem softer than other stablemates. Playing it can be heavenly or hellish, but there is something to be said for the game's Yin and Yang approach. Much like the Yin-Yang, even the negative side contains seeds of good, whether they be build inspirations, a deeper understanding of the mechanics, or unlocking new epochs.

I'm going to keep playing Slay the Spire 2. If you have even a cursory interest in roguelites, you should too, because it's a fantastic example of the genre. Just be prepared for the inevitable frustration when the cards don't come up the way that you want them to, because it'll come. Try not to throw your PC out of the window when it does.

Check out the best roguelikes to play for short, intense bursts of fun, from Balatro to Hades 2

All Saros endings are listed here, including any secret endings that the game might have hidden, so you can be sure to get the full experience! Not only that, but if you've finished the game yourself, we also explain every ending and what it means for the story of Saros as a whole, with explanations for some of the game's most significant questions. If you want to know more, we'll explain everything in our full Saros endings guide below.

Warning: From now on the following guide contains major spoilers for the entirety of Saros! Read on at your own peril.

All endings in Saros

There are two endings to Saros' story, as laid out below:

• Main Ending (aka, the bad ending)
• Secret Ending (aka, the good ending)

You have to go through the main ending first no matter what, as completing Saros and getting the bad result then unlocks the steps needed to unlock the good ending.

How to get the Main Ending in Saros

To get the Main Ending, aka the bad ending, in Saros is pretty simple:

1. Progress the game to the point where you unlock the Yellow Shore biome, accessed via the Passage.
2. Enter the Yellow Shore and progress through until you defeat the Consort boss.
3. This will allow you to go even further, beginning a boss fight with the King.
4. Defeat the King and choose to attack them afterwards by walking up to them and pressing R1.
5. After beating the King to death, pass through the gap in the Yellow around the arena.

This will then trigger a final cutscene, and afterwards you'll be returned to the Passage.

How to get the Secret Ending in Saros

To get the Secret Ending – also called the Good Ending – in Saros, you need to do the following:

1. Complete the main ending as shown above, then be returned to the Passage.
2. Go to the Echelon 3 camp in Shattered Descent and speak to Kayla, who's hiding behind a door in the main habitat dome.
3. Go to the Blighted Marsh and progress until you find a huge red tree. On reaching it, a cutscene will play.
4. Go to the end of the Cathedral Biome and visit Nitya's Lab, uncovered just before entering the final boss arena by ringing the bell.

5. Watch the Holocache recording in the Lab.
6. Go back to the Passage and speak to Kayla in a new cutscene.
7. Enter the Banyan Tree to see a new flashback sequence.
8. Go back to the Yellow Shore and battle the King again.
9. After victory this time, you'll be given a choice as to whether to strike the fallen king or not. Choose to spare him and let him live.
10. With the King still alive, progress through the gap in the Yellow Barrier to see a new cutscene and ending to the game.

Main Ending explained

What happens: In the main and first ending, Arjun fights his way to the Yellow Shore in pursuit of Nitya, and ultimately ends up battling the King, the distorted monster at the end of the Yellow. Arjun kills the King and, lured by Nitya's voice, passes through the barrier beyond.

Here Arjun ends up back at the room at the Rue Parée, the brothel that was a significant part of his past back on Earth. Looking for Nitya, instead all he finds is his reflection in the window, which grins nastily and drags him through the glass into a void beyond.

Arjun awakes with Nitya beside him, who convinces him to take the throne. In that moment, he transforms into a copy of the King in a nasty bit of body horror, before sitting on the throne and grasping Nitya's wrist in a possessive way. Our perspective draws back, showing that this whole tableau is held inside some sort of strand of gold energy, and that there are many strands around it.

What does it mean? This ending is ultimately Arjun being corrupted by the Yellow Shore, giving into his desires and becoming the next Yellow King. The Nitya besides him isn't even the real one, but an illusion created by the Yellow to coax and lure him to this point. The other strands suggest that Arjun is just the next in a chain of Kings, each one murdering the previous King in turn.

Secret Ending explained

What happens: In the Epilogue Ending and steps leading up to it, Arjun speaks with Kayla again, as well as the spirit of Kiira, who was one of the members of Echelon 1 alongside Nitya. Kiira reveals that she and Nitya fell in love during their time on Carcosa, forcing Arjun to confront the fact that Nitya did actually move on after she left him, something he had been convinced was impossible.

Returning to the Passage, Arjun then confronts the truth about his past on Earth in another flashback. It's revealed that Sebastian Torres was a former Enforcer and friend of Arjun's that he nonetheless murdered when it seemed as though Torres was going to tell Nitya that Arjun had cheated on her, as well as other unspecified immoral acts. This suggests that the Torres that Arjun has been speaking to on Carcosa is a creation of the Yellow, or just a symptom of his strained sanity (perhaps both).

Arjun tells Sebastian he's sorry and that he regrets what he did, before eventually returning to the Yellow Shore to confront the King again. However, this time after beating the King, Arjun pushes past him without landing the fatal blow and choosing not to take the crown, proving that he's not going to give in to his poisonous desire this time. Having made it to the shore, it seems as though the Yellow is going to try and transform Arjun anyway, until he rips away his sun pendant and throws it down in the water.

At this moment, the transformation stops and Arjun is finally left standing with Nitya on the beach. He apologises to her for what he did, and she comments on the possibility of tomorrow and what it will bring, as well as asking what sort of person he'll be. Arjun stands on the beach as she walks away from him, and as she does so, we see blue and red lights flashing on his face, as if from a police car off-screen.

What does it mean? In this ending, Arjun comes to understand the corrupting nature of his desire and that the best thing he can do is to stop chasing Nitya, thus breaking the cycle of Carcosa in the process. The two revelations of the epilogue are firstly that she found love after him in Kiira, and secondly that Arjun is a literal murderer who killed his friend Sebastian to conceal his infidelity, making a mockery of the idea that he's a good partner to anybody at all. Ultimately, Nitya does not need him, and he does not deserve her.

When he throws down the sun pendant, the symbol of their relationship, it's a way of effectively letting her go, realising that what he wants isn't enough – it's more important what she wants. Without that toxic need to possess Nitya in his soul, the Yellow has nothing to latch onto and can't transform him into the new King, preventing the transformation.

Nitya's comments on the beach are pretty straightforward – it's best for them both to move on and look to tomorrow. Arjun's possessive nature, and the belief that he is entitled to her no matter what he does, is what he needs to get past. If he wants redemption, he also has to finally confront his actions back on Earth: specifically, Sebastian's murder.

What are the Yellow Shore and Yellow King?

The Yellow Shore, sometimes just called "The Yellow", is a cosmic entity that seeks to lure people towards it by exaggerating and corrupting their innermost desires, coercing them to chase those desires all the way to it. On reaching the Shore themselves, they then become the next Yellow King after killing the previous one. This process is referred to as "The Path to the Yellow Shore".

A text log we find in-game suggests that the Yellow Shore's true nature is that it is some sort of eldritch god of Desire and Want. It's also suggested that, because of the elastic nature of time in and around Carcosa, the various Kings all exist simultaneously and forever, even despite subsequent ones deposing them.

It's stated that Nitya built The Constant to seal off the Yellow as much as possible, effectively trying to end the constant cycle of Yellow Kings and block the Path.

The first King we know of was Arnold Delroy, the Commander of Echelon 1, but audio logs show that his comrade Micah Wilde either successfully replaced him, or was at least planning to, so it's possible the King that Arjun battles is either Delroy or Wilde – though in a sense it doesn't matter which one, as the end point of the Path is the same.

All that being said, there's also some implication that Arjun repeatedly dying and coming back to life in the Passage (not to mention the warped chronology of Carcosa) means that he might be many of these Kings, effectively murdering himself in a repeating cycle.

Who is Sebastian Torres?

On Earth, Sebastian Torres was another Enforcer and friend of Arjun's who planned to reveal the fact that Arjun had been cheating on Nitya, as well as other unspecified "lines crossed". Arjun murdered Sebastian to prevent the truth from coming out, but the mental strain of what he'd done exacerbated his already excessive drinking and violent behaviour.

On Carcosa, Sebastian appears as a figure tending the giant tree in the Passage, and it's eventually revealed that this Sebastian is a figment of Arjun's mind (hinted by the fact that Sebastian is the only character in the game who doesn't get a Database entry). It's not clear if this ghost is the influence of the Yellow, or if Arjun's guilt is just projecting a delusion to torment/reassure him, but either way the root of the problem is the same: Arjun's unresolved guilt over killing Torres.

One small note of interest is that Arjun is seen on Earth in a flashback drinking "Torres" brand beer. It's left unclear whether Arjun's fractured mind is jumbling elements together, giving the Sebastian on Carcosa a different surname he associates with the darker moments of his past, or if Arjun drinks that specific brand of beer as a way of remembering Torres and torturing himself with the reminder.

What happened to Nitya?

Much of Nitya's experience on Carcosa remains elusive, but we can determine some specifics. She went to Carcosa with the first Echelon 1 team to get a fresh start away from Arjun, and there fell in love with Kiira. However, the team were corrupted by the Yellow Shore, leading to Delroy becoming the new Yellow King and the others becoming mutated monsters (or in Kiira's case, basically just a spirit).

From what we understand, Delroy tried to make Nitya into a Priestess, but she resisted and rebelled, having finally understood the horror of the Yellow Shore. She went into hiding and created two devices: the Preserver, a machine which was supposed to bring her back to life if she was killed in her mission, and the Constant, an AI computer that would also act as a barrier to cut off direct access to the Yellow Shore, stopping anybody from becoming the next King.

Somehow, Nitya eventually ended up at the Blue Precipice (more on that below), free from the power of the Yellow Shore or the King. There she remains until we finally encounter her at the conclusion of the Secret Ending.

What do the Blue and Red Lights mean?

The blue and red lights visible on Arjun's face in the final shot of the epilogue ending are an interesting visual, obviously reminiscent of police lights and calling back to Arjun's crimes on Earth. There are several possible interpretations that I can see, though they all largely follow the same theme: Arjun taking responsibility for the killing of Sebastian Torres. Here are all the possible meanings that I can think of:

1. Arjun is now fully aware of his own crimes. He may never make it back to Earth, but he recognises his own guilt and understands the full horror of what he did. The lights aren't real, just a symbol for him recognising what accountability means.
2. Arjun goes back to Earth to hand himself in. The police lights are more prophetic than symbolic: at some point Arjun will manage to escape Carcosa, and will turn himself in for what he did.
3. The Yellow is giving Arjun what he now wants. If the Yellow is there to provide people with corrupted versions of what they want, Arjun's desire for punishment, penance, and accountability may mean an illusion of being arrested and held accountable. That seems unlikely though, as the beach is supposed to be free of the Yellow's influence.
4. Nothing on Carcosa was real. A world of broken time run by yellow eldritch space gods? What a silly idea: the whole game has clearly been a metaphor, or a drunken dream Arjun had after Nitya left him! Even if it was a purely symbolic process, it still takes Arjun to the point of realising that he needs to acknowledge and pay for his crimes.

What's significant is that in one audio log from Arjun himself, he makes reference to the idea that "blue and red" and the "song" that accompanies it is all he deserves, most likely police lights and sirens. This feeds into the notion that Arjun is riddled with guilt for his actions on Earth, but is trying to suppress it, allowing his ego and desire for Nitya to overrule that guilt.

What is the Blue Precipice?

The Blue Precipice is probably the most mysterious and enigmatic part of Saros lore, something that is alluded to occasionally but never spelt out in great detail. It could be either another god, a visited physical place, a state of mind, or something else altogether. Either way, those at the Blue Precipice seem to find themselves immune to the Yellow's influence.

The Blue Precipice seems to be most associated with those who have freed themselves of desire and think selflessly. Text logs state that Kayla had awareness of the Blue Precipice, though even she didn't know how, and at the last time we see her in the game, planning to do what she can to stop others from reaching the Yellow, her eyes are glowing blue.

Kiira's spirit also states at one point to Arjun that the Yellow Shore could not reach Nitya as "she walked the edge of the Precipice." It's possible that the Blue Precipice is the calm beach that she and Arjun speak on at the end of the game, but again – this is largely theory and hard to prove decisively.

Was it all a dream?

Who can say? Yes, there are elements that seem strange or unreal, but any story about science fiction technology and eldritch gods playing with people's sanity was always going to be weird. There's no real way of knowing just how much of Saros is meant to be taken literally by the end (especially with that final shot of the flashing lights), but real or not, it still brings Arjun to the same realisation about himself and what he's done. I'd say that everything prior to Nitya leaving is probably guaranteed, but as for the rest of it – that's down to the individual.

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Erik Wolpaw – best known for writing Psychonauts, Half-Life 2's episodes, and the Portal games – has revealed Slay the Spire is one of his favorite games of all time.

Speaking to PC Gamer, Wolpaw reveals that as of late, he is currently playing, exclusively, Slay the Spire 2. "I'm either playing it solo … or playing it co-op with my son," he says. Obviously, the big chat around the game right now is how Slay the Spire 2 plummeted to 66% positive lifetime Steam reviews after its first major update earlier this month, but Wolpaw hasn't been too bothered about balance right now.

"Co-op's phenomenal. Like most of it, it may not be perfectly balanced yet. I don't know it for a fact, [but] I think two players may be the most unbalanced. It gets harder two-player and then starts to get easier at three and four-player. This is my suspicion, and what I've heard from other people. We're still having a good time, even though it's hard." Wolpaw explains, before subtly flexing, "We were in Ascension 10."

He continues, "It's not as balanced as Slay the Spire 1 yet. But it's also exciting because I trust them, because they balanced Slay the Spire 1 as well as any card game has ever been balanced. I trust that they'll do it here."

He says that both Slay the Spire games are "the exact, perfect level of decision making and cognitive load for my brain. Games like Crusader Kings or something are too much for me. I can't wrap my head around [them]. This is the perfect level of strategy. There's an interesting decision to be made on a real, regular basis."

As for the first Slay the Spire, Wolpaw refers to it as "number one in my heart," and that the game is by far his most played game on Steam at 1,500 hours. For context, second place is 571 hours of Dark Souls 3, to which he says "can't be right," but that his number three is Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen at 450 hours, which – aside from being a fire choice – is obviously significantly less than Slay the Spire.

Even as someone who absolutely sucks at the first game, it's hard to argue that there aren't many better deckbuilders out there than the original Slay the Spire – my love for Metal Gear Acid 2 aside – and I'd be shocked if his 1,500 hours of it are even in the top 10 highest playtimes for it worldwide.

Slay the Spire 2 won't get an endless mode, but creator says "maybe a modder" can "make it work"

Autohit in Saros is pretty self-explanatory, a feature wherein most of your weapon attacks have a baseline amount of homing, making it much easier to shoot opponents when diving around bullethell projectiles. But every now and then you'll get an icon that says "Autohit disabled", and sure enough, that power goes away with it. Below I'll explain why this is the case, and why there's actually a potential advantage to not having Autohit in Saros.

Autohit disabled weapons explained

Certain weapons in Saros that you find will have Autohit disabled, meaning that there's no homing feature and that you have to aim manually. This is marked by a square symbol in the weapon description, as seen above.

Not only that, but some weapons in Saros have the Autohit feature disabled in all variants, such as the Marksman Handcannon. This isn't a randomised factor, it's a specific feature of these weapons! However, it's also possible to find weapons with it randomly removed, despite the fact that they would normally have it. The Onslaught Rifle, for example, generally has Autohit, but you can find versions where it doesn't.

In these events, I found that Autohit-disabled weapons do much more damage per bullet than the homing versions. Basically, you probably won't hit as many shots, but you will do more damage per shot. This heavily rewards players with good accuracy, especially if they can target weakpoints on enemies. However, there is obviously a higher skill ceiling, though if you're a natural sniper these may turn out to be some of Saros best guns for you.

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To save the game in Saros and understand the autosave feature is something that you'll need to have a firm ground on from the start, as the game throws a sudden explanation at you as it starts and then never reminds you about how the save system works from that point on, leading to potential confusion. If you need help, I'll explain how saving in Saros works, as well as how to access and load different save files in-game.

How to save your progress in Saros with Autosave

There is no way to manually save the game in Saros, instead the game has regular auto-save that is constantly on in the background. The game saves after pretty much every action you take, locking you into choices almost immediately. Every room of enemies or puzzles you clear is saved after completing it.

With that in mind, you can feel safe to quit Saros at any point knowing that your progress will be saved, but if you want to be sure, make it to the next room or location to really confirm that you're locked in.

How to load save files

You can't reload previous auto-saves in Saros, but you are given three different save slots, so you can have multiple stories in Saros saved on the same PS5 file. To alternate between them, pause the game while in the Passage hub zone and choose the "Game Slots" option.

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How long to beat Saros? The game's length will vary depending on whether you're aiming for 100% completion or just want to do the story, but it's also a game where your personal skill level is highly significant as to how far you can get through it. Saros can be a pretty brutal game at times, and if you're not engaging with the difficulty-altering Carcosan Modifiers then it's possible to get stuck for long periods – or maybe you power through and snatch success on your first time. Having completed the game myself, I'll go through the rough estimate of how long it takes to beat Saros, and what you need to know before you go in.

This guide is free of spoilers for Saros' story.

Time to beat Saros and story length revealed

Depending on how you approach Saros and what kind of experience you want from the game, the time to beat will vary accordingly:

• Just Story: 20-25 hours
• Story and Secret Ending: 22-27 hours
• 100% Completion (all upgrades, collectibles, and Database entries): 30-45 hours

All that being said, these are rough averages based on certain assumptions about play skill levels and what kind of challenge you want to set for yourself (or not). Saros can be a pretty difficult game, but the permanent levelling system that allows you to increase Saros Attributes and Stats means that victory is more inevitable than merely possible, as you get stronger after every run. There's also a Modifier system that alters the game in ways that make it easier or harder, which can definitely impact the time you spend playing the game through.

Ultimately though, there are three ways to play the story. You can aim for the main ending, aim for the secret ending (which is basically just an extension of the story and requires you do a few more objectives) or you can attempt to 100% the game. Saros has various collectibles and database entries that depend somewhat on randomization, but it's very unlikely that it'll take anybody more than 45 hours to get them all and fully complete the game, and probably a fair amount less.

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To break Yellow Barriers in Saros requires a very specific ability, but while you'll encounter these yellow obstacles very early in the game and have to just endure them existing for the vast majority of the game. It's worth understanding how to smash them though, as otherwise you'll miss out on a lot of potential upgrades and collectibles. To help you crack through them, here's how to get past the Yellow Barriers in Saros and what abilities you need to find.

How to get past Yellow Barriers in Saros

Yellow Barriers in Saros can only be broken through if you have the Blazing Strike permanent upgrade, the last of all the Saros abilities you'll get in the whole game.

To get the upgrade, you need to progress to Act 3 of Saros and enter the Yellow Shore biome for the first time. Once you do so, you'll be almost immediately presented with a Yellow Barrier, and given the Blazing Strike upgrade that allows you to break through.

The Blazing Strike attack has other functions beyond simply breaking through barriers – it allows you to teleport to staggered enemies for the finishing blow, as well as breaking through Yellow Containers without the need for a key.

It's worth mentioning that if you come across Red Barriers, you can break those from the beginning of the game by simply hitting them with a melee attack (R1). That applies to the Yellow ones too, as long as you have Blazing Strike.

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The various attributes in Saros are Drive, Command, Resilience, Proficiency, Integrity and Power, but these stats and actually understanding what they all mean isn't the simplest thing in the world. Certain stats derive from others or are linked to certain attributes, and they're not all necessarily as important, depending on how you choose to play the game. To give you a clear idea of what these stats do and what you should be focusing on when you play, I'll explain all the attributes in Saros and how to raise them.

All Saros stats and attributes

There are six major attributes in Saros, or rather there are three core stats and three more that derive from them. They're all listed below, along with what they mean:

• Resilience: Determines your maximum Integrity. Also impacts how much damage you take from certain environmental hazards.
• Command: Determines your maximum Power.
• Drive: Determines how quickly Lucenite causes your Proficiency to level up. Higher Drive means quicker Proficiency levelling.
• Proficiency: Determines the level of Saros weapons you find in-game. The higher your proficiency, the more powerful the weapons you encounter. Your Proficiency can be improved permanently through the Primary Armor Matrix, but it can also be increased temporarily during a Cycle by picking up Lucenite and filling the orange bar in the bottom-left corner. When you return to the Passage, your temporary gains are lost. After defeating the Prophet boss fight, you also gain +1 to Resilience, Command and Drive for every level of Proficiency you have.
• Armor Integrity: Saros' term for Health. Can be restored by picking up green Aether. Your max Integrity can be reduced temporarily through Corrupted Projectiles and Artefacts. For more information, check our guide on Saros Corruption mechanics.
• Power: The fuel source for both Power Weapons and Shields. Can be restored by absorbing blue projectiles with the shield.

Some of these stats are barely different, as you can see: Command and Power are basically the same thing, though the game uses the two words interchangeably and it's technically possible to boost Power without boosting Command, confusingly.

How to level up and increase attributes

There are several ways to level up and improve your attributes in Saros:

• Armor Matrix (Permanent): Accessible via Primary at the Passage hub area, this skill tree is the main way in which players improve Arjun's stats.
• Lucenite (Temporary): As mentioned, Lucenite is used to temporarily improve Proficiency during the duration of a Cycle.
• Attribute Enhancers (Temporary): Powerful enemies and containers have a chance to spawn Attribute Enhancers after buying the correct Armor Matrix upgrades. These improve your Drive, Command or Resilience when picked up for the rest of the cycle.

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Corruption in Saros refers to a broad range of different mechanics and systems, depending on whether you mean Corrupted Weapons, Health, Artefacts, or Projectiles. Some of these systems are somewhat interlinked, but the reality is that Corruption in Saros is more of a broad, catch-all term for "the thing that should be good for you is now also bad for you".

To explain, I've got all the different corruption mechanics in Saros listed below, where I'll lay out how they work and what the word means in different contexts.

What does Corruption do in Saros?

Corruption in Saros has different meanings depending on what it's applied to. Here's a brief summary of each meaning before we get into more detail below.

• Corrupted Projectiles and Attacks: Enemy attacks that reduce your maximum health.
• Corrupted Health: When Arjun's maximum health is reduced.
• Corrupted Weapons: Guns that deal increased damage the more your Health is corrupted.
• Corrupted Artefacts: Artefacts that come with negative effects for Arjun when picked up.

Obviously that's a wide range of (mostly bad) effects, but it's still worth fully understanding them and what you need to do to counter the negatives while playing through Saros.

Corrupted Projectiles and Attacks

Corrupted Projectiles in Saros are enemy attacks that reduce Arjun's maximum health if they hit you, even if you shield against them (though there are upgrades that can reduce their impact). During an Eclipse, all enemy attacks are Corrupted.

Corrupted Health and how to fix it

Corrupted Health alone in Saros can't kill you, but unless dealt with, it can eventually reduce your maximum health to a sliver, effectively meaning that you can be killed by a single attack. Corruption is marked on your health bar with a swirling yellow pattern, as well as a growing yellow protrusion that comes out of Arjun's back (this is purely cosmetic).

To fix it, you need to use your Power Weapon. Using whatever Power Weapon you have equipped begins to de-corrupt your health bar, though the space left behind is empty and still needs to be healed. The more you increase your Command, one of the core Saros Attributes, the more ammo you'll effectively have for these weapons.

Corrupted weapons

Some weapons you find have a chance to be corrupted, marked by a Yellow Sun icon. Corrupted weapons deal additional damage based on how much Corruption your health has. Without any corruption on your health, they deal a regular amount of damage, but the more your health bar gets reduced, the more powerful they get. These tend to be some of Saros best weapons out there, especially as there's no downside to this quality.

Corrupted Artefacts

Corrupted Artefacts are Artefacts that also come with some sort of randomized penalty if you pick them up, such as increased dash cooldowns, dealing less damage when standing still, or any number of problems.

These Corruption penalties are removed if you can defeat an Overlord (the boss at the end of a biome), but you keep the positive elements of the Artefacts going forward in the run you're currently doing. If you regret picking one up, check out our guide on how to drop Artefacts in Saros.

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To drop Artefacts in Saros may seem like an unnecessary feature, but if you regret picking up a corrupted one or find all your slots full, only to find an Artefact you want far more than any other, you can be left stuck about what to do and have to go without. However, there's ways both to drop Artefacts in Saros mid-cycle, and to increase your numbers of Artefact slots so that you can hold as many as possible, potentially doubling your maximum. I'll explain how to do both below.

How to drop Artefacts

To drop Artefacts in Saros, you need to have an item called an Acolyte's Wager. These are the single-use items you find in-game to reroll rewards, spending them if you find a weapon you don't like and want to see if you can get something better.

However, Acolyte's Wagers can also be used to drop Artefacts. To do so, you simply pause Saros, go into your inventory and look at the list of Artefacts you've collected above your Saros Permanent Upgrades. If you have an Acolyte's Wager redraw in your inventory, there should be an option to remove it in the lower left hand corner of the screen by holding the Square button.

I say "drop", but this actually destroys the artifact, ensuring that you can't pick it back up again afterwards. it also uses up the Acolyte's Wager in the process, though you can start a cycle with multiple redraws by buying them from the Primary Armor Matrix skill tree.

How to get more inventory slots and hold more Artefacts

You start off with 10 slots for Artefacts in your inventory, but can increase that maximum to 20 by buying specific upgrades in the Armor Matrix through Primary in the Passage. These upgrades tend to be more expensive (one of them will cost you 10 Halcyon), but I found that once you reach about 15 Artefact slots, it's rare to have many issues with being over-encumbered.

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Abilities and Permanent upgrades in Saros are unlocked through progression and certain milestones, and can serve to help both in combat and in exploration, depending on which one you unlock. Ultimately Permanent upgrades in Saros can't be missed as they're all laid out on the critical path and mandatory to progression, but it's worth understanding how long you have to wait and what steps are necessary to reach them, as it can help you understand where you should be keeping certain obstacles in mind to return to if the unlock point is soon. Let's look at the Saros' various permanent upgrades and abilities, and what they actually do for you. And no, there is no double jump.

Warning: the following guide contains minor spoilers for Saros, though spoiler information has been kept to an absolute minimum.

All permanent upgrades in Saros

There are six permanent upgrades in Saros, abilities that enhance your combat and traversal, lasting between Cycles. They're all laid out below in the order that you'll unlock them.

We'll cover each of them in more detail below, but it's worth keeping in mind that some of these upgrades can themselves be enhanced in the Armor upgrades and skill tree via Primary. The Overdrive and Parry abilities specifically have numerous upgrades that can be bought for them.

How to unlock fast travel in Saros

The Jump Network is Saros' term for the fast travel network, which allows you to return to the Passage from certain select points, then use the World Dial at the Passage to return to any such points you've discovered.

The Jump Network is unlocked after defeating the first major boss of the game, The Prophet, at the end of the Shattered Rise biome. You'll be told to return to Passage for story reasons, the Jump Network unlocking to allow it.

How to unlock the Grapple hook in Saros

The Grapple is zipline power that allows you to rappel to specific points, marked with purple/blue lights. It doesn't have direct combat function, but can be used in battle for increased mobility to evade or navigate around enemies. Outside of combat, it allows you to access new areas that would've been previously inaccessible.

The grapple is unlocked after completing the Ancient Ruins biome and the boss at the end of it. Afterwards you'll reach an area called the Colony Ruins, have to return to the Passage with what you find there, then return to the Colony. When you go back, there's a terminal you can interact with to get the grapple.

How to unlock Overdrive in Saros

The Overdrive is a special attack separate from any of Saros best guns, a hugely powerful projectile that explodes for massive damage and is more powerful than anything else in the game. It charges over time as you participate in combat (marked by the purple meter next to your health), then can be triggered with L3+R3.

The Overdrive is unlocked in the Shattered Descent biome. After speaking to Eli at the mid-point for the first time, you'll emerge out the other side with the Overdrive ability unlocked.

How to unlock Parry in Saros

The Parry ability allows you to repel Nova projectiles (aka Red Orbs) with well-timed melee attacks. Doing so sends them back towards enemies for damage and significant stagger effects. Some traps and hazards also create Nova projectiles, so the ability to parry through them can make it safer for traversal. Parrying also ensures that these projectiles won't grant the Saros Corruption effect, unlike your Shield.

To get the Parry, you need to meet Alab in the Blighted Marsh biome and complete the task for him to power up the Carcosan device via a tower nearby. Once you reach it, you'll be teleported back to him, the bridge will be lowered, and he'll grant you the Parry ability.

How to unlock Eclipse Thread traversal in Saros

Eclipse threads are glowing lines that curl through the air, but are only present during Eclipses (outside of Eclipses, they appear as barely-visible white lines). This ability allows you to ride along them, effectively a way of teleporting short distances between fixed locations.

To unlock Eclipse threads you need to reach the Desecrated Fortress biome. At the mid-point you'll encounter a gap that can't be crossed until you trigger the Eclipse, which also changes the environment. Pick up the glowing light by the gap and that'll grant you the Eclipse Thread power.

How to unlock Blazing Strike in Saros

The Blazing Strike, the final upgrade, is an enhancement to your existing melee attack that serves numerous functions. Firstly it allows you to break through all of Saros Yellow Barriers, but it also increases damage, allows you to teleport to staggered enemies to deliver the finishing blow, and lets you break open yellow containers without needing a key.

To unlock the Blazing Strike, players have to complete Act 2 and access the Yellow Shore biome via the Passage. Upon entering it for the first time, you'll automatically unlock the Blazing Strike ability.

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The best weapons and guns in Saros will vary depending on their specific stats and randomisers, but that doesn't mean that there aren't clear standouts and a few duds, with five main weapons and three variations of each of those, as well as a selection of four Power Weapons for when you really want to go all-out.

Now it goes without saying that this is taken at the assumption that all weapons are the same Proficiency level and without consideration of the random modifiers, so consider this a broad summary. If you're fighting your way through Saros carrying a Rank 20 S-tier weapon and you find a Rank 30 B-tier, it's absolutely worth it to swap them out. However, if you're about to go into a boss fight and want to reroll a weapon drop outside for something better, or if the game offers you a choice of two guns, here's the best options to prioritize, whether we're talking Main Weapons or Power Weapons.

The best weapons in Saros

Having played the whole game through and tested every gun, I can confidently say that the best weapons in Saros are the Eruptor Handcannon and Onslaught Rifle. Of the various Power Weapons, your best option is probably the Illumine or Prominence.

The Eruptor Handcannon and Onslaught Rifle are both similar in how they function and what makes them so good – their main attack is good for fighting foes when you're at a disadvantage, having Autohit on them, while the Alt-Fire rewards precision targeting in a major way. It means you're not locked into a specific combat style or approach, allowing you to alternate between defensive and offensive approaches and ultimately proving really versatile.

It also goes without saying that, if you can find it, you'll want the Corrupted versions of these weapons. For more info on these mechanics, check out our guide on Saros Corrupted Weapons here!

The Illumine and Prominence also share strong versatility, in that they work both against groups of weak foes and single powerful enemies, though the Illumine is a little better in this regard. The other two power weapons feel designed for specific sorts of encounters, whereas these two options are dangerous against any enemy.

Saros main weapons tier list

Below we've sorted all the main weapons in Saros into a full tier list of best to worst.

• S-tier
  • Eruptor Handcannon: Burst-fire handgun. Alt-fire allows you to fire a charged shot that does extra damage to weakpoints.
  • Onslaught Rifle: Full-auto AR. Alt-fire fires slower, heavier shots that do precision damage to weakpoints.
• A-tier
  • Marksman Handcannon: Burst-fire handgun without the Saros Autohit function, designed for precision targeting. Alt-fire is a charged shot that marks enemies, activating the Autohit feature.
  • Smart Rifle: Full-auto AR. Alt-fire turns rounds into homing missiles.
  • Bifurcator Crossbow: Crossbow that can be charged, adding multiple bolts to the final shot. Bolts split over distance for a wider effect. Alt-fire is a single bolt that does damage, then splits into multiple homing projectiles.
  • Impactor Crossbow: Crossbow that can be charged, adding multiple bolts to the final shot. Alt-fire is a single bolt that splits into homing projectiles if it hits an opponent's weakpoint.
• B-tier
  • Ricochet Handcannon: Burst-fire handgun without Autohit. Projectiles ricochet and hit the nearest hostile. Alt-fire simply removes the fire rate limiter, allowing you to fire as fast as you can pull the trigger.
  • Tactical Rifle: Full-auto AR. Alt-fire gradually increases fire rate, similar to a minigun.
  • Horde Shotgun: Semi-auto shotgun with a horizontal spread of pellets. Alt-fire turns the barrel for a more concentrated vertical spread.
  • Repeater Crossbow: Full-auto crossbow. Alt-fire shoots a single bolt that splits into multiple homing projectiles on contact.
  • Myriad Chakram: Full-auto weapon that fires spinning discs that fly back after contact. Alt-fire disables Autohit, allowing precision shooting. Any discs that hit an enemy weakpoint immediately return to be fired again instantly.
• C-tier
  • Stalwart Shotgun: Semi-auto shotgun with a general spread of pellets. Alt-fire creates a wall of hovering projectiles, which hang in the air until the next shot is fired, then fly at the target.
  • Annihilator Shotgun: Semi-auto shotgun with a general spread of pellets. Alt-fire launches a grenade that explodes on impact.
  • Ripsaw Chakram: Full-auto weapon that fires spinning discs that lodge in enemies, dealing damage over time. Triggering Alt-fire causes discs to spin faster, dealing more damage. Discs return when enemies are killed or Alt-fire is released.
• D-tier
  • Reaping Chakram: Single-shot weapon that fires a disc at enemies. Alt-fire causes the disc to return to Arjun. Holding Alt-fire while the disc is returned causes it to spin around him, dealing damage to nearby enemies.

Saros power weapons tier list

Below we've listed the four Power weapons in a (much shorter) tier list for how you should prioritise them.

• S-tier
  • Illumine: A charged beam that locks onto the target and does continuous damage while fired.
  • Prominence: A single explosive shot that does major damage and stagger.
• A-tier
  • Dispiritor: A stream of homing projectiles that do damage over time to enemies. When killed by this effect, the enemies leave beyond a temporary Cell that also fires projectiles. Best against swarms of enemies.
  • Nova Lance: A charged railgun shot that passes through enemies and does major damage to weakpoints. Best against slow foes and certain bosses.

How to unlock all weapons in Saros

All weapons in Saros are tied to story progression: put simply, you just need to keep moving forward with the story. There are no secret or optional weapons in Saros that I could find, so you simply need to progress forward with the plot, at which point the game will unlock certain weapons at certain milestones, adding them to the random pool of found gear.

You'll encounter all Saros weapons in the following order:

1. Handcannon variants (starting default)
2. Prominence Power Weapon
3. Rifle variants
4. Shotgun variants
5. Dispiritor Power Weapon
6. Crossbow variants
7. Nova Lance Power Weapon
8. Chakram variants
9. Illumine Power Weapon

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The first major update for Slay the Spire 2 sparked a huge wave of negative Steam reviews, many of which skewered revisions to the Act 3 boss Doormaker, who now rotates through phases that Exhaust anything you play, prevent you from drawing additional cards on your turn, or subtract an additional point of mana anytime you play a card, even a zero-cost one. Clearly aware of the feedback, developer Mega Crit addresses the boss in its latest beta patch notes, suggesting the Doormaker is not the statistical outlier it may seem to be.

"We are currently monitoring the Doormaker and looking at a combination in-game feedback, social media posts, and metrics," Mega Crit says. "We want to give players time to adjust a bit, otherwise we'll be balancing around kneejerk reactions. Currently, from looking at millions of runs, Doormaker's overall difficulty/winrate is in a good place (slightly weaker than the other Act 3 bosses both in kill rate and damage dealt). However, we do want to ensure that its mechanics aren't too abrasive against certain playstyles."

I am honestly surprised to hear this. Doormaker has by far been the most lethal Act 3 boss in my 80 hours of experience. But I don't doubt the devs, and this report does make sense in that it highlights the difference between something feeling difficult and that thing actually being more difficult.

Compared to other Act 3 bosses, which might promote drafting card draw or severely punish lower damage output, the Doormaker has the highest potential to completely counter your build. If you're playing a Soul-heavy deck on Necrobinder, which wants to create a bunch of 0-cost draw Skills in order to cycle through a ton of cards, the Doormaker can shut you down entirely. Your key combo pieces will vanish if you play them during the Exhaust phase, and all your Souls are dead weight during the draw and mana phases.

This happened to me on an Ascension 8 run just the other day, and the problem is not exclusive to Necrobinder, as Silent fans can tell you. Consequently, these strategies and their related cards can feel like bad picks for every run. I'd wager this is the type of matchup-specific punishment that Mega Crit is alluding to when it mentions "certain playstyles," and it's definitely something that many recent Steam reviews have mentioned.

Even if the Doormaker is ending fewer runs, the runs it is ending can feel terrible, as if everything building up to that final turn didn't matter at all. More to the point, the way you built your deck in Acts 1 and 2 may feel like a mistake as soon as you discover that your Act 3 boss is the Doormaker. The other bosses, even counting The Queen's hand-locking chain of binding, just don't impose the same restrictions on what you can do each turn. Given this, not to mention the wealth of feedback, I'd be very surprised if the Doormaker isn't changed.

New Slay the Spire 2 patch makes some terrible cards and relics actually good, Mega Crit agrees the game "is quite hard" and wants lower Ascensions to be "more accessible."

There's a new patch out for Slay the Spire 2's beta branch, and the overall difficulty is getting adjusted by developer Mega Crit Games. While the objective remains providing a deep challenge for dedicated players on the highest modes, the barrier for entry was proving tricky for those who just want some fun deckbuilding.

"When it comes to general balance, the base difficulty is quite hard right now," the patch notes state in regard to the alterations made to the Ascensions. "We're continuously adjusting this baseline difficulty to make it more accessible for a wide range of players, while also continuing to deliver a challenging game at the highest Ascensions."

Mega Crit wants clearing everything at the uppermost levels to be a "monumental achievement" for those that manage it, and has added a message after your first completion to state as much. The Ascensions – modifiers that up the ante on your runs – are an exhausting pursuit by the end, since there are ten of them that stack each level you beat.

They're tough going, but obviously ran a little too tough for Mega Crit's liking, prompting the alterations and messaging. Meanwhile, a number of cards have been reworked in disparate ways. Neow's Fury and Booming Conch have both been buffed, the former now letting you choose the cards that go to your hand, the latter now gaining extra energy.

Players are particularly happy about those changes. "Love the ancient buffs! Especially Booming Conch, now it's a lantern and bag of prep in one! Definitely will be taking it more often," says one fan on Reddit.

"So so much better, essentially a super hologram," another says in regards to Neow's Fury. Two of Ironclad's cards have been revamped – Drum of Battle and Conflagration – and people are just as keen about those as well.

"Both Ironclad reworks are SICK!!!" one player writes on Reddit. "I can't wait to play with new Drum of Battle, although it seems REALLY strong, lmao. New Conflagration is dope as hell too."

Releasing in early access makes room for these kind of changes, and we can expect more of the same in the coming months. I probably wouldn't hold out hope for Slay the Spire 2 to get much easier from here on out, though – this is still a challenging roguelike.

Slay the Spire 2 almost had fewer new cards because of the co-creator's love for Dark Souls, but testers "were not jiving with that at all."

Bats and skeletons block my path as chiptune music pounds over the Castlevania-inspired scene in Vampire Crawlers. I let them have it with my whip, followed by a flurry of tomes, before attempting to finish off the horde with a lightning storm. But there are enemies who still stand, advancing on me and slicing through my HP with ease. A few turns later and I triumph over them and their intimidating boss, before the Grim Reaper arrives and promptly claims me with a single swipe. "One more run," I say to myself.

Vampire Crawlers is a familiar experience but no less appealing for it. Its pixel art aesthetic is in line with developer Poncle's previous work, Vampire Survivors, but the passive combat and top-down perspective of the 2022 title have been replaced by turn-based, deckbuilder combat and a first-person perspective. It's an exquisite combination, making for an evolution that adds interactivity.

Counting cards

It's not simply a case of gathering cards as you roam dungeons and throwing down your strongest attacks immediately. Vampire Crawlers has a sense of rhythm to it, with each item having a mana cost. Some cards are free, as denoted by a 0, but other cards can cost from 1 up-to 5 mana per go. Each card can also benefit from the one that went before it if the mana cost is precisely one count higher. So if you play a whip for zero mana, then a King Bible attack for one and a lightning strike for two, you can double the damage of the second and third card in the sequence.

This multiplier can be applied to defensive cards too, such as armor or healing items, as well as other types, like cards that duplicate attacks or draw additional cards from your deck. This method of creating combos adds a pleasurable intensity to Vampire Crawlers that goes beyond anything I've experienced from Poncle before, and it's the biggest reason for my 20 hours of playtime.

The combo element gets a shake up as you progress too, because you're able to unlock gems that alter a card's effect for your current run. These range from double the damage output, offering a health buff, refunding the cost of mana required, and more. During my time with the game I've routinely been surprised by these modifiers, with my favorite so far reducing the cost of a card by one, letting me play powerful attacks like the aforementioned lightning earlier in a chain.

It means combos don't get stale thanks to being subject to both my actions and the RNG of Vampire Crawlers. There's also the ability to combine two cards and forge a new item entirely, which can produce some of the most beautifully strong attacks I've seen in a Poncle game, especially when suitably integrated into a combo.

Crawling back

Vampire Crawlers is full of levels and playable characters to unlock. The game's hub is a peaceful, pixel-art town where you can spend the in-game currency (earned only through playing) to acquire new faces and add permanent upgrades. You unlock the town's resources as you play, but how you use them is up to you.

I'm a big fan of making my characters into powerhouses, so I started by increasing general strength, but you can equally choose more armor, health recovery, area-of-effect for relevant cards, and more. You can also buy an additional life so your run doesn't end upon your first death. Vampire Survivors veterans will recognize many of the unlockable buffs, and it's the same with the characters.

Starting out with the whip-wielding Antonio, I soon acquired Poe and his garlic attack, but Vampire Survivors really opened up for me when I unlocked Krochi and their brutal cross weapon.

As far as I can tell, each character is equally as viable as the next – in no small part due to being able to add multiple weapons during each play session, regardless of your starting loadout – with choice coming more down to personal preference than combat effectiveness, adding plenty of variety for repeat playthroughs of levels.

As it currently stands, I've beaten multiple levels with every character I've unlocked so far, enjoying the familiar labyrinths through the angles provided by different protagonists.

With my Nintendo Switch in hand, whether at home on the couch or traveling on trains, I've been fully absorbed by the moreish mechanics of Vampire Crawlers. There's no time limit to worry about, and the pace of the game is dictated entirely by the player, meaning it suits my mood whether I want to lock in or kick back. Poncle's latest is a perfect next step, and with its card-based combat and array of options, I'll be playing this one a lot more before 2026 comes to a close.

Sink your fangs into more of the best roguelikes if short and snappy play seshes are what you're after

The reviews for Saros have started arriving, and Housemarque's new blockbuster roguelike is doing quite well for itself thus far. The follow-up to Returnal is being celebrated for its ambition and scale, and according to prominent score aggregators, it's one of the best releases of 2026 thus far.

Of course, Metacritic is the first port of call here, and on there, Saros currently sits at an extremely respectable 88. An excellent score as is, it's among the highest numbers achieved this year at time of writing, placing the sci-fi shooter in fourth place within Metacritic's ongoing ranking of 2026 games.

Saros's average critic score matches that of Mewgenics, the indie roguelike from The Binding of Isaac creator Edmund McMillen, and it's just one point below both Resident Evil Requiem and Pokemon Pokopia. Could it manage to crawl above them? Possibly, but with 86 reviews already collated, there isn't much room for extra points.

Housemarque's latest production has also come in higher than its predecessor, outdoing Returnal's 86, at least in the immediate aftermath of scores going live. Those are strong innings for a pair of quite specific games.

Like Returnal, Saros involves taking on an alien threat on another planet. The protagonist, Arjun Devraj – portrayed by Rahul Kohli – is sent to investigate a strange world where a colony's gone missing, facing an entity that's able to reshape the landscape through solar eclipses. It's heady stuff, but the fundamental ideas are satisfying and well put together.

"A lean fusion of sci-fi action and eldritch horror that alternates between introspective narrative and madcap combat," reads GamesRadar+'s Saros review. On the back of Returnal, Housemarque has managed to make another piece of work. Only time will tell if the studio can manage it once more.

In pursuit of the ideal roguelike, Saros runs are shorter than Returnal's as Housemarque wanted to "keep the feeling of danger" and "reduce the feeling of helplessness."

Saros comes together with a single line: "How does it endure without entropy?" It's a throwaway comment in reference to alien machinery, but something about that idea permeates through the entirety of Saros, the latest third person bullet-hell shooter and sci-fi roguelike from Housemarque and Sony. How does something important last without breaking down? How does a person cheat death and persevere? And do certain gameplay ideas hold up when revisiting them half a decade after inclusion in your previous work?

The questions will stay with me long after the final credits have rolled, as while Housemarque has duplicated slightly more of their previous game than was probably necessary, the final result is still an excellent example of effort, artistry, and extremely incandescent artillery.

Return, all

Sent to investigate a missing mining colony on Carcosa, a planet flush with precious unobtanium, corporate security Arjun Devraj (Rahul Kohli with a perpetually furrowed brow) wakes up to discover he's lost all memory of his arrival, his ship has crashed, half his team has gone murderously bonkers, and the sun-scoured world they've dropped onto is full of twisting roguelike paths through the ruins of a dead civilization.

Well, not so dead that it isn't prowling with weird monsters and still-functional security systems. In the skies above, erratic solar eclipses herald eerie changes in both the native monsters and the visiting humans, infusing events with eldritch horror. And even beyond that, Arjun keeps coming back to life every time he's killed, a fact that frankly nobody on the team seems sufficiently curious about.

The inspirations are as apparent as they are endless. The game is an overt homage to R.W. Chambers' 1895 story collection The King in Yellow, but there's also general Lovecraftian lore in there, as well as elements of Solaris, Danny Boyle's 2009 movie Sunshine, Alien, Dead Space, and the Silent Hill franchise; all mixed with Hindu symbolism and iconography. Yet the one light that shines brightest here is Returnal itself.

Like Returnal, Saros is about a spacefaring explorer with a troubled past, dropped on a hostile planet where linear time is more suggestion than doctrine. The quick bullet-hell combat and platforming-focused exploration is basically the same, the tone is near-identical, the roguelike mechanics are frequently one-to-one translations, and some of the enemies might even be cameos or reused assets, depending on how generous you're feeling. I suspect the only reason this isn't called Returnal 2 is because Returnal's niche appeal couldn't justify the choice.

Bullet points

Whether familiar to you or not, it's Saros' combat that will stick with you. It's a fast-paced experience about snap-decisions and moment-to-moment reactivity based on what the enemy is throwing at you. Blue bullets? Shield! Yellow beams? Dodge! Red balls? Parry! It's appropriate that unbroken kill combos power you up with an "Adrenaline" meter, as twitchy, lower-brain, flow-state thinking overrides all higher functions by the end of a good battle, your heart thundering in your chest after several minutes spent flying purely on instinct.

Still, I'm a bit disappointed by the selection of guns. There are five main weapon types and four flavors of super attacks with variations on each, but that's not enough to stop things from eventually getting repetitive, as when you're vaulting over laser beams, one handgun tends to feel like another. And aside from the standard shooter fare – pistol, shotgun, assault rifle, crossbow – the only conceptually interesting weapon is the blade-shooting Chakram launcher, which ends up being too fiddly to be viable in the frenetic chaos of combat. A couple more wildcards in Saros' arsenal certainly wouldn't have gone amiss.

See the galaxy and meat people

In Housemarque's effort to make the roguelike experience more accessible, the studio arguably sands down an edge or two more than necessary. An easier start gives way to heftier challenges in the mid-game, but then somehow ends up easier than ever near the finale, which I can't imagine is intentional. This is due to a system of permanent upgrades that allows you to spend resources on better stats and abilities between runs, as well as a system for tweaking difficulty by adding in various gameplay modifiers. It's nice that no run need ever be entirely wasted, as you can spend the cash you earned back at the middle manager vending machine who lives in the hub zone, but a bit more balancing wouldn't have gone amiss.

But, there's plenty more factors to elevate the experience again. Some of the later boss fights are magnificent in their cinematic splendor, and there's a strong sense of aesthetic across the board. In Saros, the omnipresent sun stands at the centre of everything, but this isn't a hearty, healing summer warmth. The light from above is terrible and portentous, with a mixture of drone metal and synth-laden electronic music setting a harshly awe-inspiring tone. There's a grim sense that you are being toyed with by higher forces, the eclipsed sun a merciless eye that sees everything. Meanwhile, constant themes of sand and dust give events a literal gritty quality, as is the uncomfortable and loaded image of grasping hands that recurs throughout.

Going rogue

All the theming, of course, centers around our protagonist, and Arjun Devraj is a strong character for all this to hang on. Early on, I worried he was going to be a bit of a generic Joe, but more fool me – that's just Saros playing its cards close to its chest for the first act. His unwavering desire to rescue the lost colony comes across as a blandly heroic motivation until we discover that Devraj has had more going on than he's been willing to admit, adding layers of complexity that gradually turn an off-the-rack protagonist into something much messier and more interesting.

Kohli – a proven actor – isn't always given a huge amount to work with, but things always get interesting when the script allows him to show off his skills. An early flash of rage where he sweeps everything off a table would feel de rigueur in most meathead action protagonists, but Kohli and the scene direction sells it as something more, especially when it flies in the face of the focused, level-headed soldier we've been experiencing until now. As a result, it's a lurch that forces us to reconsider our leading man, especially in the context of a story where characters are becoming violently unstable. A dark sign of things to come, or an understandable outburst in a high-stress situation?

More broadly, the storytelling is decently handled, with some good ideas and creative choices, though I'd say the narrative struggles a little when it comes to plot beats outside of Kohli's core arc. Several characters feel a bit caricatured, there's certain cosmic elements I would have rather remained mysterious instead of being plainly spelled out, and there's a couple of plot twists I'd predicted several hours before their scheduled reveal, which did puncture the "ta-dah" moment slightly. Still, the ending brought me back around, and I walked away from the story with that pleasantly ponderous feeling you get from all good science-fiction, knowing I'd be thinking about it for a while afterwards.

Back to the beginning

By the end of Saros, the answer to "how does it endure without entropy" is clear: it doesn't. Perhaps that's why it's not a hugely long game – a dedicated player can kill it off in a week or two – which is a wise choice for something that doesn't want to overstay its welcome and keep the good bits condensed.

So, while Saros can't help but exist in the shadow of what came before and invite comparisons that aren't always to its benefit, this is still Housemarque doing what it does best, and a strong rebuke to the idea that thoughtful or emotive stories in games always have to be paired with slow or minimalist gameplay. Explosive action and cerebral storytelling – you can have both.

Saros was reviewed on PS5, with a code provided by the publisher.

Not ready to leave the cosmos? Find out all the best sci-fi games out there!

Poncle's new Vampire Survivors deckbuilding spin-off, Vampire Crawlers, is already tearing it up on Steam, and it looks like yet another banger 2026 roguelike to add to the pile.

Since releasing two days ago on Steam, Vampire Crawlers (or its Christian name "Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors") has received over 4,000 reviews on its Steam store page, with 98% of them being positive, thus netting the game an "Overwhelmingly Positive" rating. And frankly, it seems like perfect timing, given that 2026's other favorite deckbuilder, Slay The Spire 2, plummeted to a 66% positive lifetime Steam review score after first major update earlier this week.

According to SteamDB, the game has also amassed a concurrent player peak of 40,802 on Steam since its release, which is not a bad start at all considering its big brother Vampire Survivors peaked at 77,061 in 2022.

Looking at the Steam reviews, players seem to be agreed that it's just as engrossing as its predecessor, with one of the top reviews saying: "This is not a game. This is a time travel machine that warps you forward 20 hours in the future despite playing only one session. Be prepared to bring along a H.G. Wells novel and an Italian phrasebook." Another pits it against its contemporaries, saying: "Dare I say it's better than Vampire Survivors? Dare I say 2 hours of this is more fun than 20 hours of Slay the Spire 2? Dare I say it's worth triple the asking price?"

So from the sounds of things, it's maybe not advisable to pick up Vampire Crawlers just yet if you want to get literally anything else done. Personally I'm waiting until I finish Pragmata to sink my teeth in… get it?

Slay the Spire 2 almost had fewer new cards because of the co-creator's love for Dark Souls, but testers "were not jiving with that at all."

Mewgenics co-creator Edmund McMillen says there are details about the cat breeding tactical roguelike that nobody has found yet.

Over two months since release, Mewgenics is still my choice for the best game of the year so far, and it's going to take something extremely special to unseat it from its cat turd-covered podium. Personally, I've put about 120 hours into the game and still feel like I won't be seeing the end of it for a while yet, but given how popular it's been and how many hours some have put into the game, everything about it must be out there now… right?

McMillen took to Twitter to marvel, "It’s crazy that at this point there are still aspects of Mewgenics that people haven’t figured out yet," and when pressed whether he meant from the lore or gameplay front, the game director explained, "Both, but more lore than gameplay."

Of course, some will undoubtedly take this as a challenge to find out anything and everything about the game. McMillen is no stranger to elaborate secrets; just look at some of the bizarre unlock requirements in his other famous roguelike, The Binding of Isaac. Namely, The Forgotten, which required an elaborate multi-step quest that took place across the whole game, allowing you to unlock the character during the final area of your run.

Of course, this also invites players to datamine the game to find out things that were supposed to be hidden, which is exactly what happened in The Binding of Isaac Rebirth, much to McMillen's dismay.

While you're here, why not check out the best roguelike games

After reaching over 27 million players with a roguelike that popularized an entire subgenre, Vampire Survivors developer Poncle is now working on a whopping 15 projects at the same time.

"We're working on 15 PROJECTS, not 15 games," the developer clarified in a tweet following a few internet misquotes, "this includes VS, DLCs, free updates, our published games, etc."

Poncle went more in-depth about its expansive plans in an interview with The Game Business, where chief strategy officer Matteo Sapio announced that the breakout, auto-battling, bullet heaven roguelike Vampire Survivors has amassed 27 million players. In fact, the game's been such a big success that the company is now opening studios in Japan and Italy to fuel those aforementioned 15 projects.

That ambitious pipeline includes more Vampire Survivors spin-off games, not unlike the recently released (and dangerously moreish) deckbuilder Vampire Crawlers. Sapio explains it's an opportunity to use the "famous Vampire Survivors IP to experiment in new genres."

But after the hit game went viral, outside developers apparently approached Poncle for collaborations as well, which is how Warhammer Survivors was born. Auroch Digital is developing the game using the Vampire Survivor Engine, and Sapio says this is because Poncle itself didn't have the expertise to make a Warhammer 40k game and do it justice: "If we have knowledge of the IP, we will [make the game] ourselves. But a lot of times we don't."

Not everything Poncle touches has a survivors-ish flavor, though. Elsewhere in that 15-project plan are two entirely original games in development, Sapio reveals, alongside the free updates and mammoth DLCs you'd expect from the company.

Still, 15 projects is an ambitious workload for any company, big or small, but Sapio promises the developer isn't biting off more than it can chew with its numerous collaborations, updates, spin-off games, and originals. "We don't want to be AAA or AA," he explains. "We're efficient with costs. We don't take useless risks. We invest in people. So, with 15 projects, one can fail, one can go good, and you balance that." Essentially, the gigantic hits make up for the games that flop.

New card-based Vampire Survivors game is "hopefully the first in a series of spinoffs," but the roguelike's dev is also "working on something" related to a proper sequel

Supergiant Games creative director Greg Kasavin has a rather humble approach to thinking about the long-term legacy of Hades and Hades 2, especially considering they're two of the most acclaimed roguelikes of all time.

GamesRadar+ caught up with Kasavin ahead of the 2026 BAFTA Games Awards last week and asked him what he hopes will be Hades' legacy. He told us he doesn't think about it very much, and that he's just happy people play his studio's games at all. The fact that people seem to enjoy those games is just a bonus.

"We never know what the so-called legacies of our games may be. The legacy of almost every video game is to be forgotten," said Kasavin. "So, if we manage to make things that don't get forgotten right away, that's great. But, you know, above all, we're trying to make games that, like I said before, hopefully leave a positive impression on the person who played, make them feel as though they were glad that they spent the time, if nothing else."

I'm not even much of a roguelike guy, but Hades is one of the very few games in the genre I genuinely enjoyed all the way through, and I wasn't surprised to see it and its sequel come home from all of the awards shows juggling all sorts of different wins across various categories. What I'm saying is, Kasavin is being very modest here. I think we can safely assume Hades and Hades 2 will be remembered for a very long time in the roguelike pantheon and in in the industry more broadly.

Still, he acknowledges that, even if money isn't an issue, all games require some degree of a time commitment, and he's just appreciative of anyone willing to part ways with that invaluable type of currency for one of his games.

"You could get games sometimes for really cheap on a good Steam sale, you can pirate them, or what have you, but they all require time," Kasavin said. "And so we have to be choosy with games, even if they're completely free. So we really, really appreciate that people choose to play our games at all, and we want them to feel glad that they did that, not like they should have played something else instead. And we hope, yeah, that they find some richness there to think about."

Again, this is Kasavin selling himself short here. Hades has a 93 on Metacritic and Hades 2 has a 95, signaling "universal acclaim" for both games. People are indeed playing them, and they are indeed enjoying them. Ultimately, Kasavin's view is that players are the ones who get to decide a game's legacy, so why bother giving it any thought?

"When it comes to something like the legacy of Hades and Hades 2, it's just not for any of us to decide, so it's not something I give a lot of thought to in that way, because once you release a game as a developer, it no longer fully belongs to you," he said, adding that he thinks much more about the fact that the legacy of, uh, Greek mythology, doesn't belong to any one person or company.

"There's no, you know, IP holder for Greek mythology. It's a communal thing. It spans – even though it originated in ancient Greece – it spans the world, and these gods presided over the entire world," Kasavin said. Hard to argue with him on that point.

They weren't "distributed on Steam," but Hades 2 lead who oversaw that true ending change says myths are also "told and retold" by design

Making a sequel like Slay the Spire 2 is a difficult thing. Being a roguelike deckbuilder, there are a lot of mechanical considerations, such as what should change and be expanded versus what should stay the same. Casey Yano, co-creator of the first game and co-founder of studio Mega Crit Games, actually valued an approach closer to FromSoftware's, until playtesters told him otherwise.

"We did mess around with, like, what percentage of the card pool should be different for returning characters. At first, it was less," he explains in an interview with Edge magazine. This logic stems from the Dark Souls series, where you can replicate particular builds – two-handed axe, long-range, and such – across the sequels, with the key differences stemming from the kind of encounters you'll face.

"If you say, 'I'm going to make a katana build,' you can make essentially the same exact character again in Dark Souls 2 and 3 – you're just up against new challenges," Yano says. "I like that, personally."

Alas, people trying out early builds of Slay the Spire 2 were less amused. "They were not jiving with that at all, 'We need new stuff!'" Yano recalls.

I can see Yano's logic, and share his affinity for series that allow you to maintain a singular approach across installments. Dark Souls is a perfect example – there's a certain pleasure in taking your character outline across all three games, adapting to whatever crosses your path.

Slay the Spire had seven years' worth of updates, and it probably seemed more logical to lean on that when it came to the follow-up's card selection. But, as it turns out, people like starting fresh too, and Slay the Spire 2's success makes it clear those playtesters were onto something.

Slay the Spire 2 won't get an endless mode like Balatro because it limits "infinite strategies," but creator says "maybe a modder will think of a way to make it work."