Slay the Spire 2 Announced, Early Access Starts In 2025

The Triple-I Initiative showcase started with a big sequel for a genre-defining game. Slay the Spire 2 was announced with a cinematic trailer and teased an early access release to begin in 2025. That means we could still have a long wait for the full release.

Though the trailer didn't show any gameplay, the cinematic did feature some recognizable characters from the first game. It shows the Watcher and the Defect arriving on a quest, this time joined by a third character carrying a scythe and looking very Reaper-like. The trailer ends with a set of glowing eyes welcoming the heroes. Those appear to belong to Neow, the whale-looking creature who assisted you in the first game.

The original Slay the Spire helped define and popularize the deckbuilding roguelike RPG, letting you build an increasingly powerful deck as you ascend the tower and defeat the bosses within, while culling the weaker cards to make it ever more efficient. Lots of other games have followed with similar mechanics, but the original still enjoys an Overwhelmingly Positive user rating on Steam, and a very high 89 Metascore on GameSpot sister site Metacritic.

"Aspects of what make Slay the Spire great may not be unique among card-based games, but it's through the run-based nature and randomized elements that it sets itself apart," Chris Pereira wrote in GameSpot's 9/10 Slay the Spire review. "Because starting up another run and trying something new and different is such a tantalizing prospect, experimentation is encouraged. While it's still disappointing to fail before reaching the end, more often than not that failure can be traced back to a specific decision or series of decisions--be it an ill-advised card acquisition, the choice to upgrade a card rather than heal, or something else. You never know what the next layer of the spire will bring, but the next delightful quandary to tackle is always right around the corner."

For more, be sure to check out all the biggest Triple-I Initiative showcase announcements.