Slay the Spire 2’s explosive early access launch makes it the most-played roguelike in Steam’s history on day one

Who’s up slaying their spire? Well, a whole heck of a lot of gamers, that’s who.

Slay the Spire 2’s early access launch yesterday can only be described as a tremendous success. The long-anticipated sequel to one of the earliest and most popular roguelikes on Steam had such high demand that it caused issues on the app’s store yesterday.

But eventually, error codes subsides, and the numbers started pouring in. Less than a day later, it sits at Overwhelmingly Positive with almost 5,000 reviews, and a shocking all-time peak (reached within the past hour as of publishing) of over 430,000 concurrent players. That’s enough to instantly make it the most-played Steam game with the “roguelike” tag, ever.

On day one, it skyrocketed past Elden Ring Nightreign’s previous record of 313,593, and utterly dwarfing the high of the original Slay the Spire’s peak of 57,025. And the rest of the list is also nothing to scoff at: Hades 2, Megabonk, Vampire Survivors, Risk of Rain 2, and on and on.

Slay the Spire 2 adds on to the original game’s formula with new characters and cards, but also online co-op, giving every card battler fan a reason to gift their friends the game (or bug them until they buy it), marking uncharted territory for the series.

These kinds of numbers are a dream for any game dev, let alone an indie team like MegaCrit, who have taken years to work on and iterate the sequel. It’s a feel-good story for sure, especially when those are in short supply these days. I’m hoping to see some sales numbers soon, but either way, that many players on an indie roguelike card battler is impressive no matter how you look at it.

Congrats to the team at MegaCrit, because if this is just the beginning, I can’t wait to see how STS2 grows and improves over time with updates leading in to an eventual 1.0 full release.

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Slay the Spire 2 isn’t your typical deckbuilder, where you don’t have to take care of your health.

While there are five different characters to pick from, none of them is immortal. They will all take damage, and they will perish if you’re not careful. Taking damage is inevitable; no matter what you do, you’ll always end up receiving damage.

What matters is whether you’re healing your character at the correct moments.

How to heal in Slay the Spire 2

Healing is a premium activity in Slay the Spire 2. You can’t heal whenever you want, and restoring HP comes at a price. You’ll occasionally come across Rest Spots that appear as a campfire on your path. These spots can be found only sporadically, so you’ll need to plan carefully. Their locations on every run is compeltely random.

When you’re at the spot, you’ll have two different options: Rest or Smith. If you choose the latter, you can improve a card by applying different upgrades. If you choose the former, you’ll be able to recover a percentage of your character’s lost health.

You can also find different Relics and consumables on your run, and some of them might allow you to restore HP. Potions are one-time use, and you can have a maximum of three at a time. This method isn’t a guaranteed solution since all runs are random. It could happen that you might be unable to find an applicable Relic or consumable.

Slay the Spire 2 has five characters, and one of them has a healing ability. The Ironclad’s default relic, the Burning Blood, allows you to recover 6 HP at the end of combat. This is an extremely useful relic to have, which ranks him well on our characters’ tier list.

Outside of these methods, there’s no other way to recover HP and restore the health of your character in Slay the Spire 2. The same methods also apply if you’re playing co-op with your friends.

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