Reading Room

I have slightly more brain now and maybe enough energy to post more? Let's find out. I'm sure you've missed me posting about random video games.

Anyway, Slay the Spire 2, the sequel to my most favorite roguelike deckbuilder Slay the Spire came out in Early Access two weeks ago, and is apparently stunningly popular -- it had 500,000 concurrent players its first weekend, beating basically everything else on Steam at the time, which no one was really expecting from, you know, an indie card game.

I haven't played it enough to give a full review, because even in EA there is a lot more content -- there are five characters, two of which are brand new, all of which have new cards, and there are all sorts of new mechanics and events I haven't discovered yet. So far I have now beaten what exists of the game with four of the five characters and I know I haven't seen anywhere near everything yet. I think it's currently balanced harder than the original game, but the subreddit is full of people saying it is way too easy, so I guess we will see what happens when the balance patches start coming out.

But the really cool thing about this game is the multiplayer, which we only found out existed in a trailer that they released, like, two weeks before the actual game. It has co-op with up to four players! I only have one friend who plays this game, as far as I know -- gelishan, who actually introduced me to the original game -- and we played a game of it the other night, and I have to say that co-op is absolutely the most fun way to experience the game. It helps to be on voice chat, so you can coordinate things like 'who are we targeting first" or "if you have anything inflicting Vulnerable, please play that first" or "do you need this Strength Potion" or "do you want me to play Piercing Wail this turn so you don't take 35 damage straight to the face" or whatever, but I guess theoretically you could play it in silence and just deal with the fact that everyone is playing their turns simultaneously.

Anyway, that is clearly the way this game has always been meant to be played and I need to do this again at some point. The co-op multiplayer is absolutely amazing! I don't know that I would recommend the game in its current single-player state to people who haven't played the original, just because it is already a hard game and it helps to have some idea of how three of the five characters play, if you're going to play it by yourself. But if you are playing multiplayer, I think you can just go for it and you and your friends can take turns carrying each other through the game.

So, yeah, that's what I've been up to, as I slowly regain some brain. Slaying the Spire anew!

(Also it's really weird to actually talk to someone you have known on the internet for, like, 25 years, but you've never heard their voice before.)