The roguelike of the moment breaks historical records on Steam and players are amazed: “The perfect sequel to the perfect game.”

Last week, Early Access was launched on Steam for one of the most eagerly awaited indie games of 2026, Slay the Spire 2. The first installment, with 95% “Extremely Positive” reviews, has a legion of fans who have given its sequel a try, even in early access, and the reception has been completely overwhelming. “We’ll getcha one day Silksong,” Mega Crit said, obviously joking.

Slay the Spire 2 has already made it into Steam’s history books, and that’s no exaggeration. With a peak of 574,638 concurrent players, it not only ranks first among roguelikes, but also enters the historical and global Top 20 on Valve’s platform, surpassing games such as Battlefield 6, Valheim, Terraria, and Helldivers 2, among many others. In fact, as much as people joke about it, that figure is only slightly less than 13,000 players shy of Hollow Knight: Silksong’s peak.

“Our team is TOTALLY blown away by the amount of people who have been playing & sharing their love for the game we’ve been working on for the past half decade,” said X, alongside a screenshot of the game’s performance on Steam. “We’re excited to continue to make StS2 the best that it can be!!”

This is what the future holds for Slay the Spire 2

At the moment, Mega Crit has not specified how long Slay the Spire 2 will be in early access, although it is worth mentioning that the original was in early access for a year and a half. However, this does not necessarily mean that its sequel will be in early access for a similar length of time, as this period will mainly be used to balance cards and builds, with content likely to be added after the release of version 1.0. This was the case with Slay the Spire, when its final version also brought new cards, enemies, elite bosses, relics, etc., as well as, obviously, bug fixes.

What they do make clear is the business model, if we can call it that when it’s not a game as a service. “We’re microtransaction haters,” said Casey Yano, one of the founders of Mega Crit. Still, “a lot of our players threaten to buy all and any cosmetics we may ever release.”

That said, and although paid post-launch content is practically ruled out, Yano emphasizes that this does not mean that his work on the game ends with the release of the final version. “Both in STS 1 and STS 2, you can replace entire swathes of code, so you can kind of do anything,” he explains. “A lot of our focus this time around is reducing friction, so players have more resources and easier entry points to work with mods.”

Slay the Spire 2 is now available on Steam in Early Access, while Slay the Spire can be purchased on all current platforms. In fact, it is currently on sale on Steam for $6.24.

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