After being delayed in late 2025, Slay the Spire 2 entered early access on March 5 and was instantly a mega-hit. It shot past the two most recent big-hitters, Marathon and Resident Evil: Requiem, and remains firmly entrenched at the top of Steam’s best-sellers.

That’s perhaps not surprising for the sequel to one of the best deck-builders ever made (and the winner of PC Gamer’s Best Design award in 2019). Right now an incredible 224,000 players are slaying that spire, and there are just under 6,000 reviews on Steam that average out to an “overwhelmingly positive” rating It’s a hit! But developer Mega Crit wants to remind players that it’s not the be-all and end-all.

“Congratulations to the Marathon team on their launch,” says a post on the game’s official account, quoting Bungie’s launch post, before inserting tongue firmly in cheek: “Don’t let small indie passion projects like this pass you by just because Slay the Spire 2 is out.”

There’s also a little heart emoji at the end. The account also clarified to one player celebrating the “shade” that “it wasn’t supposed to be shade, we were being sarcastic.” It’s a joke folks, OK: not everything needs to be a gigantic fight, and so far Marathon is doing quite well in its own right. The reason for the tweet name-checking Marathon is most likely to be that the two games released at exactly the same time.

I’ve only managed one run in Slay the Spire 2 so far, and the vibe is definitely “more of what you loved.” Speaking to PC Gamer, Mega Crit co-founder Anthony Giovannetti described how the studio refines the game, likening it to butchery of all things:

“It’s kind of like you’re a butcher,” Giovannetti said. “You generate thousands, tens of thousands of different ideas and then you look at them all and you go, ‘these are bad,’ and you just cut them all away. There’s this constant culling process. Very rarely is there this golden idea you keep from start to finish. Most of it is this incredibly destructive process.”

Mega Crit says the plan is to keep Slay the Spire 2 in early access for one or two years “until the game feels great,” and add “cards, events, environments, enemies, and more” along the way. Elsewhere, the folks behind the Godot engine are celebrating Slay the Spire 2’s release, and reckon it has a chance of being “the biggest Godot game release to date.”