Slay the Spire 2's Next Character Will Be 'Stranger' Than th

"I think we're probably going to be looking at a slightly stranger character than the originals for the next character." That's Mega Crit co-founder Casey Yano, speaking in an exclusive interview with PC Gamer published on April 2, describing the direction for Slay the Spire 2's next playable addition. For a game that already launched into early access with five characters and hit an all-time peak of 574,638 concurrent players in its first week, the promise of something mechanically weirder than what's already there is a tantalising hook.

Yano's phrasing is deliberately vague, but "stranger" in the context of a deckbuilder usually means new resource systems, unconventional win conditions, or card interactions that break the rules the other characters play by. The first game's Watcher, with her stance-swapping risk-reward loop, was exactly that kind of left-field addition, and it ended up being one of the most rewarding characters to master. Fans on the Slay the Spire subreddit have been hoping The Watcher herself would return, but the brief silhouette at the end of the early access trailer doesn't appear to match her design. I'm glad Mega Crit seems to be pushing toward something new rather than retreading familiar ground; the sequel's roster already feels distinct from the original, and a character that leans into mechanical complexity could give high-Ascension players something fresh to obsess over.

Yano also confirmed that new characters fall under the longer-term content planned for the 1.0 release, alongside additional Ascension levels and the Act 4 boss fight against the teased Architect. The true ending won't arrive before the new game modes currently in development, either, so there's no rush on that front. Mega Crit expects early access to last roughly one to two years, similar to the first game's timeline.