I didn't think Slay The Spire needed a sequel. That was dumb

When Slay The Spire 2 was announced, I honestly didn't feel the need for it. The first game - deckbuilder of all deckbuilders - spawned a torrential smorgasbord of inspirants that has for years inflamed Steam's guts. If you really wanted Slay The Spire But More, you only had to put your hand into those guts and pull out any one of the dozens of disciples and see if they put a sufficiently intriguing twist on the formula. Monster Train. Griftlands. Roguebook. Fights In Tight Spaces. StarVaders. It remains a feast out there for rummagers of roguelike card wreckers. I didn't think there was much a Slay The Spire sequel could do to rekindle my feverish obsession that any of these games couldn't.

I stare now into the beady eyes of a gigantic crab with full knowledge of my inadequacies. What a fool I am.

I will admit much of the giddiness comes from being intimately familiar with the rhythm of play already. I know the playstyle of the Silent (the returning skull-faced poisoner from the first game) better than I know the crannies of my own bathroom. I understand the push and pull of cardy combat well enough to dive straight in and swim a mile. But then, all of a sudden, my leg is bitten off by a giant translucent fish, and I realise that this sequel has tons of new horrors.

The bosses, for a start, are creative in a way that goes beyond a few new simple arithmetical tricks. They are feisty, strongly themed bruisers. There's a sand worm that sucks you slowly toward it, and to get away you have to play escape cards. The giant crustacean I've already mentioned bullies you from both sides, but accidentally thwacks his own claws in the process. And there's a cross-legged levitator ghoul called the "Knowledge Demon" who makes YOU decide which nasty debuff card he will add to your pile. 

The tweaky new rules for boss fights stack up in every act. There's an ancient demonic waterfall that will self-destruct in a cloud of painful steam just before it dies, meaning you need to have your guard up right to the last breath. And a slimy inkblot beast that will shrug off the first dozen hits or so, meaning you've got to absolutely rush him down as quickly as possible. Even elites - the intermittent minibosses - need to be watched carefully for sly differences in approach. Some do have familiar tactics though, like the Ouroboros-ish centipede who regenerates its dead parts, meaning you have to kill them all within a single turn. 

If the enemies provide blurts of pained delight, one of the new playable heroes is widening my smile further. The Necrobinder is a grim reaperess with a big scythe. She is not immortal, but her giant pet skeleton hand is. Every time this left mitt dies it comes back to life on the next turn. You can pump it up with extra health and instruct it to attack the baddies on your behalf, and it will absorb damage heading your way too. It has very low health to begin with (a single hit will often crumble it to dust every turn) but there are ways to beef the little guy up until you're smashing enemies like a chaotic toddler with one of those big green Hulk hands.

But this is just flavour compared to the Necrobinder's real gift: the doom debuff. Slap an enemy with a stack of 10 or 20 doom and they'll die when they reach that level of health, instead of when they reach zero. You can keep pumping this up with doomy attacks, curses and grim powers, until it essentially becomes a kind of reverse poison - a means of lessening the enemy's health bar from the other direction. Oh, you've got 250 health max health, weird eyeball monster? No you don't. You've got 200. Now it's 150. Now you're dead.

The downside is that a scumbag demon will only die from doom after their own attack occurs. Which means you can't rely on it to get you out of every scrape. If you're about to be floored by a lethally huge attack, it won't matter that the doom will kick in and your attacker will eat dirt afterwards. You'll already be chowing down on the soil yourself. 

It's still early days for my Spire clambering. I have less than ten hours in it, and I'm yet to clear the tower and unlock daily runs. There are lots of greyed out unlockables that I've still got to prise open, which I will only get by repeatedly throwing my skeletal body into the grinder like a butcher gleefully making sausage meat. But I'm glad I ignored my deckbuilder fatigue enough to give it a try.