Mega Crit plans Slay the Spire 2 beta release on Nov. 12

Mega Crit plans to release a Slay the Spire 2 beta on Thursday, November 12 on the preview branch in Steam Library. Players should back up saves first.

The newsletter also includes a first look at a creature from the game’s next alternate Act, an aquatic being from a shadowy area possibly tied to the Underdocks. The creature was one players were asked to design last month, and Mega Crit showed the chosen design without naming it. There were plenty of good community suggestions, but the studio revealed the official version instead. The alternate Act was among the projects Mega Crit said in August were in development.

The studio said updates are shaping up to return to a regular cadence after the September break, with big new features ahead. Mega Crit took its annual break throughout September, pausing Slay the Spire 2 updates, and returned at the end of the month. The studio waited until late September to publish the newsletter so it could share more solid information about the next update.

In August, Mega Crit said its active projects included experimental modes, a second act, and a new character. The studio had to get the core game to a place it was happy with before fully concentrating on new additions, work that began in earnest in August. It said the coming content requires extensive design, UX, art, animation, and balancing before the experimental beta branch. Mega Crit said via X that the size of the upcoming patch will be “proportional to the wait,” and gave this reassurance through its X account after explaining that the new content requires substantial development work.

The experimental content will debut on the beta branch first, then the main branch will catch up with content, balance, and fixes from stable beta version v0.111.0. Whether the experimental game modes, alternate Act Two, and new character will all make the cut is uncertain, as they are big things requiring development. Mega Crit is withholding update details because the new content will have more impact if the studio says less about it, teasing “big pieces of content” alluded to in past newsletters.

Co-founder Casey Yano said fans liked co-op, so the team wants to extend the mode’s lifespan, describing the response as “really positive,” and he ruled out sharing resources such as gold because pooling them could let one player snowball too easily. “If players can pool their resources to a single player it’s sometimes too easy to have one player snowball,” Yano said. Casey Yano said the team will not add a way to share resources such as gold in co-op because pooling resources can make it too easy for one player to snowball.

Yano also said custom run options probably won’t arrive until near the 1.0 launch, and that controller support and minimum text size requirements make custom runs difficult, likely meaning desktop players and mods will get the most flexibility. Yano expressed interest in adding every feature and exploring every corner of the custom run mode, though he noted that controller support and minimum text size requirements make it difficult to implement all ideas before the 1.0 launch.

Co-founder Anthony Giovannetti said the team plans to let players view earlier beta card art and the Timeline, sharing this as extra good news during the community question segment. To access the update, players must switch to the preview branch through the game versions and betas menu in Steam Library, and should back up saves first, instructions the studio gave at the end of the Neowsletter.