I gotta be honest, Slay The Spire never quite sunk its claws in me the way it did for other people. That's no criticism—the game's great—I just lack whatever piece of brain chemistry it is that makes some people while away weeks at a time on run after run after run.
There's something about its factions and room-based, vertical setup that just scratches my brain in a way that STS' more straightforward, single-character progression doesn't. It's undeniably messier than Slay The Spire, but I have to admit I like that.
is due out six weeks from now on May 21, and promises a continuation [[link]] of the first game's multi-level card-battling with "five brand new clans" and new room and equipment cards, which let you add modifiers to your units or to the whole dang train itself. Like I said, I lost more time than I'm comfortable admitting to the first game, and I suspect the imminent release of the second will jeopardise both my career and interpersonal relationships.
Which might not go for everyone at PCG, mind you. Although our staff hivemind declared the original Monster Train the back when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth, our own Jody Macgregor scored it a respectable but unscintillating 77% in his , praising its combos for letting him feel like he had "sneakily broken the game" but lamenting a frustrating randomness to its decks and upgrade paths. [[link]] Nothing I've seen of the second game so far makes it seem markedly different from that experience but, hey, that's just what some of us ordered.