Indie Games Yeet Themselves Out Of Slay The Spire 2’s Way

On February 19, developer Mega Crit finally announced that Slay the Spire 2 has a release date: March 5. For those of us who would gladly sell a kidney to get our hands on the sequel to the best roguelike deckbuilder ever made (sorry, Balatro), this is incredible news. For every indie dev who was inspired to make a roguelike deckbuilder of their own following the original game’s success, however, this is potentially awful news, as Slay the Spire 2’s early access release date is smack dab in the middle of one of the busiest release periods of the year. It’s Silksong all over again, and games that were set to release around that time are now moving out of the way. 

The most well-publicized delay so far is Handmancers, a roguelike deckbuilder from developer and publisher 58BLADES. As the devs revealed in a post on X, Handmancers was supposed to release during the Turn-Based Thursday Fest, a seven-day-long yearly event that’s scheduled to begin on March 6. Considering that it starts a day after Slay the Spire 2’s March 5 release date, this one feels like a smart call. “Yea…we’d get absolutely crushed,” the team wrote. 

The developers behind Mini Tank Mayhem, a tower defense and deck-building strategy game from Algorocks, have yet to confirm exactly why their game has suddenly been delayed. However, an apparent tester on Reddit claimed that Slay the Spire 2 is indeed to blame. While a random comment on Reddit is obviously not the most reliable source, the timing of Mini Tank Mayhem’s sudden delay is awfully suspicious. Its SteamDB history confirms that its 3 March, 2026 release date was pushed back to April 30 (and then changed again to April 29) mere hours after Slay the Spire 2’s latest trailer dropped.

Omelet You Cook, a “cozy chaotic cooking roguelike” published by SchuBox Games, was ahead of the curve. The two-man dev team responsible for the excellent Balatro-like food prep game decided to move up its 1.0 launch back in January. As confirmed by co-developer Dan Schumacher during an interview with GamesRadar, they pulled it forward out of fear that they’d be overshadowed by Slay the Spire 2’s yet-to-be confirmed (at the time) March release window. “Every streamer we’d reach out to will be playing it. Every roguelike enjoyer will be checking it out. Even I’ll be playing so much that I won’t have time to finish our game!”

While no other devs have yet publicly announced any Slay the Spire 2-related delays, it’s clearly become a popular topic of discussion among indie studios. Bermrad, the studio behind the hack-and-slash roguelite Trials of Valor, noted that their game sharing “some elements with Slay the Spire” was less of an issue than the release date itself. Unfortunately, the two games now share the same release date, as Bermrad announced roughly three weeks ago that Trials of Valor will be dropping on March 5. 

Other studios have instead chosen to have a little fun with the increased attention on early March’s release lineup. Grimslair’s developer, ThunderRam Studios, revealed on X that there will be “no hiding in the bushes until the hype train passes,” as the studio intends to stick to its previously announced March 6 release date. Fishagon, who are working on the party card game Vice Versa, opted to copy and paste 58BLADES’ announcement and swap it out with references to their game instead.

Games have tried ride the hype wave for a top Steam release before. It’s essentially what the developers behind the decent Metroidvania Adventure of Samsara did last year, launching on the same day as Silksong. It did not go well. Other studios, fortunately, have been spared from making that choice themselves. Slumber Realm’s devs, Chugga Chugga LLC, announced that their card game roguelike won’t be ready in time to compete with Slay the Spire 2 anyway, or, as they put it, “I guess in every sense it has no impact.”