I fall for the "Risk of Rain 2" trick every time. An hour into the run, my character is painted from head to toe with bizarre power-ups, looking like a catamaran rolled in a novelty store. Yes, I have three teddy bears strapped to my thighs, but this is important. And of course, I have seven needles stuck in my head. How else am I going to increase my attack speed? With dozens of items loaded, the "risk of rain2" always gives me the illusion of invincibility. 'I am a golden god,' I exclaim in my mind. Then something hits me so hard that my divinity is blown away. In an instant, I am dead. How could I have ever thought that three teddy bears were enough?

"Risk of Rain 2" is a roguelike game, where the loot you get along the way is more important than where you go. The last year I spent in Early Access was actually not even an ending, just an endless repetition of levels that threw more enemies at you until you succumbed to the inevitability of mathematics. This suited the game. It's a good thing there is an ending. An epic final stage and boss battle would have sentenced me to an out before I inadvertently spent two hours without blinking an eye. But that doesn't change how good Risk of Rain 2 is.

Like Slay the Spire, Risk of Rain 2 is a game about finding items that make you stronger in obvious and unpredictable ways, building up over and over again until you're sitting on Olympus. On screen, you're shooting and chopping through hordes of strange otherworldly creatures, but what you're really doing is compulsively climbing a finely tuned power curve over and over again.

While the idea is basic for a video game, Risk of Rain 2 is far better done than similar games I've played. Part of this is due to its unwavering commitment to power creep. It doesn't try to keep the numbers down, it doesn't try to do too much damage, and it makes sure that the dozens of different item combinations can't be abused. The game knows that all the fun is in the exploitation of the boss, mincing him down in five seconds and squealing with glee.

There are 10 characters, each with a different play style and optimal items, each with their own satisfying strategies. One of my favorites is the Engineer, who moves slowly and throws a pile of explosive, bouncy balls as his primary attack (reminiscent of a McDonald's employee stumbling and launching an armful of plastic ball pit balls into the air). The engineer's real power comes from a pair of autonomous turrets he can place. A good engineer is always on the lookout for the Bustling Fungus, an item that heals him and his nearby allies if they don't move for two seconds. Guess what won't move? It's a turret: stack the Bustling Fungus on top of it and stand still next to the turret to double your recovery rate.

The turret shares your buffs and gains other benefits like attack speed and crit chance. The last time I played as an engineer, I picked up a rare item that revived me when I died. I watched as my turret was destroyed by a boss and magically revived 3 seconds later. I could have placed a new turret and it wouldn't have mattered, but I like the fact that the game plays fair with items and allows for such discoveries.

Risk of Rain 2 isn't worried about giving you reckless abilities. The difficulty level increases the more you play, eventually reaching HAHAHA, a difficulty level that can be scaled infinitely.

The game revels in damage numbers not because you have to worry about them, but because it knows that the fun of power creep is watching 300 unreadable numbers overlap and a habanero red critical peek into your face. I'm tired of loot games that give you swords with slightly better stats, but "Risk of Rain" condenses the entire power curve into an hour, and instead of getting better equipment, you can stack ukuleles whose every attack radiates electricity to nearby enemies, or feathers that can jump five times without touching the ground

"I love doing this.

This all works because it feels so good to play, which may surprise you if you've only seen screenshots; Risk of Rain 2's characters look small against the vast landscape they run through. Jumps are plentiful and floaty. The graphics are simple, nothing that would have been shocking to see on a PC 10 years ago. However, the characters move and aim with precision when you wave the mouse around, and everything in the game is designed to scale aggressively. Floaty jumps are suddenly welcome when the speed of movement is tripled. A vast, almost empty level can take minutes to traverse at first, but with a quadruple jump across a gap or an item that launches you forward from a sprint, it's only a matter of seconds.

Risk of Rain 2 nailed all of this on the first day of Early Access, but since then several characters have been added and I have enjoyed learning them all. My favorite of the new characters is Loader, who looks like Ripley in her "Alien" ex-suit. Loader is a fierce melee attacker and flies all over the map with his charge-up superpunch. At first, I thought he was clumsy, staying away from the action. Later, however, he learned to combine it with his utility ability, the grappling hook, to dangle on enemies before striking them and catching them with a bungee as they bounced back.

In Risk of Rain 2, there is little to do but focus on the action. There are no decisions to make about leveling up points, collecting ammunition, or dealing with resources other than money. There are no decisions to make about leveling up points, collecting ammunition, or dealing with resources other than money. There is some randomness to the levels, but they almost look familiar, wide but mostly empty, with only scattered places to find item boxes or activate teleporters to leave the stage. But the atmosphere is there. The emptiness is compelling. In the brief moments when the screen is covered with lasers, explosions, and numbers, I feel like an explorer marooned in a strange land, eager to learn more about it.

I promise it's not just a whim, and I can tell that the developers of Risk of Rain 2 have nurtured this feeling with care. Despite being a game with no dialogue or cutscenes except when you start the game and after you defeat the last boss, there is a story here, told in log entries to find and unlock items, enemies, and environments. I'm not much for story, but I do love secrets.

Many of the characters are unlocked through strange and opaque rituals. They are trivial in the tutorials and wiki pages, but I find it strange to imagine myself stumbling upon them and opening them. There are stages that can only be reached by following arcane procedures, opening alternate teleporters or jumping outside of what appear to be stage boundaries. Most of these were experienced through friends who had already unlocked them, bringing back the experience of guiding someone to a hidden door in "Wolfenstein 3D" or being shown a secret exit in "Super Mario World. "Risk of Rain 2" has an intentionally unguided There is a strong spirit of playground discovery that I haven't felt in a game since I played "Fez." Even if you do go through the whole thing, there is still the pleasure of discovering that there is more to these stages than meets the eye.

I've spent most of my time in Risk of Rain 2 playing cooperatively with two or three friends. Single-player doesn't give you the scale I'm looking for, the insanity of countless enemies and damage numbers on the screen, and solo play diminishes what I like about this game; it's a great Discord hangout, and I've been playing it for a few months now, and I've been enjoying it a lot, but I'm not sure I'll ever get the chance to play it again. Chat about life, about what this or that item does while you're searching for teleporters or fighting small groups of enemies at each stage. You can pay half attention. Then you reunite and focus on defeating the boss. In multiplayer, there is a nice ebb and flow. Solo, the teleporters and item hunting gets boring quickly.

Still, moving up the power curve is irresistible either way. There are items you haven't seen yet and timed chests that can't be opened at the speedrunner's pace. I'll probably open them someday once I've unlocked the alternate abilities of all the characters. Perhaps months down the road, on an irregular Sunday when my friends and I happen to be active on Discord at the same time and can kill an hour or two. It's an all-season sport to get your hands on a divinity.