Risk of Rain 2

Risk of Rain 2 drops you onto the alien planet Petrichor V with a single weapon, a ticking difficulty clock and one goal: find the teleporter, survive what comes through it and move on. Hopoo Games took the 2013 original's loop of scaling danger and stacking loot and rebuilt it in full 3D as a third-person shooter, and the result is a roguelike where every run starts fragile and ends in a storm of missiles, lightning and drones that you built one pickup at a time.

Survive an Alien Planet

Every stage is a handcrafted locale, from the mossy cliffs of Distant Roost to the frozen Rallypoint Delta and the blazing, hellfire-forged heat of Abyssal Depths, and each one hides a teleporter somewhere in its terrain. Activating it summons a boss and a rising tide of monsters, and you hold the zone until the charge completes. Then you choose: take the exit toward the final confrontation on the moon, or keep looping the planet to see how far the scaling can be pushed.

The clock never stops. Difficulty climbs with every minute you spend, so the game constantly asks whether to explore a stage for more chests or press forward before the enemies outgrow you. Lemurians, Beetles, Stone Golems and Wisps give way to Elder Lemurians, Imp Overlords and Magma Worms, and the survivors scale just as limitlessly if you keep collecting.

Items That Stack Into Chaos

More than 110 items are scattered across chests, shrines and boss drops, and every one of them stacks. The strength of Risk of Rain 2 is how those effects combine in ways the game never spells out for you.

Common, Uncommon and Legendary Items White items like Soldier's Syringe and Tougher Times form the backbone of a build, greens like Ukulele and Harvester's Scythe add chain lightning and lifesteal, and a single red pickup such as Ceremonial Dagger or 57 Leaf Clover can redefine an entire run. Lunar Items and Equipment Lunar coins buy powerful double-edged items such as Shaped Glass and Gesture of the Drowned, while an equipment slot holds one active ability with a cooldown. Combine the right equipment with the right lunar item and it may fire itself endlessly. Logs and Lore Each new item, monster and stage you encounter unlocks a log entry in the Logbook. Reading them fills in the story of the planet and the crew that crashed there, and the item entries double as a strategy guide for what stacks well with what.

Eleven Survivors to Master

The crew unlocks through in-game challenges, and each survivor plays like a different game. Alternate skills earned through further challenges let you rebuild a familiar character around a new loadout.

• The Commando returns as the all-rounder, a straightforward gunner whose double pistols and tactical dive teach the fundamentals of movement, positioning and item stacking before you branch out.
• The Huntress and the Engineer come back from the original in new forms: the Huntress fires while sprinting and blinks across the battlefield, while the Engineer drops turrets that inherit every item he carries.
• MUL-T, the Captain and the Loader join the roster as newcomers, from MUL-T's swappable weapon modes to the Captain's orbital strikes and supply beacons and the Loader's grapple-and-punch momentum.
• Artificer, Mercenary, REX, Acrid and the Bandit round out the eleven, covering everything from elemental spellcasting and sword-dashing melee to poison, plant-based healing and the Bandit's revolver.

Artifacts, Difficulty and Replayability

Hidden across the planet are Artifacts, gameplay modifiers you unlock by finding their codes and completing a trial. The Artifact of Command lets you choose every item drop, Chaos turns on friendly fire, Metamorphosis assigns a random survivor each stage, and there are plenty more to toggle in any combination once earned. Layer those over Drizzle, Rainstorm and Monsoon difficulty settings, randomized stages, monster spawns and item drops, and no two runs look alike. Chris Christodoulou's soundtrack builds with each stage, and it remains one of the most recognizable scores in the genre.

Solo or Four-Player Co-op

Play alone and every decision is yours, or bring up to three friends into online co-op, where item drops are shared, teleporter events become a coordinated defense and one player's build can carry the group through a boss the others are not ready for. Difficulty scales with player count, so a full squad faces a planet that hits back harder, and looping together is where Risk of Rain 2 shows its most absurd late-game power.

Whether you are chasing your first escape from the moon or trying to see how many loops a well-built Engineer can survive, the teleporter is waiting. Pick a survivor, find the chests and start the clock.