Fight your way off the planet
Risk of Rain 2 drops you on an alien world packed with handcrafted locales, frenzied monsters and enormous bosses. Your goal is simple: fight through to the final boss and escape, or keep the run going and see how long you can last. A scaling system pushes both you and your enemies to keep growing in power for as long as the run continues, so nothing stays comfortable for long. Between runs you unlock survivors, each with a distinct combat style and alternate skills, including the Commando, Engineer, Huntress, Captain and MUL-T. Artifacts add gameplay modifiers such as friendly fire, random survivor spawns and item selection, and with randomized stages, enemies and items, no two runs line up the same way.
Play it with your group
The whole thing works solo or with up to three friends in online co-op, so a Discord group of four can load in together. Everyone builds their own survivor and hoards loot in the same run, and since more than 110 items exist, the piles each player ends up with diverge fast. Item effects stack and combine the more you collect, which is where the surprising builds come from — the group ends up comparing stacks mid-run and figuring out which combinations are carrying. Beyond co-op there's the Prismatic Trials, a rotating challenge you can compete in, plus PvP and online PvP for when the group wants to test builds against each other rather than the monsters. Steam Cloud keeps your progress synced and Steam Leaderboards track where you land.
Before you start
Expect a run-based shooter: stages, enemies and loot are randomized, and dying or finishing resets you into a fresh attempt rather than continuing a save file. Difficulty is adjustable, so a group that wants a gentler first session can tune it down before turning it up later. There's a lot to learn at once — eleven survivors, alternate skills per survivor, item interactions and Artifacts — so the first few runs are mostly about finding a survivor whose style suits you and reading the lore logs you collect for item strategy. Sound is stereo and surround capable with separate volume controls, text size and camera comfort are adjustable, and full controller support is available if someone in the group prefers a pad. Family Sharing lets others on your account try it, and Remote Play covers phone, tablet and TV if someone wants to join from the couch.