Risk of Rain 2

Risk of Rain 2 is a third-person roguelite shooter developed by Hopoo Games and published by Gearbox Publishing, released in full on August 11, 2020 for PC after seventeen months in Early Access, with Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One versions that October and native PS5/Series X|S upgrades in August 2024. It holds a Metacritic score of 85 on PC, an OpenCritic recommendation rate of 93%, sold a million copies in its first month and four million on PC alone by 2021, and six years later remains the game most roguelite shooters are measured against — the one that took a 2D pixel-art indie and proved its central idea survived the jump to 3D intact: the longer you take, the harder it gets.

Its history since 1.0 is unusually eventful for a game this beloved — a change of owners, a studio that walked away to Valve, an expansion so broken it cratered the Steam rating, and a comeback — and the questions that rank beside it (“which DLC should I buy?”, “how do I unlock characters?”, “is it still an indie game?”) are the structure of this card.

Technical Specifications

Petrichor V and the Clock

The UES Contact Light crashes on the hostile planet Petrichor V; its survivors fight through alien stages toward a teleporter, a boss, and the next stage — and all the while a difficulty meter climbs in real time, from Easy through Hard to the ominous “HAHAHAHA,” turning every decision into a trade between looting now and facing stronger enemies later. Items stack without limit, producing the game’s signature late-run absurdity: a hundred stacked crit glasses, missiles spawning missiles, screens of damage numbers. The campaign ends at the Moon against Mithrix, the brother of Providence from the original game, and the series’ lore — wordless in play, dense in item logs — remains a reliable reddit rabbit hole.

Eighteen Survivors, Earned

Unlocking the roster is the game’s real meta-progression and the single most-searched question about it. The base game’s eleven — from the Commando you start with through Huntress, MUL-T, Engineer, Artificer, Mercenary, REX, Loader, Acrid, Bandit, and Captain — unlock via in-run challenges: reach a stage, kill a boss a specific way, find a hidden area. Survivors of the Void added the Railgunner and the corrupted Void Fiend; Seekers of the Storm added the Seeker, the Chef, and the False Son; Alloyed Collective added the drone-commanding Operator and the Drifter, imported from Risk of Rain Returns. Every survivor plays as a distinct character rather than a stat swap, which is why tier-list arguments have run continuously since 2019.

Which DLC Should You Buy?

The community answer is consistent and worth stating plainly. Survivors of the Void (2022, Hopoo’s last) is essential — Void items, Void enemies, two beloved survivors, and an alternate ending, universally rated the series’ best expansion. Seekers of the Storm (2024, Gearbox’s first) launched as a genuine disaster: bugs that broke the base game for everyone including non-buyers, a physics system tied to frame rate so the game ran faster on faster PCs, empty-feeling stages, and weak one-use items — the Steam rating fell to Mixed and the subreddit revolted. Gearbox spent a year repairing it, recent reviews recovered to Very Positive, and the patched version is now a fair “on sale” buy. Alloyed Collective (November 2025, $14.99) was the apology made good: six stages, seven commandable drones, a new endgame built around the Solus Unit bosses, strong reception — and a smart lobby-share rule under which only one player in a group needs to own it for everyone to play its content.

Is It Still an Indie Game?

Technically no, and the community thread asking exactly that is a fair debate. Gearbox bought the IP from Hopoo in November 2022; Hopoo’s founders, Duncan Drummond and Paul Morse, put the studio on hiatus in September 2024 and joined Valve. The game is now made by Gearbox’s internal team under a corporate publisher, which is both why Seekers of the Storm shipped the way it did and why the resources existed to fix it. What hasn’t changed is the model: a $25 base game, paid expansions every two to three years, free quality-of-life updates between them, and no microtransactions — a structure that keeps it on every “best co-op game” list alongside Deep Rock Galactic and makes it the senior partner to faster roguelite shooters like Roboquest and Gunfire Reborn.

Where to Play It Today

Risk of Rain 2 is on Steam (Deck verified), Switch, PlayStation 4/5, and Xbox One/Series X|S, with the base game routinely under $10 on sale and expansion bundles discounted alongside it; cross-play remains PC-and-console-separate. The buying order the community will give you: base game, then Survivors of the Void, then Alloyed Collective — and Seekers of the Storm last, on sale, now that it works.