The highly-anticipated Scorched Acres update for Risk of Rain 2 is now live, and that means you can take to the inhospitable alien wilderness as a scrappy houseplant named Rex. There's also a new biome, new enemies, and of course new gear to pick up in Hopoo Games' challenging rogue-lite shooter.

Rex has a set of abilities that are split between the plant and robot sides of his character. His passive is that all his abilities apply a weaken effect to enemies, which reduces their armor, speed, and damage. His primary fire shoots three syringes, and if the third of these hits an enemy, it'll apply weaken and, conveniently, heal Rex.

His secondary fire lets Rex sacrifice his own health to launch a seed-pod mortar, which can target faraway enemies and does massive damage. Rex also has a mobility move that boosts him backwards and shoves enemies, applying his passive weaken effect. And for an ultimate, Rex can spend health to plant a flower that pulls enemies toward it, rooting and weakening them.

Meanwhile, you'll be able to explore a lovely and forbidding new area called Scorched Acres, which is an alternative third stage. It's guarded by a new boss called the Grovetender, who fires hooks and seeker wisps and generally sounds quite scary.

There are also new enemies, new items and equipment, and new drones, and Hopoo Games has also implemented some community-suggested quality-of-life improvements as well. 

All in all, a pretty beefy update. Risk of Rain 2 is currently in Early Access, and the plan now is for it to launch a full version in the first half of next year, after a year's worth of updates, additions, and enhancements.

Hopoo Games laid out a development roadmap for Risk of Rain 2 earlier this year that promised four updates ahead of the full release in spring 2020, beginning in June with a new survivor, stage, boss, items, and equipment. Today the studio revealed that the June update is called Scorched Acres, and will arrive on June 25. 

Hopoo actually showed off what is almost certainly the Scorched Acres update earlier this month at E3. A "new survivor gameplay reveal" on IGN featured a half-plant, half-robot survivor named Rex, who is brand-new to the Risk of Rain universe (some Risk of Rain 2 characters are carryovers from the first game) and "completely different" from survivors who have appeared in the game previously.   

Rex will be unlockable through a specific quest: Hopoo was a little evasive on the point but said that it will enable players to go after Rex "explicitly," rather than having to play the game for hours first. More importantly right now, Rex also appears in the image Hopoo tweeted to announce the Scorched Acres date, which is a pretty clear indicator that what they were showing was pre-release gameplay from that update.

There are no further details at this point: The studio said a "full breakdown" would be provided once the update is live. The IGN Risk of Rain 2 "Rex" reveal is below.

Just a month after its release on March 28 (although it's not technically released because it's still in Early Access, but whatever), the third-person roguelike shooter Risk of Rain 2 has surpassed one million units sold.

"To give you guys a little bit of context, it took us almost 5 years to hit that same number on Steam for Risk of Rain 1," developer Hopoo Games said. "We are excited to see how many of you are jumping into RoR 2. Thank you all so much—we feel very lucky." 

The studio said that it's continuing to work on the new content announced in last week's development roadmap, which will bring all-new content to the Risk of Rain setting. But future updates "will weave in some returning content from Risk 1," it added, including Risk of Rain 1 survivors. More information, and "teasers of what's to come," will be revealed at the update approaches release. 

"We hope our first content update plants the seeds necessary to continue growing Risk of Rain 2 into an even better game for players.. This patch will also include quality of life updates and bug fixes!" Hopoo wrote. "As a reminder, we will still be shipping patches containing bug fixes, alongside full localization, before the first Content Update."   

Hopoo confirmed that the one million mark is actually one million units sold, independent of the 2-for-1 promotion that helped it achieve 500,000 players in its first week of release: A rep said the redemptions on that promotion are approaching 200,000, so the player count is "theoretically" just over 1.2 million—not bad for a sequel to a six-year-old, two-person indie joint. Risk of Rain 2 is currently expected to leave Early Access and go into full release in the spring of 2020.

Risk of Rain 2 is getting bigger in June. And then later this summer. And again in the fall, the winter, and spring 2020, when developers Hopoo Games say it will launch out of Early Access. After a hell of a successful first month, the team posted an update this Friday covering what's coming next and laid out an Early Access roadmap leading up to version 1.0. Expect new items and equipment in every single update, along with three new characters before next spring, more stages, and "Skills 2.0" and "Artifact 2.0" features.

"We are sharing this forecast so players know what to look forward to and what the team is working towards in making Risk of Rain 2 the best game of its kind," Hopoo's Paul Morse said in a press release about the Early Access roadmap. 

The June update promises a new character, stage, and boss, while summer promises the first major addition, Skills 2.0, with no breakdown of what that means. Artifacts, meanwhile, aka modifiers that change the difficulty and how the game plays, won't be coming until the winter update.

I'm most curious about Fall's "Hidden Realms" update, which sounds like it'll include some secret levels outside the standard stages. What will they do? How will we reach them? (The likely answer: Play a lot of Risk of Rain 2).

And I'm excited to see which of the characters are wholly new creations, if any, or if they're all returning survivors from the first Risk of Rain. I played a lot of the Enforcer in the first game, a shotgun-and-riot-shield-wielding SWAT dude, and would be happy to see him make a comeback.

Localization is currently in progress for French, German, Italian, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish. Aside from their content updates, the devs have a few major points on their minds, including stamping out a save corruption bug and rooting out a stuttering problem when picking up items for the first time.

Risk of Rain 2 is a near-perfect 3D translation of the 2D side-scroller it's based on, and it's a fun and exciting third-person shooter besides. As we said earlier, even in Early Access, it's well worth your time, especially if you can play it with friends. It also gets exponentially more fun as you earn new characters to play with. But earning all of them isn't a simple task, so I've put together a guide to all of Risk of Rain 2's character unlocks.

Here's an overview of how each character plays and what you need to do to unlock them.

Commando

To unlock: Start the game!

Commando is the default character, so you'll play him at least a few times at the start before moving onto someone new. But even after dozens of hours, I still go back to Commando. His cooldowns are relatively short, and his well-rounded abilities do a good job teaching how Risk of Rain 2's combat flows.

Commando's basic attack is fast and easy to aim, and his piercing secondary ability is much more effective when you take time to line up a juicy group of enemies. He also has a basic but handy dodge to help you get out of danger, and a rapid-fire ability which can stun most enemies in a pinch. Commando is easy to pick up and fun to play, so don't assume he's weak just because he's the starter survivor. 

 MUL-T

To unlock: Beat the first level five times. 

MUL-T is a flexible fighter with a unique ability: It can swap between two basic attacks at any time. One is a short-range, fast-firing nail gun which is good for crowds and bosses, and the other is a long-range sniper rifle which excels at picking off flying enemies. Swapping your basic attack will also swap your Equipment (your 'Use' item), making MUL-T the only survivor who can use two different Equipment items simultaneously.

MUL-T's other abilities include a speedy dash which you can use to get away from enemies or run right into them for heavy damage, as well as a cluster of grenades which deal modest damage but stun enemies considerably. MUL-T is all about swapping primary attacks effectively while using your dash and stun grenades to control big targets and crowds. This robot's a lot of fun to play, especially since you have two equipment items to experiment with.  

Huntress 

To unlock: Clear the first three levels without dying. 

Where the Commando excels at single-target damage, Huntress is the queen of AoE. Her auto primary attack is slow and relatively weak, but her abilities are incredibly good at melting groups. Her secondary ability, a ricocheting glaive, can bounce between up to six enemies, so you should only use it when you know it'll hit at least two enemies. If you throw it at a lone dude, it'll disappear after just one hit, which is a waste of precious damage.

Huntress can also lay down a rain of arrows at a target location, dealing damage over time to everything nearby. This ability is your go-to boss DPS, and holding the charge mid-air can also put you out of range of many ground enemies. Finally, Huntress has one of the best escape abilities in the game: a straight-up teleport. This ability sends you where you're aiming, meaning you can also use it like a jump. Huntress was my favorite character in the original game, and she's every bit as strong in Risk of Rain 2. 

Engineer

To unlock: Complete 30 levels. 

The Engineer is all about placing and defending turrets. Don't get me wrong, he has other cool abilities—deployable proximity mines, a bubble shield which blocks all external attacks, and a basic attack that fires volleys of bouncy grenades—but turrets are his bread and butter. Once deployed, your turrets will automatically attack all nearby enemies for massive damage.

Here's the kicker: They benefit from all the items you pick up. In other words, if you get an item that boosts your attack speed, it'll also boost your turrets' attack speed. This synergy causes some items to scale wildly, with an Engineer fan-favorite being the Bustling Fungus, which basically turns your turrets into healing stations. The thing is, your turrets have a pretty long cooldown, meaning you can't throw them down willy-nilly. So the ideal Engineer fight looks like this: Find a big group of enemies, place your turrets right in the middle of them, throw down a shield and some mines, and watch those puppies go to work. 

Artificer  

To unlock: Spend 10 Lunar Coins to free her from the Newt Shop. Enemies drop Lunar Coins randomly, so grab them when you see them. The blue portal to the Newt Shop will open randomly when you clear stages, but you can spend one Lunar Coin at a Newt Altar (before activating the Teleporter) to make it appear. You'll find the Artificer in a block of ice next to the big Newt himself.

The Artificer is a true-blue mage who wields fire, ice, and lightning. As you'd expect from a mage, her abilities are all about managing cooldowns and combining elements. For example, her basic attack is a fireball that works on a charge system. Once you run out of charges, you won't be able to attack. Your fireballs recharge quickly but this ability can still be disorienting at first, especially if you're used to someone like Commando who can spam his basic attack with impunity. Once you get used to it though, the Artificer's fireball is incredibly strong.

Her other abilities correspond to specific elements. First, she has a lightning orb which she can charge up before releasing to increase its range and power. This deals heavy damage and stun on impact, and it will also zap nearby enemies as it flies through the air, so try to aim it between multiple small enemies and toward one big dude. Then there's her ice wall, which freezes enemies in place and insta-kills them if they're below 20 percent health. This ability isn't strong on its own, but it's a potent finisher.

The Artificer doesn't have any sort of dodge or teleport, so you'll also need to use this ice wall to control crowds. Finally, you've got a good old-fashioned flamethrower. This deals heavy damage but has extremely short range, so it's best used on enemies stunned by your lightning orb. Watch your cooldowns and grab some mobility-boosting items and you'll be slinging spells with the best of 'em. 

Mercenary  

To unlock: Clear seven levels to reach the Obelisk. A Celestial Portal will open when you clear your seventh stage. Inside you'll find an Obelisk located at the end of a floating path, so make your way to it and choose to "Obliterate" yourself when prompted. This will immediately end your run and unlock the Mercenary. You can Obliterate yourself again to earn five Lunar Coins to help you unlock the Artificer, or you can take the Celestial Portal back to continue your run. 

As the only current melee character in Risk of Rain 2, Mercenary plays very differently from the other survivors. You might think that a dude with a sword would feel clunky in a third-person shooter, but you'd be wrong. Mercenary has one of the most frenetic playstyles of the lot, and played correctly, he can devastate bosses and groups alike.

His basic attack is just a close-range sword swipe, but honestly, you'll barely use it. Mercenary's abilities have such low cooldowns that you can chain them together almost indefinitely. His secondary ability launches you into a horizontal sword spin on the ground and a vertical spin mid-air, while his final ability teleports you to the nearest enemy and launches an extended flurry of attacks. Did I mention you're totally invincible during this flurry?

These two abilities can be strung together using Mercenary's dash. It not only stuns and damages enemies you dash through, it can also be used three times in rapid succession as long as you keep hitting enemies. Oh, and Mercenary can double jump by default. Ya dig?

I've been playing a lot of Risk of Rain 2 this week. So have a few other people, apparently—in just seven days, the indie roguelike has hit 500,000 players in Early Access, which means at least 250,000 copies sold (it had a buy-one-get-one-free deal going for its first couple days on sale). Developers Hopoo Games were, I think it's fair to say, surprised. This is the opening to their first update on the game's Steam page:HOLYMOLYOLYMOLY 

Risk of Rain 2 does a remarkably good job of re-imagining a 2D action roguelike in 3D, retaining the same feel despite the new perspective. I wanted to know more about that process and about what's coming next for Risk of Rain 2 in Early Access, so I asked Hopoo Games co-founders Paul Morse and Duncan Drummond. Here's what I learned.

The levels in the game so far definitely have the vibe of Risk of Rain 1, but notably there's no Temple of Elders or Contact Light. Are you planning to add similar stages (or totally different later-game stages) during Early Access?

Returning players wanted to come back to something familiar, so a lot of the early access launch content was updated and returning favorites. Looking forward, we’re really excited to start bringing fresh and unique content for players new and old, so we’re going to focus more on that. Maybe we’ll sprinkle in some returning content, as well, depending on our community.

Which character proved the hardest to translate to 3D? And which do you think is most improved in 3D, compared to how fun they were to play in the original?

Melee characters, like the Mercenary, were tough since we had to not only bring the character and their abilities to a 3D space, but also had to think about balance regarding large bosses and flying monsters. By working on his mobility kit more, we feel really good now about the Mercenary’s playstyle in 3D. As for the most fun, it’s hard for us to pick our favorite child but we’re really excited to see what our community shows an affinity to.

As of today, how many copies of Risk of Rain 2 have you sold so far?

Over the opening weekend for Early Access, the Risk of Rain 2 community has grown to over 500K players. It’s absolutely surreal, and we’re so happy and grateful to our dedicated community who got us to this size so far.

Can you lay out your broad plans for what will be added to the game during Early Access? Artifacts and at least 4 more characters are the obvious ones, just from playing the game!

With the first patch having addressed initial community feedback, we’re now turning our sights to aligning on the early access roadmap. The plan is to deliver more content (characters, stages, bosses, and items) and to make sure the game is super polished by the time it officially launches. This will include additional game features, platforms, and localization. We expect this to be a mixture of larger content updates interspersed with patches and hotfixes—the cadence and amount of these will be announced at a later time.

Has the popularity of the game so far made you change the scope of your plans for what you want to add to it?

We entered Early Access with a plan and outline until 1.0 launch. We’re planning to stick to the plan we’ve thought out at the moment.

Are you planning to support modding and/or Steam Workshop?

This currently is not in our scope or priority but that doesn’t mean it’s off the table! A part of early access is listening to what the community wants and seeing if, when, and where we can implement it.

My friends (who spent a good chunk of the weekend playing) want to know if you plan to beef up the ping system to allow for permanent pings to better keep tabs on items, the teleporter, etc.

After seeing the great ideas implemented in Apex Legends, we implemented a new ping system and wanted to see how people utilized before beefing it up. A lot of people like it and we have plans to improve upon it based on the community feedback.

I respect a shooter that fills the screen with enough projectiles and enemies to render the action nearly incomprehensible. Risk of Rain 2 is one of those shooters. When I can't parse what the hell is happening on the screen, that's by design, and it's great fun.

The original Risk of Rain is a 2D sidescroller built around steadily buffing the player and modifying their skills with so much gear that they transition from little pew-pew spaceperson to opaque bullet tornado over the course of a short 10 minute run. Risk of Rain 2 transfers the same iterative roguelike loop into the body of a third-person shooter and pulls it off with surprising finesse. It may be in Early Access, but it's in pretty good shape already. 

The goals are the same as in the first game: once you pop out of your little space pod, you'll need to find the teleporter, activate it, and survive until it's fully charged. Teleport out and move to the next level, repeat until death. All the while the difficulty steadily ticks up as tougher enemies pour in from the sky and crawl out of the dirt in greater numbers. Some rush you while others harass with projectiles from a distance. They never stop coming and they never get easier. 

Dead enemies drop money used to purchase upgrades scattered around the map. These make keeping up with tougher waves possible, though what you get is determined by dice rolls. I'm only a few hours in, so my item pool is pretty limited. I've found spectacles that increase your chance to crit, a syringe that buffs attack speed, and my favorite so far, a gasoline tank that ignites enemies in a radius around any that I kill. A couple dozen aren't even in the game yet.  

Like Binding of Isaac, the gear you unlock will enter the item pool forever. Some are locked behind achievements and some are locked behind progression. Unless you're one of those fabled gamer gods, expect to die early and often until you unlock a couple of your own. 

The long term payoff of the original was filling out the item pool and getting to a point where buffs would stack and synergize in absurd ways, turning you into a frenzied, near invincible bullet beehive. Risk of Rain 2 feels close to matching that from the start, so I'm looking forward to the compounding mayhem that (hopefully) awaits. 

Singing in the pain 

Risk of Rain 2's shift to a third-person perspective has one major downside. While the first allowed for cooperative play, the 2D perspective made it possible to track all of the on-screen action by yourself. Now you can only see what's in front of you, and because enemies spawn in from every direction it's easy to get overwhelmed when playing alone.

A limited field of vision means co-op multiplayer is the only way to go right now, but I like the added chaos from four little spaceguys shooting and jumping around at once. I'm able to find full parties in quickplay without issue and consistently get to the second or third areas from just noodling around with strangers. 

Getting further will require a bit more teamwork. There's not much to encourage cooperation outside of text chat, though teamwork might naturally take shape as more people realize what an advantage sticking together is. I'd still like to see another class unlocked from the start, something that complements the default all-around Commando so players fall into supporting one another early on. Better player communication tools are a must, too. Apex Legends has ruined multiplayer games for me. 

And everyone is going to need help. The action is overwhelming at times, especially when a big boss, like a massive electric jellyfish, floats in during the teleporter charging phase and everyone panics. Glorious visual noise and hectic, desperate shootouts ensue, while I jam on the keyboard without much attention to what's firing off and where, so long as I keep seeing damage numbers. It's nice to get a sweat in. 

The looming scale and drama resulting from the grounded third-person perspective makes the original game look like a pathetic ant farm uprising. Risk of Rain 2 is decidedly less chill. 

Regardless of whether or not my teammates care about me, the shooting's great. I thrive on the stress of reading a busy battlefield and snapping between targets while trying to time dodge-rolls during clearly telegraphed enemy attacks.

I do wish the art were more expressive and distinct. The lumpy, lo-fi levels lack character, and the enemy models are flat, blurry interpretations of their detailed pixelated counterparts. Performance is also a problem. I get consistent hitches and the framerate chugs during particularly crowded, chaotic shootouts. Connection issues are infrequent, but happen every couple matches. 

These performance problems don't seem widespread, though, if the "Overwhelmingly Positive" review status on Steam is anything to go by. I might be an outlier, just know they're distracting enough for me to leave Risk of Rain 2 and check back in a few months from now. It's good fun as is, just something I might let bake until better communication tools and smoother performance settle in. 

Hopoo Games said late last year that the multiplayer roguelike Risk of Rain 2 would be released to Steam Early Access in early 2019. Surprise! It's there now.   

The Early Access release of Risk of Rain 2 supports solo action or seamless co-op for up to four players, with new and returning survivors, "massive, handcrafted levels," lore, big bosses, leaderboards, and more than 75 unlockables.   

"No run will ever be the same with randomized stages, enemies, bosses, and items," Hopoo said. "With each run, you'll learn the patterns of your foes, and even the longest odds can be overcome with enough skill. A unique scaling system means both you and your foes limitlessly increase in power over the course of a game--what once was a bossfight will in time become a common enemy." 

Hopoo expects that Risk of Rain 2 will be in Early Access for about a year, and said that it has three priorities for the full release: More content (ten characters, ten stages, 12 bosses, and more than 100 items), "a true ending and boss fight to match," and polish. It also warned that the price will increase at launch to reflect "all the content that we'll be adding and the added polish the game will receive." 

Risk of Rain 2 is currently going for $20/£14/€19 on Steam Early Access, and for the first day of release is BOGO: Buy one and you'll get an extra copy for a friend.