Deck-building dungeon-crawler Hand of Fate 2 gets Endless Mode and new challenges

Deck-building action RPG Hand of Fate 2 has benefited from multiple free updates since its release last November: developer Defiant Development added a new dealer companion in December and a mission creation kit in February. Today, the studio released a batch of "infinitely replayable" quests bundled together in a new Endless Mode.

Each time you clear a quest in Endless Mode, the enemies in the Dealer's deck get more difficult. The Dealer also gains more and more pain and curse cards, which you're dealt whenever you complete a stage. To help keep long runs fresh, the update introduced "a plethora of new adventures, collectible token shards, enemies and narrative branches," Defiant said. You can also see how your best runs stack up on new leaderboards.

Endless Mode was teased back in December as the first of many 2018 updates, the big new entree ahead of multiple side dishes. Defiant says those sides are still on the way, with a new enemy faction, more companions and new weapons in the pipe.

Our own Eric Watson rather enjoyed Hand of Fate 2 despite its lackluster combat. "Hand of Fate 2 more than makes up for it in the vastly improved strategic layer, and lovely storytelling. The deck-building strategy remains satisfying and the new variety of challenges adds a roguelike replayability to obtaining the gold rank for each one," he wrote in his 82/100 review.

Austin freelanced for PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree, and has been a full-time writer at PC Gamer's sister publication GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize that his position as a staff writer is just a cover-up for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a focus on news, the occasional feature, and as much Genshin Impact as he can get away with.