I’ve been a fan of rogue-like deckbuilding games for a while now, but I guess I was in the sleeper car when it came to Monster Train, which is way better than its wacky story would suggest.
On track with games like Slay the Spire, in Monster Train, players fight a series of battles by playing cards that represent monsters and spells, except Monster Train goes full steam ahead on the complexity by having battles take place simultaneously on three vertical battlegrounds.
In Monster Train, created by San Francisco-based Shiny Shoe, Armageddon has just happened after Heaven broke a pact and attacked Hell, snuffing out its flames and literally freezing it over. For some reason, there’s a quadruple-decker train that runs from Heaven to Hell, and on board is the burning pyre needed to restart the inferno of Hell and restore balance to the world.
Thus, there’s a train full of demonic monsters (the good guys) who must defend this pyre from angelic beings (the bad guys). I guess I’ve seen worse plots, and it doesn’t take itself too seriously with its cartoony art style.
At the start, players will pick one of five clans (six with downloadable content) to be their primary team, and then a secondary clan, which will determine their starting cards and what cards will be found during the match.
The clans offer quite distinct play styles: There’s the Hellhorned, red-skinned, multi-attacking fiends who power up their attack and armor; the Awoken, plant-based creatures who fight defensively with spike growths and heals; the Stygians, deep-sea demons that use spells and cold; the Umbra, shadowy fighters who use golems and eat souls to power up, and the Melting Remnant, whose fighters are essentially wax candles that burn out and then return stronger than before.
Each clan also has one of two champions to select, which means that this major-minor-champion pairing gives us, right out of the gate, 40 starter deck combinations, or more accurately I think, permutations. And that’s just the start — after every battle, during which multiple waves of enemies are defeated — players select one of two tracks to follow. Each track will lead to various upgrades, such as being able to acquire new monster cards, to upgrade spells, units or champions, or add game-changing artifacts with permanent passive effects.
Combat is pretty complex (a lot more than Slay the Spire, which has just one unit to worry about), with enemies usually appearing on the bottom floor first. Each floor can only hold a few monsters, and after each turn, any enemy units that didn’t die move up to the next level of the train car. If enemy monsters make it past all three levels, they can start attacking the pyre directly — if the Pyre goes to zero health, that’s game over. In this way, it’s sort of a tower defense game, too. Making it through each layer of Hell gives another chance to acquire cards and upgrades, or remove useless cards from the deck, until a final showdown with the angel Seraph.
But victory doesn’t mean game over for rogue-likes — it’s just the beginning. Winning means unlocking new cards, and a harder mode, and winning again will unlock harder modes still, so the game always stays challenging.
It’s also really helpful that there’s a preview of the outcome of each battle before you lock in your choices, so you’ll know which units will survive and which won’t and can change tactics accordingly. The variety of cards and spells can make for some really broken combinations, like a hero attacking multiple times for hundreds of damage — but choose the wrong upgrades and the enemies will be too strong to defeat.
With each clan having 10 unlockable levels, and more than 300 cards in total from which to choose, with 25 difficulty levels, no two runs will be the same, and it’s got a very addicting, yet satisfying, gameplay loop. Monster Train comes loaded with fun, and card-battler fans shouldn’t miss out on this one.
After more than a decade as a reviewer, Jason Bennett has an unhealthy love for rogue-lite survival games and terrible puns. Questions or suggestions? Reach out to him at [email protected]
Monster Train
Platforms: PC, iOS, Xbox 1/X/S, Switch
Cost: $24.99
Rating: Everyone 10+ for fantasy violence, mild language
Score: 9/10