You know, when I first started Monster Train In 2020, I rolled my eyes. “Oh, is this a Slay the Spire clone?” I chided. But within about 10 minutes, Monster Train completely dispelled all those pithy put-downs in my head. Within half an hour, it had me, exactly right. This wasn’t just a clone of Mega Crit’s 2019 deck-building opus, no. It was a full-fledged competitor; a competent rethinking of the genre, a serious competitor that legitimized roguelike deck-building games as a genre. I fell in love with it.
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This game blends the genius ideas of Slay the Spire with its own unique style. Instead of pushing your way to the heart of evil in Slay the Spire, Monster Train flips the script slightly – having you fend off waves of angelic enemies determined to put out the fire you’ve escorted to the heart of the underworld in order to reignite the fires of Hell (yes, really).
It has more of a tower defense vibe, then; pitting you and your team of demons against other teams of bad guys. It’s also a less lonely game than Slay the Spire, where your lone warrior/thief/robot charges out into a hostile world.
But the differences don’t stop there. Since the train is so small, each room has a limited “capacity”, which means you can only summon a certain number of demons per car. And you have to think ahead; for example, how do you scale the number of demons you summon to counter the angles that can kill with one strike? How do you make sure your defenses and attacks gradually increase so you can go toe-to-toe with God’s army?
I’ve been playing a lot of Balatro lately (god, help me), and Monster Train has a similar core concept, if you strip away all the flavor and frills. It’s essentially a numbers game, and your job is to manage your deck so that you can rely on drawing the right card at the right time. Your enemy is luck, just like anything else. Often, you’ll find that your own greed or complacency is actually what’s weakening you – I can’t count the number of times I’ve been blown up by my own torch in these games. They’re smarter than you are, and they love to remind you of that fact.
But therein lies the charm of Monster Train. It’s one of those games that turns “one more time” into a complete and proper mechanic. Unlocking new decks and new cards, learning how to work together in the most effective way is all part of the game – in this respect, I found Monster Train to be more generous than Slay the Spire. In just a few rounds of play, you can progress from “basic deck” skills to advanced math skills. It’s like catnip. You can’t put it down after playing for less than a few hours.
And I’m not the only one who loves it. A cursory look around the internet will show that people all over the world are fascinated by Monster Train’s unique blend of luck-based strategy and skill-based tactics. It has a 4.6 rating on GoG. It has a 10/10 rating on Steam with nearly 18,000 reviews. It has a 4.9 rating on the App Store. People love this game, and rightfully so.
Now that it’s coming to PlayStation, we can probably predict that the Good Shepard-published game will get another well-received storefront. It’s about time. The game has been available for a while now on PC, Switch, and Xbox (where it launched as part of Xbox Game Pass and built a loyal and passionate player base early on), attracting more than 1.5 million players since 2020. Now that it’s on PlayStation – for a very reasonable $24.99 – I finally have an excuse to turn around and say: play this damn game. If you don’t, you’re screwed.
Monster Train is out today on PS5. It’s also available on mobile devices, PC, Switch, and Xbox.
