Six years ago today, Monster Train launched on Steam for Windows PC and gave roguelike deckbuilders a wonderfully strange new problem: what if the cards were only half the battle?
Shiny Shoe's debut did not arrive quietly into an empty genre. By May 2020, Slay the Spire had already taught a huge audience to love run-based card combat, relic synergies and the slow panic of a bad draw at the worst possible moment. Monster Train could have looked like another game chasing that formula. Instead, it put the fight inside a vertical train car to hell and asked players to defend three stacked floors at once.
That one spatial twist changed everything. A hand of cards was not just a set of attacks, spells and units. It was a plan for where enemies would stop, which floor could survive pressure, when to let a wave climb and how much damage the final Pyre could take if the math went wrong. Monster Train understood that deckbuilding becomes sharper when every card also has a physical address.
A deckbuilder with tower-defense nerves
Monster Train is easy to describe in pieces and harder to explain as a feeling. It is a roguelike deckbuilder, a lane defense game, a tactical positioning puzzle and a race to make something broken before Heaven reaches the top of the train. The premise is theatrical, with Hell frozen over and a last Pyre that has to be protected from angelic forces, but the real drama happens in tiny arithmetic.
A run can turn on whether a tanky unit belongs on the first floor to absorb punishment or higher up where it has more time to scale. A fragile damage dealer might become brilliant if the right support unit stands in front. A spell that looks ordinary can become the difference between wiping out an early wave or watching survivors climb toward the Pyre. The best Monster Train turns feel engineered in a panic, then obvious in hindsight.
That was the secret behind its staying power. Slay the Spire made players ask whether a card improved the deck. Monster Train added a second question: where does this card live? Units had size. Floors had limited capacity. Enemies did not simply wait in front of the player, they moved upward if they survived. The train made every battle readable at a glance, but it also made mistakes visible. A bad placement could haunt the next two floors before finally reaching the top.
The format gave Monster Train its own personality at a time when roguelike deckbuilders were beginning to multiply. It was not trying to be cleaner, harder or more minimal than its obvious inspiration. It was louder and busier. It wanted stacked effects, upgrade chains, clan identities and absurd damage numbers. It turned the genre's usual card economy into a cramped moving fortress where board position mattered as much as draw order.
The route was part of the deck
The train battles were only one half of the run. Between fights, Monster Train's map asked players to choose routes with real consequences. One track might offer unit upgrades and artifact shops. Another might offer spell improvements, healing, money or a chance to duplicate a key card. That made the journey feel less like a simple march through random rewards and more like a series of commitments.
The upgrade system helped separate it from many deckbuilders of the period. Cards could be modified directly, often twice, which meant a mediocre spell could become a reliable engine piece and a favorite unit could be shaped around a run's exact needs. Duplicating a card was not just a nice bonus. In the right run, it was the moment a strategy stopped being a sketch and became a machine.
The clan system gave those machines flavor. At launch, Monster Train offered five clans, each with its own champion, units and mechanics. Pairing a primary clan with a supporting clan created enough overlap for experimentation without making every run feel shapeless. Hellhorned aggression, Awoken sustain, Stygian spell power, Umbra morsel play and Melting Remnant revival tricks all pushed players toward different rhythms.
That structure made the game unusually good at producing stories players wanted to retell. One run might be about a unit that became too large to kill. Another might revolve around endless morsels, burnout abuse or spell weakness stacking. The numbers could get silly, but the silliness worked because the board stayed understandable. You could see the build happening floor by floor.
Why it found an audience in 2020
Monster Train launched into a strange year for games. In 2020, many players were looking for games that could absorb hours without demanding a fixed schedule. Roguelikes fit that mood. A run could be a lunch break, a late-night obsession or the start of a dozen more attempts. Monster Train had the comfort of clear structure and the danger of endless variation.
It also benefited from being generous with modes. The Steam version included daily challenges, custom challenges and Hell Rush, an eight-player real-time race mode where everyone fought through comparable conditions. Not every player stayed for competitive multiplayer, but its presence said something about Shiny Shoe's confidence in the core loop. Monster Train was not just a solitaire deck puzzle. It had enough speed and transparency to work as a race.
Critics responded warmly. The PC version sits at an 86 Metascore on Metacritic, and Good Shepherd later noted that the game appeared on multiple Best of 2020 lists and earned a D.I.C.E. Awards nomination for Strategy/Simulation Game of the Year. Those details track with how the game spread: not as a blockbuster, but as a word-of-mouth favorite among players who already knew the shape of a deckbuilder and wanted to be surprised again.
The surprise mattered. After Slay the Spire, the genre risked hardening into a checklist: map, elites, relics, boss, repeat. Monster Train showed that the formula could bend without breaking. It kept the intoxicating search for synergies, but made every fight about space, timing and the cost of letting one more enemy through.
The rails kept expanding
Monster Train's afterlife made the original launch feel less like a one-off hit and more like the start of a sturdy little series. Free updates added features and balance changes, while The Last Divinity expansion brought a sixth clan, new cards, new challenges and a tougher final threat in 2021. Monster Train First Class reached Nintendo Switch later that year with the base game, the expansion and post-launch additions included.
The game's spread to Xbox and Switch helped its design make sense in new contexts. On PC, it was a natural fit for long sessions and obsessive build testing. On Switch, the run structure suited handheld play, even if the screen had to carry a lot of information. On Xbox, its Game Pass appearance put it in front of players who might never have gambled on another deckbuilder after bouncing off card games elsewhere.
The cleanest proof of its legacy came five years after launch. Monster Train 2 arrived on May 21, 2025, exactly five years after the original, with new clans, room cards, equipment cards, Pyre Hearts, dimensional challenges and a hub called the Covenant Outpost. The sequel did not need to reinvent the image of a three-tier train defense because the first game had already made it iconic. It could expand the idea because the original was so legible.
That is where Monster Train still stands apart six years later. It did not dethrone Slay the Spire, and it did not need to. It became the other name that comes up when players talk about the modern roguelike deckbuilder boom. Slay the Spire is the ascetic climb, Monster Train is the packed infernal engine roaring down the track with too many numbers on screen and one more enemy about to slip through.
A great deckbuilder gives players the pleasure of finding a plan where there should only be chaos. Monster Train added floors, capacity limits, enemy movement and clan chemistry to that pleasure. It made the plan visible as a little vertical disaster, then let players rebuild it after every stop.
On May 21, 2020, Shiny Shoe sent a frozen Hell, a burning Pyre and a pile of upgradeable cards down the rails. Six years later, Monster Train remains one of the clearest reminders that a genre can change shape with a single smart twist, especially when that twist gives every decision somewhere to stand.