MONSTER TRAIN

Wes Fenlon: It’s impossible to play Monster Train without Ozzy Osbourne singing Crazy Train in your head. And honestly, that’s exactly how it should be, because it is a crazy train. My favorite thing about this deckbuilder is its wild makeup of factions, which I can mash together into unlikely allies. The Awoken, for example, are burly plant boys that I use as front line defenders to soak up damage for units I place behind them. But depending on the faction I pair them with, that strategy totally changes.

With the Stygian Guard I sometimes like to go all-in on spell weakness, using puny magicians to stack a multiplicative debuff on enemies and then one-shotting them. But the Stygians also have a whole other set of warriors that grow stronger every time you play a spell, turning them into deadly direct damage dealers with the right hand.

It’s breezier than Slay the Spire. You might even win your very first run. But it keeps layering on new challenges, and after a few hours it becomes clear that the easier start was just Monster Train’s way of making sure it’s firmly set its hook before reeling you in. Getting the train to the end of the tracks isn’t your end goal—the real reward is building a killer faction combination that feels unbeatable, then finding a single card or relic to build an even better combo around. That’s when things really go off the rails. Ay ay ay.

Robin Valentine: I’ve described Monster Train in the past as a game for people who’ve already put 200 hours into Slay the Spire, though that’s maybe a little uncharitable. It definitely walks in that game’s shadow—and overall, Slay the Spire is the more focused and finely tuned experience. But Monster Train’s relative messiness is its strength.

It combines the core tactical deck-building of its inspiration with a kind of chaos that never stops escalating through a run. Your roster is always stacked with ridiculous powers and abilities, and with overwhelming odds stacked against you, you’re actively encouraged to throw together effects in combinations that would feel utterly broken in any other game.

Slay the Spire’s cold efficiency is a wonderful challenge that keeps me coming back again and again—but Monster Train is a gleeful explosion of illegal fireworks that never lets the adrenaline drop long enough to let you get bored.

A KIND OF CHAOS THAT NEVER STOPS ESCALATING