Monster Train (v12924 & ALL DLC)

A frozen Hell turns the usual demon fantasy on its head, casting Heaven’s armies as invaders and placing the last surviving Pyre aboard a locomotive bound for salvation. Monster Train is a roguelike deck-builder with a tower-defense edge, where every battle unfolds across the stacked carriages of a hellish train. Its mood is energetic rather than grim: grotesque monsters, explosive spell effects, and absurdly powerful card combinations make failure sting, but also make another run immediately tempting.

Each fight asks you to defend three vertical floors as angelic enemies board at the bottom and climb toward the Pyre. You spend Ember to deploy units, cast spells, position blockers, and build lethal synergies before combat resolves automatically, forcing careful planning around damage, health, buffs, and enemy movement. Between battles, branching map routes let you recruit units, improve cards, upgrade a champion, duplicate key pieces, or take passive relic-like bonuses. Five distinct clans can be paired as primary and allied factions, creating decks built around mechanics such as reforming fallen troops, stacking armor, hatching massive creatures, or sacrificing disposable allies for profit.

Monster Train stands apart because its battlefield matters as much as its deck: a powerful setup on one floor can still collapse if the wrong enemies slip past elsewhere. Card upgrades can be layered into wonderfully broken combinations, while clan pairings and randomized routes give runs far more variety than a standard single-character deck-builder. Hell Rush adds a real-time competitive mode where players race through identical runs, and daily challenges offer altered rule sets for score chasing. Fans of Slay the Spire who want faster battles, more unit management, and bigger combo potential will feel at home, while newcomers benefit from its readable systems and satisfying early builds.