Monster Train has one hell of a premise. You're the conductor of a locomotive descending through the seven layers of hell—the denizens of the underworld hot on your tail. Harpies, warlocks, and abyssal knights are constantly breaching the walls, and players have to muster their own infernal forces to consign the interlopers back to the pits.
Courtesy of Shiny ShoeIn the hands of a gigantic studio like Blizzard or Ubisoft or EA, it'd be easy to imagine Monster Train as a sprawling, open-world adventure. We'd explore every nook and cranny of perdition—following waypoints, climbing watch towers, maxing out talent trees. But Shiny Shoe, the developer behind the game, chose a different direction entirely. Instead of a globe-trotting action game or a titanic RPG, Monster Train is a relatively simple digital card game, where the struggle against the Seraphim plays out with a deck and a dream. In 2021, that was more than enough to blow up the charts.
