Monsters Are Coming! Rock and Road Review
Monsters Are Coming! is highly reminiscent of 2024’s indie phenomenon Balatro. A very simple premise that combined two otherwise ordinary elements into one addictive experience. In Monsters are Coming! it’s a combination of Tower Defence and Horde Survivor or as the studio calls it Tower Survivor. Similarities go beyond the genre fusion as Monsters Are Coming! also captures a lot of the little details of Balatro as well with a very catchy soundtrack, dopamine inducing sounds and gameplay that is easy to pick up, but nearly impossible to put down.
After the massive success of Vampire Survivors, there has been a never ending deluge of Bullet Heaven releases, but few offer anything remotely unique. Not only does the addition of Tower Defence elements and resource management take a genre with relatively shallow gameplay and infuse it with depth and strategy, but even fewer look, feel and sound as good as Monsters Are Coming! Rock and Road.
Monsters Are Coming! ROCK & ROAD Review
Monsters Are Coming! Rock & Road is the latest title to be published by Raw Fury, who have had an incredible year with releases like Blue Prince, The Seance of Blake Manor, and now Monsters Are Coming! Rock and Road which adds some well needed variety and depth to the bullet heaven genre by blending in elements of Tower Defence and resource gathering in this extremely additive action roguelite.
In Monsters Are Coming! you start each run as a nameless peon who’s only purpose is to protect the last living city against the imposing horde of darkness and reach the Arch. As a nameless peon you are disposable and will be quickly replaced throughout your journey by another nameless peon. Your city on the other hand is irreplaceable and must be protected at all costs.
In the place of different starting characters you have different moving castles or cities, each with their own interesting quirks and features that provide a wrinkle to the experience. There are ten different starting castles, four different roads to travel, and four different difficulty levels. You will travel the long road as the horde attacks you from all angles as you try to reach the last bastion of humanity. In between you and The Arch a few safe havens where you can take a well need respite, acquire a hero upgrade, and spend your collected coins at a shop to improve your travelling city.
Instead of avoiding damage like most in the genre, you are also juggling many other responsibilities, but above all else, you need to protect your city. You will also need to repair and upgrade, which is done through defeating enemies and collecting resources as well as constantly clearing obstructions on the road that prevent your city from reaching the Arch. Balancing and prioritizing everything is what gives Monsters Are Coming! a level of depth and strategy uncommon in the genre.
Upgrading your castle is done through collecting experience orbs in a very similar manner to Vampire Survivors. Enemies will drop little blue gems and you need to collect them with your peon and return them to your moving city. Just like you expect when you reach a new level, you will be presented with three upgrade options with varying degrees or rareness complete with a familiar color palette (blue for common and yellow for rare etc). The upgrades range from defence items including a fire breathing dragon, which is always hard to pass up or you can upgrade resource gathering for you hero in the form of a statue, or improve your city in the form of farms or mills for example.
The big wrinkle is that these upgrades will need to be built onto your traveling city, expanding its footprint, which is another way that Monsters Are Coming adds depth and strategy. Placement is important as you need to decide which area of the castle needs the most protection, but take into consideration that wherever you build will be expanding your city, making it more susceptible to road blockages, making it extremely vulnerable. As mentioned earlier, your nameless peon is disposable, but the way Monsters Are Coming penalizes death is clever as you need to attach a cemetery to your castle, which takes up valuable space that should be used for upgrades.
When your city burns to the ground and your run is over, you will be rewarded with meta progression unlocks in the form of new items to use for accomplishing certain goals like defeating a certain amount of enemies with freezing or with burning. You are also rewarded currency depending on how much distance you traveled each run, which can be spent directly on castle and hero upgrades of your choice including increasing base health, damage output, or faster resource gathering to name a few.
Monsters Are Coming! looks and sounds great. The visuals are fairly simple, but have a charming feel with a cel-shaded inspired look. I loved the monsters, the darkness they come from and how all of the red eyes are constantly imposing to the player. There are also plenty of little details that that add charm such as the shop keeper, who dismantles his shop and heads into an underground bunker when you depart the safe zone. The soundtrack as you may have guessed is heavy metal inspired, hence the title and it pays dividends for the experience as the metal soundtrack is catchy, but also adds a level of tension without being irritating, which is a very fine line to balance.
When it comes to the bullet heaven genre, story is often a very overlooked aspect. Although Monsters are Coming! doesn’t feature a revolutionary plot, it does have just enough to act as accoutrement to the fantastic gameplay.
One of the most surprising aspects about Monsters Are Coming! is how good natural it feels to play with friends and family on the couch. It might only be a single player game, but every run will have four sections with three safe havens to stop at along the way. It’s at these checkpoints that a perfect opportunity arises to pass the controller. This is how I played the majority of the game because Monsters Are Coming! Rock and Road is almost as much fun to watch as it is to play.
Monsters Are Coming! Criticisms
It’s expected that Bullet Heavens are going to get extremely hectic with enemies on the screen, along with damage numbers, and elemental effects, and for the most part Monsters Are Coming remains extremely playable during these moments, but there are occasional obstacles that block the road that are very difficult to see even with the help the game offers. These are usually very small items or even the harder to see fallen items like a stone arch that has collapsed on the ground. When you are juggling as many things as you will be it becomes frustrating when you can’t find the blockage.
As resource management plays a large role in Monsters Are Coming!, the audio effects on gathering should have had more weight to them and offered a highly audible and distinct sound when gathering different resources. This would have increased immersion and eliminated minor confusion when materials are placed close together.
Monsters Are Coming! is Steam Deck verified and it is exactly the type of game that you want to play on the handheld and for the most part, performance is great, but that many elements on screen plus destructible environments can cause the frame rate to drop from the mostly stable 60 that it holds onto down to around 45. However, without a frame rate counter on screen, its hardly noticeable an since the game doesn’t have split second life or death moments, it’s a very minor issue.
IS Monsters Are Coming! WORTH IT?
For a comparable price to a terrible fast food meal, Monsters Are Coming! Rock and Road is a smarter choice and also probably provides more nutritional value.
Since 2021, there have only been a small handful of games that deserve to be in the conversation with Vampire Survivors as the best Bullet Heavens. With the unique genre fusion that brings a level of depth often ignored in the genre, Monsters Are Coming! Rock and Road belongs in the conversation with the best of the genre.
In the same vein of Vampire Survivors and Balatro, there is a good chance that Monsters Are Coming! Rock and Road could become your next obsession.
