Monster Train is a roguelike deck-builder where you control the monsters of Hell aboard their train, the Boneshaker, to defeat the forces of Heaven and relight the fading Pyres of Hell. The concept of playing as the ‘bad guys’ (they’re just misunderstood!) was around from the very beginning and, as the designer in charge of creating the world, I spent my time coming up with new horned demons and candle mobsters to control and factions of angels to destroy. For each card, relic, and game system, I created a concept design to give them a reason to exist in the larger world. 

In addition to the world design, I pitched in with gameplay engineering support. Most notably, I created the Concealed Caverns events system and designed the various characters and situations you’d encounter inside. This introduced us to Ink, which similar to YarnSpinner, allowed us to write in-game text while integrating game system logic within that same text making content creation much more efficient. A tool we’d utilize even further in our next project, Inkbound.

You can download Monster Train on Steam, Xbox, Playstation, and Nintendo Switch.