New roguelike turns Vampire Survivors into a tower defense game on wheels

Horde survival. Tower defense. Outwardly similar, yet different genres. Both rely on scaling your arsenal against ever-more-challenging waves of mobs, though the latter is typically a static experience. But what happens when you shove a set of wheels under the tower? The answer, Monsters are Coming! Rock and Road posits, is a 'tower survivor.' After spending an hour fending for my life in the opening slice of the innovative splice at publisher Raw Fury's Stockholm office, I'm convinced it has the spice to succeed if it can stick the landing.

Having procrastinated countless school IT lessons playing Bloons off a USB stick, and having pumped many post-work decompression hours into Vampire Survivors, Monsters are Coming! was always going to be a bit of me. The upcoming PC game puts you in control of a peon, a faceless figure who lives to protect and serve their mobile city as it rolls down towards a haven known as the Arch.

During a run, you'll have to gather resources like wood, stone, and gold to build and upgrade your city's fortifications, while also fending off the monstrous masses that would see it destroyed. It's chuffing hard work, and as I frantically zip across the map, Raw Fury producer Linda Johansen tells me that it's trying to be "chaotic and overwhelming in a good way." I don't have time to agree with the statement, but the panicked yelps I emit throughout, yelps that not even the FBI could get out of me, surely suffice.

Vampire Survivors' roguelite elements are there, too. Accruing enough XP levels up your city, presenting a choice of towers to snap onto your city grid. These can be crudely categorized into 'economy,' 'utility,' and 'offense.' So far, there's a solid variety of build paths you can take, and in my case, I was able to cobble together a halfway decent gold-based setup. Here, I opted where possible for eco towers that generated gold, utility towers that amped tower damage based on how full my coffers were, and offensive towers that generated more of the shiny stuff with each kill. My DPS wasn't particularly outrageous, but that's to be expected this early on.

Bricked builds are a common frustration within the genre, and while that's just how the cookie crumbles sometimes, losing to RNG never feels good. Developer Ludogram won't rig the odds entirely in your favor, but Johansen explains the game does acknowledge where you're trying to take it, and will ever so slightly increase the likelihood of rolling a complementary tower.

Making the big number power fantasy - something roguelike cousin Balatro has in spades - even slightly more achievable is a big win in my book, and will only inspire repeated play. This is bolstered by the game's metaprogression system, which offers permanent upgrades to both peon and city that you can invest in over time.

Monsters are Coming! fundamentally wants to play nice with the player, but Ludogram also aims to provide ample challenge for the more adventurous. There are multiple difficulty levels available, and while the system doesn't look to be as modular as something like Hades' Pact of Punishment, I'm hopeful that the devs will do it justice. I blitzed through the lowest difficulty of the first biome on my inaugural run, which should theoretically never happen in a roguelite, but Johansen assures me that the game balance is off in the demo build. So, prepare to suffer until you make enough metaprogression, even on easy.

Monsters are Coming!'s player-friendly design marks it as a potentially perfect pick-up for casuals, though it remains to be seen if it will provide enough challenge for that more niche hardcore audience. The early sample I played was chaotically entertaining, well-paced, and it's clear Ludogram is juggling its multiple genre clubs well. While Raw Fury has yet to slap a release date on the game, you can add Monsters are Coming! to your Steam wishlist to stay up to date on its progress.

Until the monsters arrive, go and check out our lists of the best tower defense games, best survival games, and best roguelike games that'll all give you a taster of what's to come.