Monsters are Coming! Rock & Road Deserves Space in Your Steam Library

Move Over, Grandma—The Real Survivors Are Here! Monsters Are Coming! Rock & Road Is the Only Game That Lets You Abandon Your Hero Like Last Season’s Fashion 🚀💥

If you’re still stuck in the stone age, mindlessly mashing buttons in yet another “Vampire Survivors” clone, it’s time to wake up and smell the apocalypse. There’s a new sheriff in town, and it’s called Monsters Are Coming! Rock & Road. It’s been out for over a month, and while Steam is flooded with over 2000 “Very Positive” and “Mostly Positive” reviews (because apparently, people finally learned how to use the thumbs-up button), the rest of the world is still blissfully unaware. How is this possible? Are we living in a simulation run by people who think Candy Crush is peak gaming? 🤔

Let’s be brutally honest: the survivor genre is drowning in mediocrity. Every other email I get screams, “It’s just like Vampire Survivors!” Yeah, and this game is just like a supernova compared to a glow stick. Monsters Are Coming! Rock & Road doesn’t just pay homage to the genre; it takes it out for coffee, breaks its heart, and then builds a better version from the ashes. It flips the formula like a pancake at a breakfast diner run by caffeinated raccoons. 🦝🥞

I’ve been obsessed since summer. It snagged one of our Best of Gamescom 2025 awards (because excellence deserves a trophy, not just a pat on the back), and when I reviewed it, I gave it a 9.5. Why? Because the gameplay loop is so addictive it should come with a warning label, the unlockables are so satisfying they make collecting bottle caps feel meaningful, and the mechanics are so unique they probably have their own zip code. The only things missing are more platforms (looking at you, Nintendo Switch 2) and multiplayer (because suffering is always better with friends). 🎮✨

After the release, I cornered the creative mastermind behind the madness, Edouard Gaudel from Ludogram, and grilled him like a suspicious cheese at a fancy party. Here’s what he had to say, and trust me, it’s juicier than the plot of a telenovela.

**Q: For those who haven’t been able to check out Monsters are Coming! Rock & Road, could you give us a little rundown of the mechanics and the goal of the game?**

**Edouard:** It’s what we call a “Tower Survivor.” You control a hero who must gather resources to upgrade their constantly moving city. Why is it moving? Because a relentless horde of monsters is chasing it like it stole their last energy drink. The goal? Use your hero efficiently to collect resources, fight monsters, and build the best city you can. Think of it as SimCity meets a zombie marathon, but way more fun.

**Q: What is the Ark, exactly?**

**Edouard:** The Ark is the mythical place all wandering cities are desperately trying to reach. It’s a final refuge where their long journey can finally end. Basically, it’s the finish line in a race where the prize is not getting eaten.

**Q: Survivor-likes are very popular right now, but games take a long time to develop. How long has your team been working on Monsters are Coming! Rock & Road?**

**Edouard:** We worked on it for two-and-a-half years. The main challenge was figuring out how to represent a rolling city without it taking up the whole screen. Also, we had to design the relationship between the city and the hero. All our choices were built around the idea that both should complement each other. Translation: We wanted the city to be the star, not the sidekick.

**Q: Where did the initial inspiration for Monsters are Coming! Rock & Road come from?**

**Edouard:** From a fascination with a brilliant book: The Inverted World by Christopher Priest, which tells the story of a city in perpetual motion. We were captivated by that idea for a long time but never found the right gameplay to explore such a universe. Survivor mechanics gave us the spark: “What if, instead of a hero being the core of the survivor experience, it was a moving city?” And thus, a legend was born.

**Q: Making your minion expendable and the Town Hall the main star is very unique. Was that the plan from the beginning?**

**Edouard:** It evolved during production. Initially, every level-up allowed the hero to gain new weapons and stats. But something felt off. We realized the true “hero” had to be the city itself. That’s why when the hero dies, they’re immediately replaced by another, but when the city is destroyed, the run ends. It’s like having a pet rock that actually matters.

**Q: There are 10 Town Halls to unlock. How did you come up with the ideas for these Town Halls? And were there any that were left out?**

**Edouard:** Choosing wasn’t easy. We designed many concepts, but our criteria were to mix Town Halls that are easy to grasp with others that offer deeper strategic twists. A large number of designs are already ready, and we plan to add more in future updates. Imagine a city that runs on pure chaos and glitter. That’s in the pipeline.

**Q: Right now, the monsters lean more toward creepy-crawlers. Do you think there could be different kinds of enemies, or even collaborations with other games for content like enemies or locations in the future?**

**Edouard:** There are still a lot of opportunities within the monster roster, and we intend to explore them. One idea we’re excited about is letting players fight other cities, be they small or gigantic. As for collaborating with other games, we’d love to. Instead of asking “which monster should we add?”, we dream: “Which iconic city from another game could appear in ours?” Imagine a Dome Keeper city appearing in Monsters Coming one day. The crossover event of the century!

**Q: When I played the game at gamescom 2025, I chatted with someone about the possibility of multiplayer. Is that something that could be in the future?**

**Edouard:** It’s something we dream of adding. Multiplayer is expensive in development time, but more and more players are asking for it, and the game lends itself extremely well to a cooperative mode where several players would embody multiple heroes supporting the same city. Think of it as herding cats, but with more explosions.

**Q: Are there any other future plans for Monsters Are Coming! Rock & Road that you can share with us?**

**Edouard:** We haven’t shared our full roadmap yet, but what I can say is that the January update will introduce a feature that players have been requesting a lot! Stay tuned, because it’s going to be bigger than the time we tried to fit a whole pizza in the microwave.

**Q: Just for fun, what is your ultimate Town Hall/Road combination?**

**Edouard:** Disclaimer: I’m definitely not the best player in the studio! But I love building a Mirror City where symmetry helps me expand my fields quickly, generating a ton of gold so I can buy, upgrade, and fuel the “Gold Towers” in my build. It’s like playing chess with a city planner on espresso.

**Q: Now that Monsters Are Coming! Rock & Road is out there and in the hands of reviewers and players, how does it feel? What has the response been so far?**

**Edouard:** It’s incredibly exciting for the entire team to see so many players jumping into the game. Players seem to really enjoy the gameplay, and they’ve given us extremely helpful feedback. This allowed us to release three consecutive patches quickly, improving balance and offering more options to help create wild builds and cities.

So, if you’re still stuck in the dull, repetitive loop of generic survivor games, it’s time to upgrade. Monsters Are Coming! Rock & Road is available now on Steam for only $11.79 CAD, and it’s also available in a bundle with other gems like BALL X PIT, Noobs Are Coming, or Dome Keeper. Don’t just survive—thrive, build, and most importantly, have fun while doing it. The monsters are coming, but so is your next favorite game. 🎉👾