As this wonderful year of gaming comes to a close, I’ve discovered something about my tastes. I quite possibly love Survivors style games more than any other genre, which is a little wild considering I didn’t even touch Vampire Survivors until a couple of years after it took the world by storm. 2025 has been a great year for this blossoming new genre, with Deep Rock Galactic: Survivors hitting 1.0 and Ball x Pit blending in some breakout action into the Roguelike fun. This Year of Survivors delights isn’t over yet though, as Monsters are Coming! Rock and Road is here with something to obsess over through the winter months.
The aim of Monsters are Coming is to transport a moving city to The Ark, through hordes of dark and assumedly evil creatures. You are humanity’s last hope, and only by defending your group of buildings will you reach the sanctuary and create a safe haven for the survivors of this world. By blending Survivors style auto combat and tower defence a truly unique game is born, and it’s one I really struggled to put down.
When you begin a run to The Ark your starting town hall will fire a single shot at incoming monsters, and it’ll be up to you to rush up to the creepy crawlers and axe them to death yourself. Dead enemies drop gems though, which you can collect and take to your moving fortress to level it up. Every time you level up you’ll be offered three potential new buildings to stick to the edge of your base, and it’s up to you to decide which will help you the most.
These additional buildings come in a variety of forms, like for example a giant dragon’s head that breathes fire on nearby foes or an icy ballista that both hurts them and slows them on approach. These offensive options can be placed wherever you think they’ll help the most, and can even be upgraded by finding more of them and stacking them on top. At first I focused mostly on just strapping as many towers onto my base as possible, but doing this meant the fortress got stuck on trees and rocks constantly. After enough failed runs I learned to be more cautious with this, and even found synergies that ensured maximum firepower.
The real key to success in Monsters are Coming! Rock and Road is to use lots of support buildings to buff your total offense. There are damage boosting buildings that power up all adjacent towers, farms that passively grant wood (a resource that raises towers rate of fire) and all sorts of other options to choose from. An early victorious build of mine involved boosting fire damage and placing a whole lot of dragon heads, and thankfully the level ups and shops provided lots of these to me.
Worrying about your fortress is only one side of Monsters are Coming though, because your hero has to help out too. By finding chests you’ll be able to upgrade your auto firing weapons in a variety of ways, like boosting damage and rate of fire. You’ll also gain new weapons at each safe zone, which there are three of in each run complete with a shop. By adding icy beams and flaming jars to my loadout I had a great time helping take down the enemies approaching my base, and in tandem we felt unstoppable.
You don’t have to be all about the attacking when playing as your hero though, you can instead focus on harvesting wood, rock and cash. This is as satisfying here as it is in Deep Rock Survivors, and will help boost your base’s health and tower’s strength too. It’s easy to roam too far and even die when you go on a gathering mission, but even if you do you’ll just respawn at your fortress and only have to add a useless grave onto it as punishment.
There’s a lot to balance in each run of Monsters are Coming! Rock and Road, and outside of these runs you’ll unlock a whole lot of extras too. There are multiple starting Town Halls you’ll unlock, with wildly different effects like mirroring all towers added to them or buffing the range of passive towers. There are also different roads which are essentially different stages, and all the unlockable new towers and weapons you could want (as long as you’re able to fulfil their conditions). There are even permanent stat upgrades you’ll slowly be able level up, meaning there’s always progression even in the most painful of bad runs.
There’s so much to love about Monsters are Coming, but it does have a few minor issues. At the start of your time with the game there’s a pretty paltry amount of weapons and towers to find on runs, with the same options coming up constantly. Music is also designated to each individual level, and while it’s good when you replay the same road over and over you’ll just hear the same quickly looping song. It’s a very minor issue but it somewhat irked me and that’s as bad as this game gets.
Monsters are Coming! Rock and Road is a wonderful addition to the Survivors genre, with a clever twist on the formula and instantly compelling gameplay. It’s a game that’s almost impossible to put down, and because of that I’ve had a whole lot of near sleepless nights. If you’re looking to switch things up after years of Vampire Survivors, or just for an effortlessly compelling and infinitely replayable experience, Monsters are Coming will be more than happy to absorb all your free time.
