Monsters Are Coming! Rock & Road Preview

During the summer, we were lucky enough to be invited into the main office of Raw Fury to celebrate their 10th anniversary. During this little shindig, we were given the chance to have a short session with multiple upcoming titles, to get a small taste of things to come. If I’m being honest, said “little nibble” was probably a ploy to get us hooked, as I’ve since kept a manic eye on many games’ release dates. As such, I was beyond thrilled to gain an early sneak peek into one of these: the upcoming title developed by Ludogram, Monsters Are Coming! Rock & Road.

The core gameplay of the title is an interesting mix of roguelike, survivors-like, and tower defence elements: you see, monsters are indeed coming and your little city is smack-dab in the middle of the horde's path of terror. Luckily, your home is smarter than some horror movie protagonists and (literally) legs it as soon as the game starts. Additionally, the hamlet is not without its defences: powerful towers and passively helpful districts make short work of any foe dumb enough to get into range.

You take on the role of a Peon, a little guy armed with a sword, a set of tools, and a gigantic bag for resources. As your haven ambles along the path to safety, your job is to gather resources from the side, collect useful items, and fight any enemies your city’s defences can’t handle in time. There are four major resources for you to collect: Wood, which will power up your defences; Rock, which will repair your city; Gold, which can be used to purchase new towers or districts; and Crystals, which will fill up your experience bar, leading to a level up! 

Every time you fill said bar or spend gold at safe zones, you can add new defences to your walls, which is where the tower defence elements come into play. You see, each new building must be placed in a grid around the town’s centre. Towers, your main form of attack, may have a range or an arc of vision, so being smart with their placement is crucial. Districts, on the other hand, offer various passive boosts and bonuses, but may be restricted to affecting towers that are adjacent. Finally, the shape of your home itself can be very important! You will often run into patches of trees or the odd boulder blocking parts of the road, making a wide bastion more likely to get stuck, eating up precious moments of movement.

Happily, the Peon can also take a more active role in defending their home. At the default level, you have a sword that will automatically swing at enemies. However, you may find other goodies amidst the trees and stones of the road, such as derelict towers you can activate to cull the numbers of the monstrous horde, magical circles that provide rare buildings if powered up, and treasure chests. 

If broken, these boxes of goodies will give you three options of either weapons or upgrades to bolster your armaments, making the Peon a walking tower in their own right. However, if you get overconfident, you may find the oogly booglies quickly overrunning you. While the death of the Peon is not game over, you have a town full of them after all, you will lose any resources you have gathered, unless your newly spawned worker is fast enough to collect the discarded bag.

During each (literal) run, your route will have a number of safe zones to stop at. While these are only temporary reprieves, they do offer a few useful features! First off, the area often has a few resources, such as health for your Peon or a bit of experience, lying around and also allows you to access the shop. Additionally, you have a choice between two routes on both sides of your castle that have an abundance of a specific resource. These extra sections aren’t without risk, however, as the horde will invariably make their way even here! As you enter, a timer will start, leaving you a short span to collect the offered goodies before you are overrun.

Once you are done with your shopping and other business, the run continues, and the shadowy foe will be hot on your heels yet again. This process keeps going until you either get to the end of the path and defeat the boss of the area, or your bastion falls to the enemy’s relentless assaults. In either case, you’ll get some stats on the run, meta currency to help get you up to snuff, and possibly unlock new biomes, towers, city types, and even classes for the Peon!

Though the build we were given access to didn’t contain everything, we still got to play around with a few different cities and towers, and it was fun to see how much the seemingly small changes affected the general playstyle. Where the default city would work well for any style, the second option, the Ashes City, placed a higher emphasis on gathering resources than fighting monsters, which instantly changed how we approached the challenges.

The game feels like the type of title you pick up to “play just one run” and then spend the next few hours trying out new strategies, cursing at those creepy tree mobs, and praying to the RNG deities to bless you with great upgrades or towers. It’s also pretty simple to get to grips with, but it still offers a fair bit of complexity for those who want to dive deeper.

I think the greatest thing about Monsters Are Coming!, however, is how creative it can be. The combinations of towers and districts will produce some amazing emergent qualities, and I can’t wait to see what kind of placement strategies other players come up with. The game is sure to conjure up a lot of similar watercooler discussions, as we learn how to navigate the terrible hordes of the night. 

If what you’ve read so far has caught your attention, make sure to check out the Steam page and wishlist Monsters are Coming! Rock & Road. Also, keep an eye out for more information and reveals, as the title is present at gamescom!