Games Like Monster Train and Monster Train 2
What should you play after Monster Train?
If you have not played Monster Train 2 yet, play that first: it is the only game on this page that keeps Monster Train’s three stacked floors. After that, the best buy is Vault of the Void, the highest-rated of the nine games below, and if what you loved was placing units and keeping them alive, buy Nowhere Prophet.
Updated October 2026. Every price, review count and platform below was read off the US Steam store this month.
Monster Train asks you to do two things at once: defend a board (its store page promises “three vertical play fields to defend”) and pile upgrades onto your strongest pieces, since the same page lets you “upgrade any card twice” and upgrade your champion “multiple times”. I sorted this list by board shape, the thing that decides how a fight feels from turn one: rows, lines and rings where position matters, grids you move across, or no board at all. The shape labels are my own grouping, and each game’s section links the developer’s own words that back its label. I left out Slay the Spire, Inscryption, Wildfrost, Cobalt Core and Roguebook, because our roguelike deckbuilder list already covers them.
| Game | Board shape | Why a Monster Train player might like it | Regular price (as of October 2026) | Steam reviews (as of October 2026) | Mac on Steam |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nowhere Prophet | Rows | Units you place and protect, gone for good if they fall | $24.99 | 70.7% positive across 1,177 | Yes |
| Across the Obelisk | Front line | Two-clan pairing, scaled up to a four-hero party | $19.99 | 79.9% positive across 13,167 | Yes |
| HELLCARD | Ring, near and far | Choosing where your cards land, the way you choose a floor | $24.99 | 85.7% positive across 4,675 | No |
| Floppy Knights | Tile map | Units on the board, with factions in place of clans | $7.99 | 79.5% positive across 410 | Yes |
| Trials of Fire | Hex grid | Positioning that decides the fight, across three hero decks | $19.99 | 86.0% positive across 3,262 | No |
| Vault of the Void | None | Building one big combo, with the enemy shown before every fight | $17.99 | 92.2% positive across 3,013 | Yes |
| Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles | None | Run building, with dice in place of cards | $24.99 | 91.6% positive across 4,564 | No |
| Tainted Grail: Conquest | None | A village between runs, like Monster Train 2’s hub | $19.99 | 89.8% positive across 8,379 | No |
| NEOVERSE | None | Three heroes and a big card pool, and it runs on a Mac | $19.99 | 84.1% positive across 3,774 | Yes |
| Hellmate | Chessboard | Summoning pieces in Hell with mana | ours · unreleased | ours · unreleased | Yes |
Prices are the regular US price, not a sale price. Review figures are Steam’s total across all languages, with the positive share beside it.
What counts as a game like Monster Train?
A roguelike deckbuilder is a run-based game where your deck is your character: you start with a weak set of cards, add and remove cards between fights, and one loss wipes the deck and restarts the run.
Monster Train adds two things to that loop. Your cards summon units that stay on the board, and the board has three floors, so a card spent on one floor is not helping on another. Its sequel, Monster Train 2, keeps the “classic three-tiered, vertical gameplay” and adds five new clans plus Room and Equipment cards, according to its store page. It costs $24.99 regular and stood at 95.3% positive across 10,217 reviews (as of October 2026), close to the original’s 95.9% across 22,965 (as of October 2026). One practical difference: the original is Windows only on Steam, and the sequel adds macOS.
Each of the nine games below leans on one half of that formula: a board that shapes the fight, or a deck with no board around it.
Which games make position matter without a grid?
Nowhere Prophet
The closest thing here to Monster Train’s units. You lead a convoy across a wasteland, and in a fight you “play convoy cards to put your followers onto the field and position them”, in the store page’s words (Steam). The field is laid out in rows: a follower with the Brawl keyword “will fight the first target in the opposing row”, per the developer’s Board/Control Update. The twist is that the followers are people you recruited: “if one of your followers takes too many wounds, they are lost forever.” That makes every unit you build up worth protecting, the same pull as a Monster Train unit you have stacked upgrades on. Its 70.7% positive share (as of October 2026) is the lowest in the table, and the store page warns of “a high difficulty and permadeath”, so treat it as the hard pick. Buy Nowhere Prophet if keeping your best unit alive was the fun.
Across the Obelisk
You run a party of four heroes, and you build all four decks side by side, so a card pick is a decision for the whole party. Position works through a front line: the developer’s patch v0.8.5 notes cut back enemy “one-shots to the frontline in the first round”, so the hero standing in front is the one you plan around. The store page lists 500+ cards, 300+ items and 16 heroes in four classes, and you can play it solo or with up to three friends in online co-op (Steam). It has the most reviews in the table, 13,167, at 79.9% positive (as of October 2026). If you liked pairing two clans in Monster Train, Across the Obelisk stretches that idea across a four-hero party.
HELLCARD
Its developer puts the pitch plainly: “monster placement actually matters and can be used to your advantage” (Steam). Enemies sit in near or far range, in slices around your party, and the Major Balance Update describes cards “moving them clockwise and switching their distance”. Other cards exist to “reach far away enemies or move them around the battlefield”, as the “Cards. Lots of Cards.” update puts it. You have no units of your own to defend here: the board is about where the enemies stand and which of them your cards can reach, much like picking which floor a card goes to. It also supports co-op for up to three heroes. If position is what you want more of, deckbuilders where the grid matters puts HELLCARD next to other games where position decides the fight. For a board that matters with a friend or two along, HELLCARD is the one to try.
Which ones put the fight on a grid?
Floppy Knights
Floppy Knights is the cheapest game here at $7.99 (as of October 2026) and the most lighthearted. Turn-based tactics meet a card game: your Knights stand on a battlefield, and each unit “generate[s] special cards during battle”, per its store page (Steam). The battlefield is a map of tiles, and the Graveyard Shift DLC post has you “moving your units over special tiles” to make Rune Cards. Each deck is a faction (Plants, Monsters, Hooligans), which plays the role Monster Train’s clans do. Two caveats: the store page never calls it a roguelike, and its 410 reviews (as of October 2026) are the thinnest sample in the table. Want units on a board and a gentler tone? Floppy Knights is the cheap way in.
Trials of Fire
Three heroes, three decks, one fight. Each hero’s cards are commands, and the store page says “movement and positional play are critical to survival in combat” (Steam). The fights play out on hexes: Weekly Update #62 lets a charge attack “select the hex you want to charge to”. Between fights you cross a large overworld, and the gear you find changes the cards you can play. It lists 9 heroes and 345 skill cards, and it is Windows only on Steam. Choose Trials of Fire if you want far more between fights than Monster Train’s choice of route, and positioning that decides each fight. If a grid feels like the next step after three floors, games like Into the Breach goes further down the tactics road.
Which ones have no board at all?
Vault of the Void
The best game on this list for Monster Train’s other half: building one oversized combo. Vault of the Void is a “low-RNG roguelike deckbuilder” with no random events, and you see which enemies you will fight before each encounter, so a run is a plan rather than a gamble (Steam). You can change your deck at any point in a run, socket Void Stones into cards to give them new abilities, and discard cards for extra energy. It lists 4 classes, 440+ cards and 320+ artifacts. At 92.2% positive across 3,013 reviews (as of October 2026), it is the highest-rated game in the table, and the first one I would buy after Monster Train 2.
Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles
Astrea swaps cards for dice. You build a pool from over 350 dice, edit their faces, and fight with Purification and Corruption, where taking Corruption yourself unlocks skills on your own health bar (Steam). Enemies roll dice too, and you can manipulate their dice to change what they do. It is the furthest step from Monster Train here, and it scores 91.6% positive across 4,564 reviews (as of October 2026). Tired of cards but still want to build a run? Astrea does that with dice.
Tainted Grail: Conquest
The store page calls it a “story-driven hybrid between a deck-building Roguelike and an RPG game”, with ever-changing maps and a mystery about the cursed island of Avalon (Steam). Between runs you come back to your village: the early access launch post promised “an option to build and upgrade your village in between the runs”. That works a little like Monster Train 2’s Covenant Outpost, the hub “you’ll visit after each run” (Steam). It has 8,379 reviews at 89.8% positive (as of October 2026). It runs on Windows and Linux, not Mac. If you want a story wrapped around the run, start here.
NEOVERSE
A time-travel deckbuilder with three heroes, 300 cards and over 100 skills, an “auto-draw system for remaining cards” and a talent tree to build out (Steam). It sits at 84.1% positive across 3,774 reviews (as of October 2026), the lowest of the four no-board picks, and it is the weakest fit here: nothing on its store page ties it to Monster Train beyond deckbuilding with a small cast. Its case is the Mac. Of the four games without a board, only NEOVERSE and Vault of the Void run on macOS, so it is the one to reach for after Vault on a Mac.
Which one should you buy first?
Start with Monster Train 2. Then buy for whichever half you missed: Vault of the Void for the combos, Nowhere Prophet for the units. For a group, Across the Obelisk takes up to four players and HELLCARD up to three. On a budget, Floppy Knights costs the least. Skip Nowhere Prophet if losing a unit for good sounds like a chore rather than the point, and skip NEOVERSE unless you play on a Mac and have finished Vault.
If you would rather try something before you pay, roguelike demos on Steam collects demos you can play today.
Where our game fits
Hellmate is our own game, and it sits beside this list rather than on it. It is roguelike deckbuilding chess in the seven floors of Hell: each floor belongs to a deadly sin, every sin crowns its own king, and you summon pieces and cast spells with mana, brand your army with sigils, and melt the king’s HP before your turns run out. The overlap with Monster Train is the verb and the setting, putting units onto a board in Hell and piling power onto them. The difference is the board: a chessboard with pieces in place of floors, which is what makes it a chess deckbuilder. It is unreleased, dated January 19, 2027 on Steam (as of October 2026), for Windows and macOS, so the full game has nothing to point at yet. The Hellmate demo is playable now, and the Hellmate Steam page is where to follow it.
Frequently asked questions
What is the closest game to Monster Train?
Monster Train 2, the direct sequel, and it fixes one gap in the original: it runs on macOS as well as Windows. Outside the series, Nowhere Prophet comes closest on units you place and protect, and Vault of the Void comes closest on combo building.
Is there a game like Monster Train and Slay the Spire?
Yes: Vault of the Void. It plays like Slay the Spire, one hero facing enemies with no board, and at 92.2% positive (as of October 2026) it is the best-reviewed of the nine here. It is also on iPhone.
Are there games like Monster Train on iPhone?
Yes, three of the nine. Vault of the Void and Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles are paid apps on the US App Store, and Nowhere Prophet is free to start, with a one-time in-app purchase that unlocks the full game. Monster Train itself is there too (as of October 2026). I did not check Android.
Which games like Monster Train run on a Mac?
Five of the nine: Nowhere Prophet, Across the Obelisk, Floppy Knights, Vault of the Void and NEOVERSE (as of October 2026). Monster Train 2 runs on macOS, but the original Monster Train is Windows only on Steam.
