App Store Editors’ Notes

Wonderful card game with a twist but touch controls can be better

Great game. Was enjoying on game pass Xbox and now I can play on my iPad. You definitely should try it. Below is a message to devs since I couldn’t find a way to report issues/suggestions on the website. Bugs first. Swipe up and down on iPad has dead zones and not working smoothly all the time. Picking a card bug is dangerous. When you tap on a card so it flows above all others and then start swiping this card to the field, you may drag card below instead. Happened dozens of times already. Easy to reproduce. IPad specific layout - would be nice if you make space below for all the cards so they are not squished. There is plenty of space on iPad 12.9 at least. Also you can see the whole card but a bit below info like damage/health and still need to tap a card which seems silly since there is all that space. Same with floors. I can see all three floors. But yet I can’t target a spell to a different floor. Seems counter intuitive for a touch device. One solution could be to move icons from the bottom and to the sides. I understand the layout is good for iPhone, but not so much for iPad. Anywho the game is good, and could be more enjoyable on a large touch device with a few tweaks.

Amazing!

This is one of my favorite games of all time in any genre, and I’m enjoying it all over again on my phone. My favorite thing about this game is how impactful each choice is; I get bored now with other games where it feels like my decisions or upgrades are incremental. In this one, adding or even removing a single card can change your whole strategy :) Just some notes for the devs: On a non-huge iPhone, units stacked to 5+ become pretty unreadable, especially if they have armor, in which case you can’t read the stats. I think there’s probably not an easy solution to totally solve this, but I wonder if you could add the unit stats to the hold/hover dialog where it currently only shows buffs, debuffs, statuses and helper text. It can also be tough to target a specific unit when they’re stacked high on mobile - I think it would probably be particularly frustrating for a newer player, but I’m not sure what’s to be done about that one. There is a strange issue that I’m pretty is the same thing I ran into in the pc version, where occasionally when grabbing a card to play, it would scroll you to a different floor with the card in hand. Sometimes this causes a misplay but I think it’s a slightly bigger issue on mobile because you can’t scroll a mouse wheel to quickly correct it; you have to put the card down and try again. Anyway, thanks for brining this masterpiece to my pocket!

Great game but massive cloud save issues.

This is an awesome game and I have put a large number of hours into it. Here’s the problem though. If you try to access the game on a second device it will start over from the beginning. I could get over this but somehow the iCloud prioritizes the save on the second device and updates very fast. I had almost everything unlocked on my iPad and tried to play on my phone and now it’s all gone. Patch notes say this has been fixed but it has not. I was actually prompted to see which data I wanted to use local or cloud but both of my choices were at the beginning of a brand new game. The local iPad data was overwritten unprompted. The funny thing is my iPad saved my run history and shows my most recent run with the last two clans to get unlocked but my logbook is empty and I can only pick starters. I like the game enough that I am probably gonna start over and rebuild my file but it’s a huge bummer I lost several dozen hours of work. Was literally considering buying the dlc this evening before this happened. Will update to 5 stars if something is done about this. If cloud save can’t work just disable it or provide some other file transfer method. I’d rather not even have the option than to loose all my save data unexpectedly.

Great Steam crossover

I first played this game on Steam and was really happy to see it for iOS. Not pay to win in any way, you develop your deck and never lose progress. No silly events to get you to buy and a fun soundtrack. I don’t know what more you can ask for in a rogue-lite/rogue-like card battler franchise. The story is fun, but not tedious. The different factions are each interesting on their own, and fun to combine into different runs. It features a progression map like Slay the Spire (another great rogue-like on Steam) which allows you to choose your path through the game for high replay value. The system demands for the game are low, which makes it great on PC, but now for iOS, it’s available on your handheld platform for a great time killer wherever you are. It’s turn-based, which is a plus; and well…. I just can’t recommend this game highly enough. Play it, you’ll love it.

60fps and cross device saves?

The game itself is the same great Monster Train experience as on PC, no complaints with regard to gameplay. However, a few complaints about the port: — No 60fps mode. The game runs beautifully on PC, why shouldn’t it on mobile devices capable of running it? — Cloud saves are buggy/not working. Attempting to play the same save file across phone and iPad has not worked at all. Yes, they are logged into the same Apple account. Yes, I checked that cloud saves are enabled in settings. — More minor gripe, but swiping to switch floors on the train is rather finicky/unresponsive. Often takes multiple tries, and honestly tapping the tiny arrow is less annoying. —— The game could be great, and I’ll update my review if/when these issues get fixed. ———— UPDATE: The game now overwrote my more recent phone save’s progress with my unplayed iPad progress, effectively wiping everything I did last night. Lowering to 2 stars as now I don’t feel comfortable playing the game for fear my progress will be wiped again. Please fix this and make a more robust cloud save system.

Amazingly Refreshing

I’ve played every single major tcg/deck builder from their releases and Monster Train is one of the best. Addicting. Simple to learn. Hard to master. Just like all the best games ever made. The three tiers of fighting. The synergies. The combos. So good. Ive played Slay the Spire for years. It’s my go to for deckbuilder roguelites. Not any more. My only complaint…I NEED MORE! MORE CARDS, MORE CHAMPS, MORE ARTIFACTS! Maybe Monster Train 2!?!? Update - found a couple flaws that really ruin a run. I play on an ipad and choosing the card I want to play and actually playing it can be tricky. It feels like the cards need more space in-between one another or a confirm play button. There’s actually a few QoL choices during a run that I feel should ask for a confirm. When given choices in random cave events it should show the items or ask for a confirm when you click them as well.

Great game but limited on m1

I've been playing on xbox for quite a while and bought the game and the DLC despite it being available on game pass because of how much I enjoy it. I was really excited to learn that it was available on iOS because I've been wanting a way to play it away from my xbox. I've used cloud streaming and that works okay, but it isn't ideal. I was hoping that I would be able to play this on my M1 macbook, but there isn't any controller support and scrolling gestures on the trackpad aren't recognized, so when you're looking at your deck, you can't see the entire thing. This makes it impossible to delete cards or upgrade cards if they are past the first few, visible rows. Playing on my phone, the game seems great although I've only got a small out of time on it so far. I haven't tried it yet on my ipad.

It’d be a 5, but for bugs & no support

So I love rougelike games, and having mastered Slay the Spire, picking up Monster Train seemed a natural shift. And I am loving this game, and its dynamic variability. However there are several recurring bugs (see below example) that there are no good fixes for, and all efforts to contact support via email or discord have had no response. So yeah, great game. Love the game. Plan to get MT2, but don’t hope for glitch assistance. “Can’t find if this has been posted anywhere else, but I have a recurring glitch playing Monster Train on iOS. If I get a Concealed Caverns event, and anything causes the game to close out (like a phone call, or putting the phone down to go do something else) before getting to the next fight to “save” progress, then on reopening the game the Concealed Caverns will be greyed out & locked but I got no reward from it. Is there any fix for this? This has happened enough times to actually make me burn an entire run because losing that reward completely nerfed the deck setup. Note: as far as I have experienced, this only happens with the Concealed Caverns. No other reward events are impacted.”

Leaving on a hell train - As heaven threatens to extinguish the flames of Hell once and for all, it's down to you, some demonspawn,...

Push Square Fri Oct 10 2025

Hellishly good roguelike Monster train has finally pulled up on the PlayStation 5 console. Like any good rail operator, Good Shepherd...

GameSpace.com Fri Oct 10 2025

Monster Train, the acclaimed roguelike deckbuilder from developer Shiny Shoe, is making its way to PlayStation 5 today,…

Eurogamer.net Sun Oct 05 2025

LOS ANGELES (July 25, 2024) – Good Shepherd Entertainment today announced that Monster Train, the critical hit roguelike deckbuilder from...

Capsule Computers Mon Oct 06 2025

Better late than never - Surprise! The highly acclaimed roguelike deckbuilder, Monster Train, has reached its final platform;...

Push Square Sun Oct 05 2025

Monster Train is a strategy game, in which you can find strongly outlined elements of card games and roguelikes.

Gamepressure.com Fri Apr 11 2025

If I'm being honest, I haven't personally been all that into the whole deckbuilding roguelike phenomenon of the last few years.

TouchArcade Thu Jan 11 2024

The developers have provided a decent amount of new content while maintaining the delicate balance of the game. DLC Review...

RPGFan Mon Jul 11 2022

Hell is empty and all the devils are here, and by here I mean on this train, teaming up with monsters to fight angels across the frozen...

PC Gamer Sat Sep 11 2021

Good Shepherd Entertainment will be bringing Monster Train First Class over to the Nintendo Switch on August 19th, 2021.

Bleeding Cool News Fri Nov 11 2022