Monster Train 2 News

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Hi friends. It’s April Fools' day.

If you’ve spent enough time on the internet, you already know what today is about. It’s about goofs. It’s about tricks. It’s about “pulling a fast one”. April Fools' Day in the video game world is a particularly special time for video game studios like us. With the right April Fools’ Day announcement, your game can land at the top of the gaming news sites and subreddits. So we’ve studied the history of the holiday, run the simulations and crunched the numbers, and found that these days there are two key paths to April Fools' Day success:

A) Put out an announcement so “too good to be true” that eventually we have to follow through on it.

or,

B) Release a shallow dating sim/visual novel with a comedy twist, doing a disservice to the entire dating sim genre.

For this April Fool’s Day, the choice was crystal clear: The world isn’t ready for the Monster Train dating sim “You Stole My Pyre Heart!”*. We’re going to go with option A.



No kidding. This is not a drill. Monster Train 2 will be in your hands in less than two months. If you haven’t already, please enjoy the trailer above, wishlist the game, and get ready for five all-new clans, dozens of new cards, and surprises of all shapes and sizes. As we ramp up towards launch, we’ll be back at a regular cadence giving you deep dives into Monster Train 2’s new content, from clan deep-dives to new game mode reveals and more.

All aboard.

*This does not exist, please do not ask for it. We’re giving you Monster Train 2. Please.

It’s official. Monster Train 2 has been Steam Deck verified.

“So what?” you say, “I’ve already been playing the Monster Train 2 demo on my Steam Deck for weeks!”

Yeah, fair. But before today it wasn’t 100%-cerified, Valve-endorsed, Half-Life-3-confirmed, solid-gold verified.

So what does this mean?

Firstly, it means that Monster Train 2 has the thumbs-up to perform well on your Steam Deck. The controls are going to function exactly like you’d expect. No fumbling around with a simulated mouse on the trackpad (although you can still do that if you want!). Text readability is going to be big, clear, and crisp. We could go on and on, but you know what to expect here.

But the real power of Steam Deck Verification comes in the form of validation. A newfound sense of pride as you remind folks just how far the Monster Train 2 Steam Deck experience has come. Here’s a scenario: You’re sitting in traffic, playing Monster Train 2 on your Steam Deck. A police officer approaches your vehicle.

“Excuse me, you can’t play Monster Train 2 while you’re driving”

That’s where you’re wrong, pal. Because Monster Train 2 is STEAM DECK VERIFIED.

You’re somehow years younger, back in school. Despite this nightmare scenario, you have your Steam Deck and a copy of Monster Train 2. As you attempt to escape into the zen-like deckbuilding of Monster Train 2, your teacher stops mid-lecture and tells you that you can’t play Monster Train 2 in class. This is INCORRECT. Why? Because Monster Train 2 is STEAM DECK VERIFIED.

There are thousands of reasons why being Steam Deck Verified is important, and it’s up to you to find them. Spread the news, dear reader - and share your own stories of Monster Train 2 Steam Deck Verification in the comments. For today your life has changed. Monster Train 2 is now Steam Deck verified.

Hi there, I’m ModusPwnenz from the design team at Shiny Shoe here to share some design insights behind the Pyre Hearts; a new addition to Monster Train 2!



Before each run while choosing your Clans there is a new option to swap your Pyre Heart as well. The idea behind the swappable Pyre Hearts was similar to the trinkets from Inkbound; have some fun new things to unlock that let you customize your run to fit your preferred playstyle or just your mood at the time. Whether you want to focus more on playing unit cards, slinging spells, making money, adding more randomness, or setting up a high impact turn, there are Pyre Hearts that will help you achieve these dreams.

Without giving away too many secrets, let’s take a look at some of the Pyre Hearts: Bogwurm’s Growth and Aquath’s Reservation.



Bogwurm’s Growth is great for players that want to fill up their train with the largest menagerie possible as each victory increases the floor space on your train. However, the goal is still to embrace the randomness that makes rogue games so replayable as the floors that grow in size will be different every run. As you can tell from the name, each of the Pyre Hearts is inspired by a Titan and their powers. Bogwurm’s tremendous size led to the idea of an uncontrollable evergrowing Train passively getting larger over time.



Aquath’s Reservation on the other hand is more focused on setting up a huge impact turn and embracing the cerebral nature of Aquath. This Pyre Heart has an ability that can be used once per battle to generate a bunch of Ember which then in turn can cheat out a high cost card or fuel an “X” charged spell. This also demonstrates some of the differences in how the Hearts can be used to either support you in a passive style like Bogwurm or a single high impact player choice like Aquath. One of the larger changes we made early on to Aquath’s Reservation was to turn it into an active ability. The earliest version simply gave a passive bonus to how much Ember could be held between turns but the switch to the active ability made much more sense with fitting the theme and also utilizing the new unit ability system in a fun way.

While the added changes can be exciting and run warping we know that some players like the classic experience. To accommodate this, we wanted to make sure that the default Pyre Heart is viable, and thus need a way to balance around that. In this case, and to help balance the other Hearts in general, we tune the attack and health values of each Heart differently depending on what it brings to the Train. As the default Proto Heartcage has no extra powers, it is extremely durable naturally, while on the other hand a Pyre Heart like Malicka’s Shifting Pyre is much lower due to the strength you can gain from all the random upgrades it imparts.



There are thirteen Pyre Hearts in total with some of the endgame ones having truly run warping properties for those that want to take it to the next level. We hope you have fun unlocking them, trying them out, and using them to break the game in new and exciting ways when Monster Train 2 comes out later this year!

If you would like to see these Pyre hearts (and more), join us for a special stream on March 28th, 12:00 PM PST here.

Thank you so much for reading and for playing Monster Train 2!

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Uuuuh this is your conductor speaking. We're currently bound for our final destination, the celestial gates of Heaven. Before we arrive, please ensure you have your ticket easily accessible and all swords, enchanted underlings, and other run-breaking artifacts are properly stowed. Please keep arms, legs, and tentacles out of the aisle. For what to expect once we reach our destination, please observe the following Monster Train 2 informational video:

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We'd like to thank our partners at The MIX for showcasing Monster Train 2! And of course, thank you once again for choosing Monster Train Railways for all your astralplanar travel needs.

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