Monster Train 2 chugs to release this year, with a debut demo playable today

thesixthaxis.com:

Monster Train 2 has been announced, a full-sized sequel to the hit deckbuilding roguelite that is set to pull into the station later this year for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch and PC. But there’s even better news for fans of the original, because a Debut Demo is out today on Steam!

Monster Train 2 looks to build on the original’s three-floor battle system while tasking you with stopping the hugely powerful Titans from destroying the world. That means that – gasp – Heaven and Hell will be forming an alliance? And journeying together to the homeworld of the Titans, the Abyss.

You’ll have new enemy factions to face off against, and helping you to do that are the five playable clans, each of which has specific advantages and battle styles. New unit abilities have been added, which can be activated at the player’s choosing to maximise their effectiveness, while there’s hundreds of new and familiar cards in your deck, with the debut of some new card types. Room Cards will boost a single floor of the train, Equipment Cards stack powers onto units, and the clan-agnostic Neutral Cards will be a general purpose stopgap.

There’s new ways to play with an Endless mode, Daily and Dimensional challenges, run mutators, leaderboards and more, and you can draw upon some buff-granting train customisation too.

The demo gives two of the five new clans in Monster Train 2 – the Banished and the Pyreborne – and is limited only to the full run experience. It also doesn’t include many of the new clans, cards, artifacts, modes and features that will come to the full game… but it is a demo, so that’s fine.

We rather enjoyed playing Monster Train after its debut into Early Access in 2020. “Monster Train already feels like a fairly well-polished roguelike,” Jason said at that time, “and it’s doing something a little bit different with the card-battling side of things too. It’s exciting to see it playing so well and already feel perfect for the “one more run” mentality that lets a roguelike