Monsters Are Coming! Rock & Road had me shouting and squealing in my gamescom 2025 preview, and honestly, I’m here for it. Introduced to me as a Vampire Survivors mixed with tower defence mechanics, I was a bit puzzled, but once I sat down to play, it all fell into place, and Monsters Are Coming! Rock & Road even made my Best of Gamescom 2025 picks. I am very eager to get my hands on this one, but let me tell you more about why.
The world has been taken over by creepy critters, so to save your town, it has been hoisted up onto wheels to get it to the Arch, where there are no monsters. In Monsters Are Coming! Rock & Road, your objective is simple. Transport your town hall through the world until you can safely store it in the Arch. You basically need to run the gauntlet, survive, and the town will be safe and sound. Simple, right?
Where the Vampire Survivor mechanics come into play is while you’re running this gauntlet. You need to fight off hordes of enemies along the way, and the fighting mechanics are automatic, much like Vamp’s. As you level, you gain access to new abilities, gain more firepower and more speed. However, that is where the similarities stop, as Monsters Are Coming! Rock & Road introduces a whole new mechanic: tower defence.
“Monsters Are Coming! Rock & Road had me shouting and squealing in my gamescom 2025 preview, and honestly, I’m here for it.”
Essentially, while you’re levelling up, you are also levelling up your town hall. Based on a grid system, you can choose new additions to the town hall. These make the hall bigger and easier to reach, but can also add much-needed offence and defence abilities. I piled on AOE ice attacks, targeted ice attacks and even added some buildings that would amplify their damage. Later on, you get buildings that can cut trees as they go past or even ones that summon little minions to fight for it.
It was explained to me that the character you control isn’t really the main character; the town hall is. If your little guy dies, you must place what I am calling the gravestone of shame in the hall, occupying a grid space, but then the town spawns a new character for you to continue with. You can die repeatedly, but once the town hall dies, it’s game over.
On your run, trees can both block the way, needing you to clear them. Cutting trees also fills a bar and levels up your attack speed. As you break rocks, they heal your town hall (very construction-like of them). If either of these bars is full, you will string a pile of them behind you as storage. It’s actually pretty cute.
On the run, there will also be two “breaks” where the town hall is caged up, and you can choose to go left or right to face off in an arena to earn more resources. Each side tells you what you will earn, and then you have to last 45 seconds without dying to get the reward. There are also little plans on the ground to heal your character, too, which you will need.
“Monsters Are Coming! Rock & Road might be the worst title of gamescom 2025, but it was an absolute blast to play.”
The art style is all-around awesome. You have a cutesy design for your minion, and even the little buildings are adorable, yet filled with detail. You can watch them fire off at the equally cute yet menacing enemies, which all resemble bugs and other creepy critters like spiders and mutated frogs. The black silhouettes with bright-red eyes keep them cute but alarming, especially when they come by the dozen.
The world itself is procedurally generated, with four difficulty levels and four different biomes to fight through. I believe there are 10 different town halls you can deliver to the Arch (it could be eight, don’t quote me), with a space to save each one. Each town hall is different and carries different bonuses or drawbacks. For instance, some are very small, allowing more grid space for more fighting power. Another was like a graveyard that spawned minions who fought with you from the beginning. I also saw a fire-breathing dragon on a town hall, so really, there is something for everyone!
For every successful town hall you reach the Arch with, you will have the ability to save it to that location to put on display. If you have already saved a town hall of that type, you will be able to choose to replace it or keep it as is, only displaying the town hall you like the most in the Arch.
Monsters Are Coming! Rock & Road might be the worst title of gamescom 2025, but it was an absolute blast to play and has incredible replability. The only thing that is missing is a co-op mode, which is a major part of what makes Vampire Survivors so appealing. That level of panic and chaos is best shared with friends! Though Ludogram eluded to co-op in the future, we will need to guard our own town halls at launch, which is hopefully very, very soon.
