STACKED DECK

MONSTER TRAIN was a hit, but did that make releasing a new game any easier?

- Wes Fenlon

Monster Train, a deckbuilding roguelike that firmly entrenched itself as the crown prince to the kingly Slay the Spire back in 2020, was the kind of smash success you might call Champagne Big. Four years later, its successor Inkbound’s launch from Early Access was looking more like Sandwich Big.

I’m not just saying that because of the mountain of lamb and eggplants I ate while meeting with developer Shiny Shoe over lunch, to feel out what the aftermath of releasing a game looks like in 2024. I mean, have I thought about that sandwich every day since? Yes. But also, the indie team talked frankly about the struggle of luring Monster Train’s audience on board for its next game.

“Had we gone out like Palworld I would’ve greeted you with Dom Pérignon and been like, ‘Welcome to Shiny Shoe, I’m already drunk, today’s going fantastic,’” jokes CEO and founder Mark Cooke. Instead we get sandwiches and sit in the downtown San Francisco office’s meeting room-turned-gym. The half-dozen or so members of Shiny Shoe’s hybrid remote team who were in the office had time to go out for lunch, a testament to how well at least one part of the launch was going—no catastrophic day-one bugs needed triaging.

“I’m proud of Inkbound, and it seems like it’s doing well,” Cooke says. “But I want every next game to do better than the last, and I ask myself sometimes, ‘is that ever going to be possible?’ It’s probably not, for almost anybody. But I’m still like, ‘I gotta beat Monster Train! We gotta do even better…’”