Monsters Are Coming! Rock & Road – An Indie Gem in the Making

A Journey Into Monsters Are Coming

The Cologne heat from August’s Gamescom 2025 still echoes in my backlog, and today I’m bringing you an exclusive interview: Monsters are Coming! Rock & Road, the latest project from French indie studio Ludogram.

When the invitation from Raw Fury (the game’s publisher) arrived, it wasn’t about choosing what to skip — their lineup was so strong that even a quick look at each trailer was enough to think, I want to play this. The real challenge was my already packed schedule. In the end, I pushed things around and squeezed in two more titles simply because I couldn’t let them pass by. One of those was Esoteric Ebb, which you can already read about on the site. The other is the one we’ll dive into here: Ludogram’s new creation, where survival, roguelite tension, and tower defense collide on wheels.

In the following sections, we’ll uncover the inspirations behind a moving city, how Ludogram balances creativity with production discipline, the role of the humble peon in keeping the wheels turning, and why letting players break the system is sometimes part of the fun.

So grab a tea, wrap yourself in a comfy blanket (autumn has already marched in at full force on my side), and let’s drive straight into the dark wood and caves.

Ludogram – A Studio of Many Worlds

Ludogram’s CEO, Edouard Gaudel, has been steering the studio since its founding in 2019 in Lille, France. He couldn’t be present at Gamescom this year, but I had the chance to sit down with Adrian Narcisi, Production Director, who became my guide through the making of Monsters are Coming! Rock & Road.

The studio is known for blending creativity with a data-driven approach to production, reducing risks while keeping its games accessible to as many players as possible. Their portfolio reflects that diversity: Worlds of Aria, a multiplayer narrative RPG; Firebird, a very interesting narrative game in an unusual setting; and now Monsters Are Coming, their upcoming roguelite published by Raw Fury.

Ironically, this interview about a French studio comes just two weeks after my own first trip to France. I visited Mulhouse for the largest train museum in Europe, and brought back so many photos I’m still tempted to post them — and while travel isn’t usually my subject, I know plenty of geeks who share that fascination with railways.

It’s in this spirit of diversity that Monsters Are Coming takes shape. Unlike Ludogram’s earlier projects, this one makes survival itself the central story. The moving city at its heart is both a metaphor and a mechanic, and Adrian explained how it grew from a long-held idea into a playable reality.

Here is a gameplay trailer, do not forget to subscribe for more content:

From Page to Pixels – The Moving City

The spark behind Monsters Are Coming comes from literature rather than another game. Ludogram’s CEO, Edouard Gaudel, had long carried the idea of a moving city in his mind, and the seed was Christopher Priest’s novel Inverted World (adding this one to my own reading list, thanks for the tip, Adrian). In its pages, an entire city crawls across a hostile landscape, with many of its inhabitants unaware of their own drifting existence. That vision of survival by movement stayed with Gaudel and eventually became the foundation of Ludogram’s project.

Early prototypes leaned fully into the concept — the city itself was the only character. Players guided it through a dangerous world, shifting and rolling as threats loomed. No heroes, no foot soldiers, just a fortress on the move. Later iterations added the peon, the player’s avatar inside the world. This figure serves as the city’s fragile extension — venturing out to gather resources, fight monsters, and interact with the environment while the city keeps rolling forward.

By the time the project reached the hands of publisher Raw Fury, this balance had become the defining trait. The moving city wasn’t just a backdrop; it became the protagonist. As Adrian Narcisi explained during our conversation, “At some point, we realized that the main character is the city itself.”

That choice reframed the entire design. Instead of tying upgrades and progression to the player avatar, Ludogram shifted them to the city. Its districts and defenses became the true markers of survival, while the peon remained the risk-taker — the one who leaves the safety of the walls to keep the wheels turning.

Tower-Survivor on Wheels

At first glance, Monsters are Coming! Rock & Road might look like a cousin of Vampire Survivors. In fact, that was the starting point: a game where players withstand relentless waves of enemies while gradually powering up. But Ludogram steered the formula in a different direction. Rather than centering on a single hero growing stronger, they designed a survival-crafting hybrid where the city itself takes the spotlight.

The result is a mix of genres that overlap but rarely fuse: tower defense, roguelite progression, and survival-crafting mechanics. Runs are built around the mantra of fortify, forage, fight. The city rolls onward through hostile lands, constantly threatened by hordes. The peon — fragile but vital — gathers wood, stone, and gold to feed the engines, repair damage, and fund expansion. Meanwhile, players build districts and defensive structures, shaping the city’s strength run by run.

Progression shifts from raising character stats to expanding an entire moving fortress. Each district you add changes both the look and the survival potential of the city. For me, it feels like a bundle of tower defense units glued together and set in motion — except the monsters don’t politely follow a path from point A to point B. They come straight for you, forcing the stronghold itself to endure the assault head-on.

Speaking of personal experience, I’ve spent hours with Vampire Survivors, and I’ve been hooked on tower defense since the days of Gemcraft and Kingdom Rush. Mixing both genres together feels like a double tap on me personally — exactly the kind of design that makes me lean in closer.

Balancing City and Peon

Designing Monsters Are Coming meant constantly juggling two layers of progression. On one side is the city, growing stronger by unlocking and placing new districts. On the other is the peon, a fragile avatar whose power comes not from leveling up, but from the weapons and upgrades discovered along the way.

The shift to city-based progression kept the moving fortress at the center of attention, but the peon still matters. Exploration brings weapon chests hidden across the map, each one capable of changing how you approach the run. A sword or axe leans into melee brawling, while ranged or area-of-effect options make the peon more of a battlefield controller.

Adrian described the peon’s role as a flexible support unit: “We want him to gather resources, of course, and to do some damage control when the horde is too close.” But the real depth comes when weapons reinforce the city’s development path. Imagine building towers that freeze enemies, then equipping the peon with the Ice Drake weapon. Every frozen enemy becomes vulnerable to extra tower damage, multiplying the effect of both choices.

Level-up perks add another layer of experimentation. Most enhance the city, but some routes are designed to tilt progression toward the peon. “One of them is more focused on the peon itself,” Adrian explained. “Half of the levels you will get will allow you to upgrade your peon instead of the city.” This option lets players flip the dynamic and test a fighter-first approach, while still keeping the city as the foundation.

Mortality and Legacy

Even though the city is the true protagonist, Ludogram didn’t want the peon to feel disposable. In early tests, players often treated their avatar as expendable — sacrificing them without hesitation because the run only ended when the city fell. To fix this, the team introduced a mechanic that ties loss directly into the heart of the fortress.

“When a peon dies, you have to build a tombstone in the city,” Adrian Narcisi told me. Each death takes up a valuable building slot, gradually turning your moving fortress into a rolling cemetery if you’re careless. The mechanic forces players to think twice before charging into danger, since every loss now has lasting consequences.

The roguelite structure reinforces this tension. Runs last around twenty minutes, with no checkpoints — if the city is destroyed, it’s back to the start. Shelters act as rare safe zones, offering a short pause in the chaos. Here you can spend resources accumulated earlier and choose new upgrades. Once ready, you open the gates and push into the next stretch of the journey. In the demo I played, there were typically two shelters per run, each doubling as both a breather and a decision point.

Shelters also open up side opportunities. You can send the peon to risk short detours for extra wood or stone — resources that directly fuel the city’s growth. Sometimes a shelter even hides a new weapon, nudging players to take risks for long-term payoffs.

From my own time with the demo, the progression curve felt like three shark fins. Intensity builds fast as monster waves grow denser, forcing you to spend resources faster, secure the city perimeter, and forage with your peon. Then, reaching a shelter pauses the storm. It’s a chance to review what you’ve looted and built, plan the next steps, and breathe — before opening the gates and unleashing the next wave of chaos.

On top of this, maps are procedurally generated from handcrafted chunks, stitched together in different ways each run. This keeps layouts unpredictable, ensuring no two journeys across the wasteland ever feel the same.

Breaking the Game Is Part of the Fun

One of the delights of roguelites is watching players twist mechanics in ways developers never fully predicted. Ludogram expected this, and Monsters Are Coming has already shown how creative minds can bend the rules.

Adrian Narcisi shared an example from early playtests: a player discovered how to chain multiple resource-generating buildings together. Each fed into the next in a loop, creating an endless supply of wood that converted into attack speed bonuses. The result was absurd — the city’s towers firing like machine guns, mowing down waves before they had a chance to reach the walls. “It was really insane,” Adrian recalled. “The towers were attacking continuously.”

Rather than treating this as a bug to crush, the team embraced it as part of the fun. The challenge isn’t to stop players from building powerful combos, but to make sure those setups don’t become the only way to play. The build and combo exploration is part of the gameplay loop. My take is that this is where Ludogram’s data-driven mindset comes in: if playtests start showing players completing the game the same way over and over, that’s probably the signal to step in and encourage more variety.

Even the peon has had its share of over-the-top moments. One programmer once discovered a way to upgrade the default axe so much that it slashed across the entire screen in a single swing. That exact version is gone now, but the spirit remains — the joy of pushing a system to its limit and watching the results fill the screen.

Moments like these show that Monsters Are Coming isn’t only about survival, but also about discovery. It’s a sandbox of systems that sometimes collide in spectacular ways, leaving both players and developers laughing at the outcome.

Monsters Are Coming – Release Date and What’s Next

Ludogram plans to introduce more town halls (the main building of the moving city), each designed to bend gameplay styles even further. One example Adrian highlighted was the Royal Mausoleum, where necromancer towers summon minions and the peon can take direct control of them, turning the fortress into a mobile horde of the undead. These additions hint at Ludogram’s goal: a roster of cities with distinct strategies, so every run feels different.

Requests for cosmetics have surfaced — everything from alternate castle skins to unicorn motifs — but the team isn’t heading down that path. “Right now it’s not part of our plan,” Adrian said, adding that microtransactions aren’t in the picture either. For Ludogram, the focus remains on systems and survival rather than decoration.

A demo build was playable at Gamescom in the consumer area — you can check my photo tour to explore the Raw Fury booth where the game was available, along with hundreds of other photos grouped by showfloor halls. The Steam page currently offers a free demo, so you don’t have to wait for another expo to try it out.

Monsters are Coming! Rock & Road release date is not yet announced, but the game is in active development for PC.

An Indie Gem in the Making

Like I said earlier, as a big fan of Vampire Survivors, tower defense classics, and roguelites with endless build variety, Monsters Are Coming: Rock & Road was an instant wishlist for me. I didn’t walk into the interview full of doubts about the game’s features — those already spoke for themselves. The real value of an exclusive interview is the chance to peek behind the curtain: how decisions are made, how prototypes evolve, and what the developers actually think about the systems they’ve built.

One point I was especially curious about was Ludogram’s attitude toward game-breaking combos. For me, that’s a core joy of the genre — combining elements until something unexpected and powerful emerges. Adrian was transparent on this: it isn’t a bug or an oversight, it’s part of the design philosophy. Players are meant to experiment, to break things, and then adapt when the balance inevitably shifts.

I didn’t even mention the art. The city has a chunky charm, and even the spider-like monsters come across as oddly cute. It’s a style that keeps the game tense but never oppressive, balancing danger with approachability.

Replayability also looks promising. Different weapons, multiple town halls, varied level-up perks, tower builds and placements, plus procedurally generated maps — all combine into a system that could soak up dozens, maybe hundreds of hours. The key will be whether the core loop keeps motivating you to try again, chasing new challenges and rewards.

In my opinion, Monsters Are Coming: Rock & Road has the potential to be a genre-defining project. I’m comfortable calling it an indie gem in the making. Check out their Steam page, try the free demo, and don’t forget to hit wishlist if it clicks with you.