For years, nothing was more repulsive to me than “deckbuilders” and “roguelites”. Put those together, and that was a game I’d most definitely hate. Turns out, all they needed was trains. During PAX East 2025, I checked out Bandai Namco, Nerd Ninjas, and Terrible Posture Games’ upcoming release, Battle Train. Think The Price is Right, mixed with trains, all controlled by an evil Supreme President, Conductor.
The entire game is as outlandish as its premise. All under the guise of a game show, you will build train tracks to attack your opponent’s depots. Win, and you move on in the gameshow. Lose, and a new contestant begins the process again. Every opponent you face, and every contestant you play as, acts over the top with wacky lines and crazed looks in their eyes as they send trains veering down the tracks, all to hopefully face off against Conductor.
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Battle Train plays out similarly to a card game or deck builder. You have a limited number of crystals and cards that cost a certain amount of crystals to play on a grid-like 2-d field. The cards can range from simple track patterns to play, to explosives and barriers to impede your opponent or fix mistakes, to special abilities that change how the game plays. Then, there are loose crystal deposits and mines on the field that, if collected, increase your crystal count each turn. They’re all fair game, and getting them early can save you many headaches for more protracted battles.
As part of the hands-on experience, I checked out two different modes in Battle Train. One, being a puzzle mode. With one turn to reach a treasure chest, you must build tracks to keep your crystal resource up and create a connected track to the chest to win.
Because the randomness of drawing new cards while being limited to the deck of cards available was surprisingly challenging, while always feeling like it’s winnable, and with the requirement of building tracks connected to your starting train depot and having two depots to work with, interesting ideas can quickly spawn genius solutions. Like having one depot being your primary track build to the chest while the other is just to collect more crystals.
Overall, Battle Train is a game of cat and mouse.
The other is the main campaign, and this was the most fun I’ve had with a deck-builder, that should be called a “track-builder” in this case, possibly ever. The mix of the absurdity and the explosions on screen when making a good play against your opponent finally connects the pieces of what you’ve worked on all together, creating an exhilarating time. You may build some tracks that you think work out well for you. But the next turn, your opponent can connect to what you’ve laid out and use them for themselves.
Plus, connecting to an enemy base isn’t enough in Battle Train. Each base has health associated with it, and there are power-ups on the field for a train to deal even more damage. But if it’s not enough, that track around the depot explodes. So you’ll have to redraw some cards that work with what’s remaining to finish the job. Then, train customization plays a factor, too. After each round, you can purchase train customization parts for the body, wheels, and more. Each part adds big bonuses for what you can do in the next round, like a prow that has your opponent start with one less crystal. Or you get a bomb card every fifth turn for free.
Tie all this in with the many different ability cards, and you have a highly chaotic experience in Battle Train. Especially when the environments are also dangerous, not every opponent will have a unique experience, but when you fight one, it’ll be intense. For instance, one opponent can squash the arena, another can prevent you from placing explosives for a turn or two. In other words, it’s just an enjoyable, dumb time that pushes you to think while glorious destruction happens all around.
To say that I’m now excited for a deck-building roguelite is very different. Battle Train took every issue I’ve had with the genre and re-packaged them in a way that I now can’t wait to play more of. Big explosives, trains, lots of strategy create a winning combination that quickly overcomes any personal issues with roguelites. And after playing it, imagining what could come next for this game excites me even more.
Battle Train is coming on June 18th for Steam and Nintendo Switch.
