A city gang has taken over, the streets aren’t safe, and the people stepping up to fix it are a handful of trainers who fight their battles with rosters of small, strange creatures arranged on a 3×3 grid. It sounds like a lot to take in for a save-the-city story, but that’s Montabi, a new creature collector, and as of today, it’s live on Steam.
If the setup made you think of a certain other creature-collecting franchise, that’s fair. Montabi clearly knows the comparison too, and instead of running from it, it grafts that idea onto a genre that’s had a genuinely great few years, the roguelike deckbuilder.
Catch ‘Em, Deck-Build With ‘Em
You start by picking one of 22 starters and building a team around them. Simple enough. But rather than turn-based menu battles, every Montabi brings its own deck to the fight, and those decks stack together into whatever strategy you’re cobbling together as you go.
There are over 60 Montabi total, and since each evolutionary line plays completely differently, the team you’re running in hour one probably won’t look anything like the one you’re running by hour ten. That’s the part that’s easy to undersell on paper, this isn’t just “more monsters to catch,” it’s more decks to learn, more synergies to stumble into, and more reasons to swap your starter out the second something better wanders across your path.
Equipment and charms get thrown into the mix too, so even two players running the exact same core team can end up with decks that barely resemble each other by the time they reach the boss fight.
Tactics on a 3×3 Grid
The thing that actually sets Montabi apart from other card battlers is where you’re standing. Fights happen on a 3×3 battlemap, so every card you play is also a decision about positioning. Front line or back line, spread thin or stacked together, it’s less about finding the one strongest card in your hand and more about figuring out the right shape for your team, turn by turn.
A lot of card battlers live and die on raw numbers, biggest damage number wins, but bolting a grid onto that formula changes the math. Suddenly a weaker card in the right square can matter more than a stronger one stuck in the wrong spot, and that’s the kind of wrinkle that tends to keep a deckbuilder interesting well past the first few hours.
Evolve, Recruit, Repeat
Win enough fights and your Montabi level up, eventually evolving into stronger forms with new cards and abilities. There’s also a trainer system on top of that. Each trainer plays differently, whether that’s shoving your team into aggressive positions, buffing everyone up, or feeding them to keep them in fighting shape between battles. Put it all together and runs start to feel less like the same loop over and over, and more like you’re chasing a slightly different version of your team every time.
Recruiting new Montabi along the way only adds to that pull, since every new addition is a potential deck-defining piece you didn’t have last run.
Perma-Death Keeps the Pressure On
No undoing a bad run here. Lose your trainer, and that’s it, back to the start. Throw in over 30 randomized city events and no two attempts at taking down the local gang boss play out the same way twice, which means even a run that ends badly usually teaches you something worth carrying into the next one.
Montabi is walking into a genre with some seriously high bars already set, and today’s the day we find out if the 3×3 tactics and evolution system are enough to carve out its own space. Sixty-plus creatures, real positional strategy, and the kind of perma-death pressure that keeps people running it back, that’s a solid foundation to build a following on.