Griftlands is a deck-building rogue-like where you fight and negotiate your way through a broken-down sci-fi world. Every decision is important, be it the jobs you take, the friends you make, or the cards you collect. Death comes quickly, but each play offers new situations and strategies to explore. Play as Sal, Rook, or Smith. Three unique character campaigns with their own specialized decks, abilities and maps to explore. Sal is an adventurer out for profit and revenge. Rook is an aging spy working his own agenda. Smith is an idle loafer who might just save the world. Each playable character's story takes place in a unique environment, with different factions and locations to explore and exploit.
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While successful Griftlands is a game that deserves much much more recognition than it got. While it lacks the replayability of other deckbuilders it is hands down the greatest experience I've had in a deckbuilder.
Why? Because it succeeds at telling amazing stories while doing it. This is a narrative heavy game with major choices and consequences in the story of each of the 3 characters.
The world building is phenomenal, each character is complex and really interesting with major major kudos to Smith, a complete train wreck of a drunken *sshole who surprised me in becoming one of my top 10 favorite game character of any game ever.
Some game design decision might be shocking: a run is 8 to 10 hours long and if you die, you die. What's on the line is big and when during the final boss your heart will be pumping. Now, the difficulty is also adapted to that: I beat all 3 stories on my first try and never had to redo anything. So this is a design choice that is scary but in my case I found it created a powerful tension that made me really care about my choices and immersed me really deeply.
The only caveat is that there is no Griftlands 2 and by the time I beat the game the only thing I wanted was more Griftlands and more stories about it's characters.
Oh yeah, and the soundtrack by Emmett Hall is absolutely incredible and haunting. There is so much care in it with a unique track for dozens of NPCs you barely meet for a few minutes, multiple combat and negotiation tracks for each character depending if it's day or night... Dynamic tracks during combats affected by which side is winning. It's kinda insane how good it is.
Why? Because it succeeds at telling amazing stories while doing it. This is a narrative heavy game with major choices and consequences in the story of each of the 3 characters.
The world building is phenomenal, each character is complex and really interesting with major major kudos to Smith, a complete train wreck of a drunken *sshole who surprised me in becoming one of my top 10 favorite game character of any game ever.
Some game design decision might be shocking: a run is 8 to 10 hours long and if you die, you die. What's on the line is big and when during the final boss your heart will be pumping. Now, the difficulty is also adapted to that: I beat all 3 stories on my first try and never had to redo anything. So this is a design choice that is scary but in my case I found it created a powerful tension that made me really care about my choices and immersed me really deeply.
The only caveat is that there is no Griftlands 2 and by the time I beat the game the only thing I wanted was more Griftlands and more stories about it's characters.
Oh yeah, and the soundtrack by Emmett Hall is absolutely incredible and haunting. There is so much care in it with a unique track for dozens of NPCs you barely meet for a few minutes, multiple combat and negotiation tracks for each character depending if it's day or night... Dynamic tracks during combats affected by which side is winning. It's kinda insane how good it is.
The negotiations in this game are soooo fun. Many games give you options to talk your way out of a situation, but its often at the cost of interacting with the fun mechanics - but i love that in this game the negotiations are their own thing, and theres quite the emphasis on playing them AND fighting normally. The art style is quite good, and I love the designs.
The music could be better, but outside of battle themes I found myself ignoring a lot of it. I could see it made that way as to not distract from reading, but it still feels like a miss. I also don't see myself doing more than a few more runs after beating the campaigns once, but that's a personal thing.
I liked this title a lot more than I thought I would! The writing was also very witty, and while the plots were not life-changing, they were fun and engaging. I'll def be picking up a run here or there to pass time.
The music could be better, but outside of battle themes I found myself ignoring a lot of it. I could see it made that way as to not distract from reading, but it still feels like a miss. I also don't see myself doing more than a few more runs after beating the campaigns once, but that's a personal thing.
I liked this title a lot more than I thought I would! The writing was also very witty, and while the plots were not life-changing, they were fun and engaging. I'll def be picking up a run here or there to pass time.
Extremely interesting game! I really enjoyed my time with it but I made 1 playthrough with each character and left it there. I don't really feel the draw to go back and engage with the Roguelike elements of the story to be honest. But I appreciate that they're there and I'm sure others have reeeeeally got their value out of this one.
Beat it on my first run, then never cared to try it again.
Super neat concept for a story-based roguelike that was solidified with Hades but my indecisiveness kept me from continuing.
Sights & Sounds
- Just looking at screenshots, you can tell this is a Klei game. If they weren't so sci-fi, the characters look like they could be found in Shank or Mark of the Ninja. Here, moreso than those games, the characters are very expressively drawn and bursting with personality
- The music is kind of a let down. It's not bad, but every track sounds like it would be the menu music for a less interesting game
- The sound design is otherwise okay. I get that the Simlish-like VA work is meant to signify alien languages, but the game would have been fine without it
Story & Vibes
- Avoiding spoilers, there are actually three narratives (one for each of the three protagonists). Each one plays out as an interesting little sci-fi character study. Sal's story plays out like a classic revenge tale, Rook's is more subdued and full of intrigue, and Smith's is a bit funnier with several doses of comic relief
- It winds up being a bit of a let down that these stories don't play into each other much. Sure, you may see one of the other two characters pop in to make a cameo, but nothing noteworthy. It really feels like a lost opportunity
- One thing that I did appreciate were the plot-altering consequences. For example, choosing to save an innocent trader from a pack of marauders may net you a reward, but you can bet those bandits will be out for revenge. Screw someone over in a negotiation? Well, hope you're prepared to weasel yourself out of the consequences once your duplicity is discovered
- Vibes will depend on which of the characters you play as. I enjoyed Smith the most. Even though he was the worst at combat/negotiations, I found his story to be the most enjoyable to play through
Playability & Replayability
- I won't go into a deep mechanical explanation of the roguelike deckbuilder; they're mostly the same in term of things like action order/economy. I'll just try to share some observations regarding how it's unique
- In Griftlands, you actually use two separate decks: one for battling and one for negotiating. Which one you use depends on the random event you choose to navigate to on the world map first
- Given the binary focus, you'll typically want to choose events that play into the deck and character upgrades you've received that run
- Griftlands also features partners and pets. Some of these can be very helpful in tougher battles or negotiations
- You can also employ the use of run-altering "mutations", which can provide buffs or nerfs for you to take advantage of or work around
- Unlike many other roguelike deckbuilders, there's very little metaprogression. Sure, you'll unlock cards for future runs (6 per character), but you won't be, say, permanently increasing your HP or the number of cards you can play per turn
- In that way, there's not a ton of replayability in Griftlands once you've completed each character's story. Sure, there's other endings to see and dailies to play, but I wasn't interested in remixes of the same content I'd already played through
Overall Impressions & Performance
- It's a fun game, but doesn't quite reach the upper eschelons of the genre like Slay the Spire. I may not be the most trustworthy of opinions on the matter as I'm not a huge card game player and have just recently started being able to tolerate CCG gameplay
- I didn't encounter any audiovisual issues or other bugs, and the game performed very well on my good-for-2019 setup
Final Verdict
- 7.0/10. It's probably a better game than my score implies, and the presence of a narrative (or three) helps make the plodding gameplay pace a little more tolerable for someone who's lukewarm on CCGs
- Just looking at screenshots, you can tell this is a Klei game. If they weren't so sci-fi, the characters look like they could be found in Shank or Mark of the Ninja. Here, moreso than those games, the characters are very expressively drawn and bursting with personality
- The music is kind of a let down. It's not bad, but every track sounds like it would be the menu music for a less interesting game
- The sound design is otherwise okay. I get that the Simlish-like VA work is meant to signify alien languages, but the game would have been fine without it
Story & Vibes
- Avoiding spoilers, there are actually three narratives (one for each of the three protagonists). Each one plays out as an interesting little sci-fi character study. Sal's story plays out like a classic revenge tale, Rook's is more subdued and full of intrigue, and Smith's is a bit funnier with several doses of comic relief
- It winds up being a bit of a let down that these stories don't play into each other much. Sure, you may see one of the other two characters pop in to make a cameo, but nothing noteworthy. It really feels like a lost opportunity
- One thing that I did appreciate were the plot-altering consequences. For example, choosing to save an innocent trader from a pack of marauders may net you a reward, but you can bet those bandits will be out for revenge. Screw someone over in a negotiation? Well, hope you're prepared to weasel yourself out of the consequences once your duplicity is discovered
- Vibes will depend on which of the characters you play as. I enjoyed Smith the most. Even though he was the worst at combat/negotiations, I found his story to be the most enjoyable to play through
Playability & Replayability
- I won't go into a deep mechanical explanation of the roguelike deckbuilder; they're mostly the same in term of things like action order/economy. I'll just try to share some observations regarding how it's unique
- In Griftlands, you actually use two separate decks: one for battling and one for negotiating. Which one you use depends on the random event you choose to navigate to on the world map first
- Given the binary focus, you'll typically want to choose events that play into the deck and character upgrades you've received that run
- Griftlands also features partners and pets. Some of these can be very helpful in tougher battles or negotiations
- You can also employ the use of run-altering "mutations", which can provide buffs or nerfs for you to take advantage of or work around
- Unlike many other roguelike deckbuilders, there's very little metaprogression. Sure, you'll unlock cards for future runs (6 per character), but you won't be, say, permanently increasing your HP or the number of cards you can play per turn
- In that way, there's not a ton of replayability in Griftlands once you've completed each character's story. Sure, there's other endings to see and dailies to play, but I wasn't interested in remixes of the same content I'd already played through
Overall Impressions & Performance
- It's a fun game, but doesn't quite reach the upper eschelons of the genre like Slay the Spire. I may not be the most trustworthy of opinions on the matter as I'm not a huge card game player and have just recently started being able to tolerate CCG gameplay
- I didn't encounter any audiovisual issues or other bugs, and the game performed very well on my good-for-2019 setup
Final Verdict
- 7.0/10. It's probably a better game than my score implies, and the presence of a narrative (or three) helps make the plodding gameplay pace a little more tolerable for someone who's lukewarm on CCGs