Griftlands is a pretty neat roguelike deck-builder RPG where you adventure across a small part of the world, completing quests, negotiating, fighting, improving your abilities while trying to defeat a powerful boss at the end of a few in-game days while unlocking new cards for your next runs whether you fail or succeed. I had a really good time with it, even tho this kind of game isn’t entirely my cup of tea.
After selecting a character (you only have one at the start), you’re thrown into the griftlands with revenge on the mind. There’s a wide cast of characters linked together with factions and quests, and you can have them like or hate you at some various degrees for boons and banes depending on how you act with them or people they care about, which is pretty neat. Every in-game day consists of a few quests and special randomized opportunities to fight or negotiate your way through some challenge, then you go to bed, oftentimes fight a boss beforehand, until you get to the last day and attempt to defeat the big bad.
Negotiating and fighting are done through two different decks of cards that you’ll improve by adding new cards (won from encounters, purchased, or won from quests), upgrading your existing cards (usually by using them enough to level up), and removing cards you do not want - I wish you had more opportunities to do so. You also have the aftermentionned boons and banes from people you interacted with, and you also have permanent “graft” upgrades that are very powerful and can change how you play your character.
Negotiation is a battle of wits where you have to take down your opponent’s Core Argument to 0 before the same happens to you. You can specialize in intimidation or diplomacy, with some opponents being easier to take down with one method or another, and I really enjoyed this mechanic, especially in my runs where my deck was finetuned to just be completely indestructible while dealing tons of free damage to everything, but because this is a deck-builder, sometimes you’ll also have a bad deck and struggle along the way. The way the game usually forecasts exactly what will happen makes the whole affair pretty frictionless too.
Battles go through the same principles, with a deck of cards trying to reduce opponent’s health to 0 before the same happens to you. The mechanics are of course different, with more status effects, defense and recovery, and a panic system where enemies will surrender when their health gets low enough. For my builds I usually went with Bleeding effects, and it worked pretty well. For completing fights and negotiations, you can upgrade your cards, get new ones and get a currency to improve your stats progressively so your future runs go better. Losing a fight will game over you, while negotiations are more forgiving, it still feels bad to fail.
As I said above, I’m not a huge fan of most roguelikes because going through a successful run or two often feels like I’ve had enough with the game. This is more or less what happened here, but I’m sure some people would be very interested into unlocking and collecting everything Griftlands has to offer. It’s a game with a great visual identity, and it’s very fun to play as well. Check it out!
