Last week I talked about Slay the Spire and how it is the benchmark for a great roguelike deck building game. Now I will be talking about Griftlands and how it deviated from the template for the better. Two of the most prominent diverges are its world and the presence of a story, as well as the fact you have two decks (battle and negotiation) for different types of approaches to your mission. Griftlands has three characters and each has unique deck mechanics and cards for each deck type much like in Slay the Spire, but each character has a story to go with them alongside a roguelike climb through various jobs called brawl mode. The story helps add variety to the playthrough as well as player investment as you can choose how you want to roleplay your character. The choices you make can vary from run to run so the experience diverges slightly even in the story mode across multiple playthroughs. The skeleton of Slay the Spire is still here but Griftland’s more unique systems take center stage to make this game interesting.

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First major change in the spotlight is the addition of story and lore. The addition of a world to provide context adds so much to make the world feel fleshed out with many aspects interlinked across the different maps each of the three characters play in. Bandits, bureaucrats, steampunk archeologists, and cultists are the factions that make up the world and working with one usually upsets the other. It’s just as easy to make enemies as it is to make friends in the grifter line of work and each come with benefits, and banes. This approach avoids being boring on subsequent playthroughs by adding some randomness to what you do each run but there is also a concreteness to the story beats so you notice when things change. The world is just so interesting and you are thrown right in so you are forced to get your bearings to know how it works for yourself. The lore is delivered in a similar way to Pyre by Supergiant games in that you are talked to like your character knows what’s going on, but key words, places, people, and things are underlined so you can hover them to get a quick rundown to learn the world by yourself. They also do a thing I love in fantasy books, in that the characters have in universe curses and slang that also goes a long way in making a world feel real. I like this feature as a world building tool since the alternative is expositional dump which feels much less organic and annoying on multiple playthroughs and while it is not weird to see alien races say curses in English, saying something culturally similar to them goes the extra mile for me and I love.

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Each of the playable characters stories are interesting enough that it made me care about the world, and the outcomes and me caring about those things made making choices enjoyable because I was invested in the story I was apart of and the world I was in. When people helped me I was thankful because the world is cruel and brutal, when people hated me it was business as usual because my character was a renowned spy. When they offer to help you there is context to what is going on and why they would that really highlights the importance of friends in the mercenary line of work. While Slay the Spire has choices and random events there is no context outside of your the choices other than immediate effects to the player. Griftlands has these things, but they have a face, emotions, they talk to you and will fight for you if you treat them right. The randomness makes things feel new each time, but the same people live in the area each run so who you come across and why is the random part. There is even a random event to run into one of the other playable characters and sometimes it’s to kill you, and sometimes you help them but it is so cool when it happens.

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Each playthrough has you interreacting with certain NPC’s depending on the quests you choose to do. Often you will be deciding between combat quests and negotiation quests and sometimes both. Different choices has you doing different things and your rewards will be based on what you were successful in. Successful negotiations gives you negotiation cards as a reward, and same for combat situations. Each person also has a special card they drop when they are killed if you choose to go that route but killing people tends to make you liked less by their associates. Relationships have four tiers: like, dislike, love, and hate. When people love you or hate you you get a buff or bane depending on who they are. When they like or dislike they will help or hinder you on your journey but only if they’re around. Each character has a set buff and bane for liking or loving you, so that is concrete, but how you’ll even run into them can be different each time. Each playthrough has people showing up in different ways. One run you might be friends with someone and save their life, and in another you may be enemies with them and kill them. All in a days work.

Each deck functions separately and uses unique mechanics to the character which adds a lot of flavor and I think it goes well with the more story driven narrative of the game and gives your character some flavor to them as their decks do kind of play off who they are as people. The choice in your approach adds a small element of role play that isn’t even a fleeting thought in Slay the Spire. I’m not saying this is an RPG but I genuinely tried to choose what I thought the character would do sometimes. Negotiating can help make combat easier or help you avoid it altogether. But these two systems aren’t quite separate. Each deck has its own health bar that might dictate the approach you take depending on its status. Resolve is your negotiation health and once it reaches zero, you lose your negotiation. While its at zero you will lose any negotiation you are in. The run isn’t over but not being able to talk your way out of a fight you can’t win is dangerous. Once you health reaches zero you lose your run and have to start over. Choosing to negotiate will grant you negotiation cards as a reward and combat will grant combat cards. Balancing your two decks is crucial to a run as boss fights can’t always be talked out of, and nothing ends a run faster than a weak combat deck against a tough boss. It is up to the player to find a good balance with their decks as the rewards you get are based on which method you employ. It is a form of risk and reward that Griftlands employs.

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The world you’re in is equally as important as the individual characters in the story and it is well complimented by the gameplay in the form of choices, and how your relationships with the people are effected by those choices. People who like you might help you in a fight or negotiation, whereas people who don’t like you will do what they can to screw you over. I talked about how Slay the Spire used risk and reward as a core mechanic to your choices but in Griftlands you are considering the consequences of your choices in your relationships, as well as how it impacts the world. You still must juggle risk and reward but rather than taking risks for items and cards, you are taking risks for your friends. And for cards. Sometimes throughout your day of running errands you will come across random events that are timed so you only have time to do one of the choices. Usually, one of those choices is to save a friend of yours life, or you can choose to upgrade your deck. This is a small occurrence and the person who needs saving is often different each run but the impacts of this decision goes well beyond any of the random events that occur in Slay the Spire Relationships, and consequences for choices is a nice addition to the risk reward formula while also providing branching paths for each playthrough. The game at semi-random intervals will give you the option to make decisions that can be the difference from life and death to NPCs in the world. These people have relationships and whether or not they love or hate you is sometimes up to you. At other times you will be forced to makes enemies to progress the story which usually involves choosing a side of the couple factions the games world has.

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Griftlands took the deck builder formula and created a game that truly stands out as something special. Its world and characters paired with solid writing and interesting gameplay allows it to stand out from the other deck builders. The addition of another deck adds a lot of depth to each run as juggling two decks adds another element of balance the player has to manage to ensure they are able to handle the situations the game throws at them. This game is fresh out of early access and It has tons of replay value for $15. With daily runs to attempt, prestige values to make subsequent runs harder, and modifiers to add random chaos to your journey this game is easy to go back to and find something new, especially across three different campaigns.

May you find wisdom in the bog.