Griftlands - Now Available in Early Access

Griftlands is now available in Early Access on Steam.

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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.

At this stage of development you can play as Sal or Rook, with a third character and campaign in development. Sal is an adventurer out for profit and revenge. Rook is an aging spy working his own agenda. Expect regular updates, including new cards, quests and characters as we work on the game with community feedback!

Battle Challenging Bosses

Test your combat decks against powerful foes with unique mechanics and attacks.

Build a Team - or Buy One!

Hire mercenaries, find pets, or impose upon your friends to accomplish your goals.

Master Hundreds of Cards

Each character has unique negotiation and combat decks to draft from. Get powerful item cards from fallen foes, or as rewards.

Decisions Matter

Killing foes may incur the wrath of their friends, but sparing them leaves a dangerous piece on the board. Choose wisely, everyone remembers everything you do!

Welcome to Havaria

Each playable character's story takes place in a unique environment, with different factions and locations to explore and exploit.

Explore A Broken-Down Sci-Fi World

The world of Havaria is a harsh place, full of harsher denizens. Explore lush, hand-illustrated environments full of people who want to kill you.

Playing Politics For Keeps

Each character has a factional allegiance and an opinion of you. Play politics between rivals, and try to capture the most powerful social boons. But watch out -- doublecross the wrong person, and you'll be subject to their bane!

Outwit or Overpower

Overcome obstacles with the power of your fists - or your words. You'll need to pick your cards and play them right if you're going to survive. Build two decks simultaneously, balancing the tradeoffs of each.

Learn from each attempted run through the various stories of the Griftlands. Encounter different combinations of enemies, quests, and events every time you play. Your fate is determined by your choices, and by fate.

More information.

I'm confused. I thought this had already been in EA for quite a while now.

Originally Posted by JFarrell71
I'm confused. I thought this had already been in EA for quite a while now.

Steam says initial release date of Jun 14, 2020. Maybe it was on crowdfunding?

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
Steam says initial release date of Jun 14, 2020. Maybe it was on crowdfunding?

I've seen several Youtube videos of people playing it and it has had a Steam page for months, so I guess I just assumed it was in EA.

Since I love deck-building games, I had to buy it. I also prefer this over the randomness of Slay the Spire.
I will try to give it a whirl today and write a few sentences about it.

This is a clear example of a developer team having much more talent than this measly card-FCKR realization, but they didn't have money… Still I hope sales of this one will earn them enough so they could do the original plan = Open World RPG. The art is amazingly top notch. A limited card-mechanics is a big stepdown for them: lets hope they'll be able to do, what they originally wanted!!!

I had countless hours of fun with Slay the Spire. If this is anything like it, I'm definitely keeping it on my radar. We'll see when it's out of Early Access, as usual, I'm not paying for being a beta tester and spoiling the game for myself in the process. If anything, they should pay me to do any of that.

This is Slay the Spire with a story and some nice world-building. Something I missed in StS.

A difference is that you have two kinds of decks. A battle deck and a negotiation deck. With the latter you can convince people to do something (like not kill you, help you in a fight, look the other way, etc.) by winning an argument. So this is a kinda abstract argument with cards where you attack your opponents statements. You get the hang of it after one or two fights.

You also have to look out if you kill your opponents or accept their surrender (with humanoids). Both of which can have repercussions later. It is also important where you fight (and kill) somebody and if there are any witnesses.

NPCs can like, love, dislike or hate you. Love and hate statuses will come with permanent modifiers like increased/decreased selling prices, etc.

Another difference to StS are Grafts. These are basically permanent modifiers during battles/arguments. Some come with drawbacks.
You can also have a pet which levels if you want to.

Cards can be upgraded in different ways through playing them a lot. This can help fine-tune your decks.

I have played for 2 h so far and if I hadn't know it is EA, I wouldn't have seen it. No bugs so far and very good production value. The game is feature complete but I guess they will add more content during the roadmap. Thumbs up! If you liked StS you will likely love this!
Since this is no first time dev you can expect this to turn out pretty great in the end. Klei has quite a few successful games under their belt already.

Slay the spire combat was BORING AS HELL, but this one seems different. I'll wait a bit for more reviews but plan to get while the discount lasts.

Maybe I'll give it a try despite it being EA. I tend to be a sucker for deck building games, especially if they shake things up a little bit. I don't usually mind these games in EA since they are meant to be played many times anyway.

The animations look very nice and setting seems very intriguing. Unfortunately the deck-building elements really turns me off. Invisible Inc. is great and would've liked a game that played similar to that but an RPG.

I like this so far. There's a demo, so there's a risk free way to try it out.

Thank You, Darkheart! I already knew this was quality from the first trailer. Let's hope they enhance this game into a cardless open-world RPG, as per original plans.

I'm actually a fan of card mechanics, I'm going to check out the demo.

Originally Posted by mercy
Thank You, Darkheart! I already knew this was quality from the first trailer. Let's hope they enhance this game into a cardless open-world RPG, as per original plans.

The world-building is already very nice and I would definitely buy am RPG in that setting. Just not survival and overboard crafting please.

Hmmm I tried it for a bit, not sure if the artwork or writing is my style?

I played the EA version for a bit. It has some really good ideas and The foundation for a good game. But I also found it really easy, which made it drag a bit by the end. Even playing for the first time I never felt remotely in danger.

So I’m going to put it aside for now, but I think they have a really good foundations for a game at the moment and the rest can be worked out in EA.

Originally Posted by fadedc
But I also found it really easy, which made it drag a bit by the end. Even playing for the first time I never felt remotely in danger.

Yeah, if you think for a bit and pick the right cards it is not too hard. I also found the battles to be decidedly easier than the negotiations.

Originally Posted by Darkheart
Yeah, if you think for a bit and pick the right cards it is not too hard. I also found the battles to be decidedly easier than the negotiations.

Interesting. I'm only on Day 3 (at the start of it), but I've found negotiations to be the easier of the two. I've never been below around 26 resolve.

I found them both pretty easy, but I guess battles were easier for me, at least at first. Occasionally my resolve would drop low and I’d have no choice but to be violent. But my hp never dropped low.

Later in the game though I never found either of them to drop much.

Other than a difficulty increase I’d also like to see more powerful cards being introduced later in the Game. It didn’t take that long before my deck was pretty well tuned and I wasn’t interested in most card rewards since they were mostly the same ones I already had.