

It started with me taking contract from a woman named Bina, who wanted me to shake down a business partner who hadn’t come through with their half of the money. Testament to that is the way I finished my first quest without playing a single card. That's a bit harsh, because Griftlands is so much more than a card game. Griftlands would be more like the guy who does a big show and dance when you knock his drink over, but then doesn't want to take things outside because he sprained his knee the day before playing boules. If we were inside one of Griftlands' many shady bars, Monster Train and Slay The Spire would be the two hunks menacing up a corner that the rest of the clientele are too scared to go near. I should caveat this by saying that I've been playing in-between Monster Train runs, and so the poor thing was always going to suffer. Thing is, it gets flabby, and the parts where you're actually playing cards just aren't that great. Decisions constantly come back to haunt you in ways that feel seamless. Parts of it are very impressive, and those parts are very impressively tied together. That sounded wild to me even before I learnt that it's about moseying around as a bounty hunter in an alien city, doing odd jobs for the locals and building up a network of friends and enemies as you work towards pulling off one last big gig. It's an unusually story-focused deckbuilding roguelike - and it's from Klei, of Oxygen Not Included and Don't Starve fame.

A deckbuilding roguelike with stories and excellent rippling consequences, hooked up to two underwhelming card gamesĬhrist, I'm not sure what to make of Griftlands.
