Wizard Worm checked out the deckbuilding RPG Griftlands:

Griftlands Review - Explore A Broken-Down Sci-Fi World (Deckbuilding RPG)

Griftlands is a deck-building rogue-like rpg 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.

3scapePod reviewed the deck-building RPG Griftlands:

Deep Dive: Griftlands - An in depth review, story theory and tips, based on a full playthrough

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PC Gamer checked out the deck-building RPG Griftlands:

Griftlands review

Play your cards right and you'll enjoy a great story.

Games have always been looking for ways to make conversations as compelling as the combat. Why can't a tense negotiation feel as gripping as a tough-as-nails boss fight? That’s the question Griftlands seeks to answer. It makes for a compelling roguelike, thanks to great writing and characters, but doesn't quite live up to the promise of its chatty deck-building systems.

The titular Griftlands are a chaotic place where corrupt law enforcement and criminal syndicates run things against a backdrop of sci-fi and fantasy. Brutal it may be, but it sure is pretty. I love the scratchy, hand-drawn touch to everything. There's a smart economy to where the embellishments are made, which ensures the game can deliver on its scope without any rough edges. Character sprites have lovely gestures and expressions that compliment the writing, while the overworld map is simply littered with tidy icons.

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Shortcomings aside, Griftlands is another slice of low-key brilliance from developers Klei. Is there a genre they can't do? The balance of narrative and deck-building made for a much more engaging experience than I often have with card-based titles, even if it feels like more could be done to connect those systems and bolster the storytelling. Still, I'm going to remember my adventures with Sal and the little moments of friendship and betrayal throughout each run. I like playing as a grifter; it ain't much but it's a living.

Score: 80/100 "Charm and good storytelling overcome limited, experimental deck-building."

Thanks Henriquejr!

Griftlands has left Early Access on Steam and currently has a 20% launch discount.

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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.

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.

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!

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. 

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.

The E3 trailer for Griftlands which you can find more about here.

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Hello everyone!

As you may have seen at the PC Game Show, we are finally ready to talk about Griftlands. As always we try not to say too much until we’re reasonably sure we have solid information to give you, but we're feeling confident with the status of the game and want to fill you in.

We have a lot to discuss here: Alpha on the Epic Game Store, Early Access on Steam, and a big change in gameplay.

Griftlands, the RPG
Every time we make a game, we set out to make a new experience that’s never been made before. Over 4 years ago, we set out to make a new RPG, and the development of the game twisted and turned in many interesting ways.

After a couple years, we thought we were close, and announced the game. It turns out, we were premature in the announcement, and after another year of development, we realized that we were not delivering the experience we had set out to. Specifically, we wanted a world where you had the freedom to do what you wanted, and the world would respond systemically to it; where you could build relationships and the nuances of them would come back to haunt you. We wanted to let you wander a large expansive world, build out your party, and backstab your own party members when they least expected it. 

We wanted the story to be systemic, but it felt either robotic or too linear. We built a full trading simulation, modeling supply and demand, we built a fully featured crafting system, and a dynamic faction simulator. Unfortunately, the whole was never better than the pieces; we found that each piece of the game felt disconnected with the rest, and that actions often felt inconsequential. We built large worlds that felt tedious to travel around, and as designers we knew the systems were not working to provide a holistic experience.

What we did see was the people loved the world, and loved the premise of negotiation and manipulation. In short, we focused our design, and over the last year, we’ve been working on something new in the same world.

The New Griftlands
Today, we’re announcing a reboot of Griftlands, a single-player deck building game where you negotiate, fight, steal or otherwise persuade others to get your way. We put aside the huge simulation and RPG elements and focused on negotiation, combat, and manipulation. You play the game as one of three characters, and each decision you make is important -- which jobs to take, which side to choose, and which cards to collect. 

In Alpha, you play as Sal, a freelance adventurer out for profit and revenge, and you do the dirty work that other people won't. As you play, you build two separate decks: one for negotiation, and one for battle. 

The world of Griftlands is harsh, and death can come quickly. Each time you play offers new jobs and situations to encounter, and a chance to rebuild your strategies. A successful run will require a sharp wit, a sharp blade, and enough cunning to know when to use each.

Alpha and the Epic Game Store
As with our previous games, we will be running an Alpha period in order to iron out the kinks. We have partnered with Epic to bring the Alpha of Griftlands to the Epic Game Store exclusively for one year, and will launch in Early Access on Steam next June.

Klei has a history of partnering with new distribution platforms when starting new projects, for example the Don’t Starve Alpha was only available on the Chrome Webstore, and the Invisible Inc. Alpha was only available through the Humble Widget as a direct download. After rebooting the game, Epic approached us as a partner and we felt that this fit well with our process of going from Alpha to garner feedback before putting it on all platforms.

On July 11, we are going to launch the Alpha version of Griftlands for $14.99. 

Early Access on Steam and Early Roadmap
In June of next year, we will be releasing Griftlands into Early Access on Steam. Anyone who purchased on Epic will get the game on Steam for free, and vice versa.

Griftlands has taken a long time, and it’s gone through more twists and turns than any of our previously released projects. Making new experiences is never easy, and if nothing else it’s guaranteed to work out differently than we anticipated. 

We have quite a bit of work ahead of us. Our expected timeline is:

• Alpha: The Sal campaign (days 1 through 4) is released
• Fall: Character 2 campaign (days 1 through ?) is released
• Early Access: Character 3 campaign (days 1 through ?) is released
• Launch: Full campaign for all characters released

We expect the full game to launch in the Fall of next year, and we’re looking forward to taking that journey with you, from Alpha to Early Access to launch.

Best, 
Jamie.

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RockPaperShotgun spoke to Klei about Griftlands to find out a little more about it.

Griftlands is a ‘pirate sandbox', says Klei

We haven't seen much of sci-fi RPG Griftlands [official site], apart from a short trailer featuring a drunk frog-man getting turned in by his space pal for a sweet bag o' cash. But developers Klei have a good track record with their cartoony games. So I annoyed them with some questions and got a few more details. As expected, it's a game of money-grubbing and turn-based battling, but it's also a world where characters will hold grudges against you, say the creators.

Looking at the town-to-town traipsing and Cartoon Network-ish animation, you might be forgiven for thinking of viking RPG The Banner Saga. But it's not as cemented in its storyline, says Klei.

"Griftlands is much less directed than Banner Saga," says Kevin Forbes, designer on the game. "It's more of a pirate/mercenary sandbox than a sequence of story battles. You are put into a simulated economy and set loose to make your fortune."

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@PCGamer Griftlands is a new adventure rpg from Klei with some nice 2D art and turn based combat. You can see some more of the game from its Steam page.

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2D art? Cool lookin' aliens? A one-armed robot? Party combat? That's just about all we could glean from the trailer for Klei Entertainment's new game, and they aren't talkin'. Here's what we do know: it's called Griftlands, and you can see the trailer for yourself above.

Klei has a fairly diverse set of games in its back catalog, including the action sidescroller Shank and the stealth masterpiece Mark of the Ninja, but it's mostly veered towards strategy with the likes of Don't Starve, Invisible Inc., and Oxygen Not Included. The latter was first revealed at least year's PC Gaming Show, and is currently in Steam Early Access. We dig it. That doesn't tell us much about GriftLands, though.

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