Griftlands

PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One

Developer Klei’s knack for identifying a popular genre and making its own distinctive mark on it has long been one of its greatest strengths. From Don’t Starve’s quirky, Tim Burton-esque take on survival sims to Mark Of The Ninja’s elegant sidescrolling stealth, the studio’s games elevate established genres with craft, imagination and style. Science-fiction adventure Griftlands continues this trend, taking the Roguelike and the deck-builder and giving them a Klei spin. While narrative is often pushed to the side in these games, Griftlands places it front and centre, using randomisation, character relationships and player choice to construct some brilliantly dynamic, interactive stories. And underpinning everything is a slick card battler, where you use your ever-growing deck to tackle both combat and tense negotiations.

It’s set on an unnamed planet – a scuzzy galactic backwater populated by aliens, grizzled mercs, jellyfishworshipping cultists, and malfunctioning robots. It’s a confidently realised setting, with masses of fascinating backstory that’s never forced on you, but emerges naturally through the dialogue. If you want to learn more about something – say, the sea-god worshipped by those cultists – its name will be highlighted whenever it crops up in conversation. Hover over the text to see a lean snippet of vivid world-building. You’re never deluged with exposition, but the game still manages to draw you deep into its setting.

There are three playable characters, each offering a unique perspective on the world. Sal is a bounty hunter on the trail of the criminal who sold her into slavery. Her search leads her to Murder Bay, a bandit-infested stretch of coastline to which the authoritarian Admiralty is trying to bring law and order. Rook, meanwhile, is a former soldier working undercover in Grout Bog. This inhospitable marsh is being fought over by two factions – a rivalry in which Rook has a mysterious stake. And Smith, an amphibious alien, is a drunken layabout from an influential family. He travels to the coastal town of Pearl-on-Foam to claim an inheritance, but is denied it by his more successful siblings.

Griftlands’ greatest strength is, by far, its storytelling. All three characters are riddled with interesting flaws and endearing quirks, and a delight to guide through their respective plotlines. The writing is wonderfully crisp, economical, and snappy. Few games simulate the organic flow of a conversation quite this well, and the script’s digestible bursts of sharp, witty dialogue make for an enjoyably fast-paced interactive narrative. As you make a name for yourself as a grifter, a mercenary for hire, you form relationships with the people you meet. These can be positive or negative, and the impact they have on the story is direct and far-reaching.

If you rescue someone from danger, let a bounty go or sweet-talk a debtor into forgiving money they owe,

KILLER INSTINCT

For players seeking an extra challenge, a Griftlands run can be altered with a large selection of mutators, unlocked after completing one of the three characters’ storylines. These can be selected manually or, if you’re feeling brave, applied randomly, which can have a dramatic impact on a playthrough. The Barbarous mutator is an interesting one, letting you get away with murder. Normally, killing someone in public will negatively impact your reputation and add nuisance cards to your deck that you have to waste turns to discard. This reputation can also work in your favour in certain situations, but mostly it’s best to avoid being too trigger-happy. Battles give you the opportunity to accept an enemy’s surrender before dealing the final blow, but with this mutator activated you can merrily murder anyone you please and suffer no repercussions whatsoever. they’ll love you. This can result in a number of positive outcomes, including buffs, cards, the character joining your party as a combat ally, or appearing unexpectedly during a tricky situation to help pull you out of it. It pays to have friends. But if someone hates you – because you kill their friend, work with their enemy, or disrespect them – this will have a negative effect. You might be forced to fight, be refused help when you need it, or get slapped with a debuff. Building and maintaining this sticky web of fragile interpersonal relationships, and how it feeds into both the story and the battle layer, is one of Griftlands’ neatest narrative tricks.

Card battles come in two flavours: combat and negotiation. Each has its own suite of cards and interface, but the fundamentals are the same. You have to reduce your opponent’s health – either their physical health or their will to resist your arguments – to zero, through a combination of attacks, buffs, and debuffs. Combat is where Griftlands plays it safest, with a turnbased battle system that is challenging and fluid, but familiar to anyone who’s ever played a deck-building game. Klei has resisted the urge to innovate, which is a little disappointing. However, the negotiations – which arise whenever you have to convince someone to see things your way, do something they don’t want to do, or help you in a fight – are much more stimulating.

Your opponent will mount their defence in the form of arguments, which you attack by playing cards. As you chip away at these defences, points from their core argument will drop away until you eventually break it. As a system, it isn’t wildly different from the regular battles, but the concept of taking a conversation and applying the structure and cadence of a card battler to it is a clever one. In story mode you can stroll through the card battles and focus on the narrative, but on higher difficulties thinking ahead, and thinking strategically, is absolutely essential when it comes to winning both types of card battle: this can be a punishing game, with sudden difficulty spikes occasionally souring the fun.

Griftlands is a decent deck-builder, with an intuitive interface and engagingly tactical battles. Many of the cards lack visual spark, and some fights drag on too long, but the underlying systems are all solid. The story, world and characters ultimately make it great. Klei’s scrappy, lived-in universe is so well established, it feels like it could be adapted from some forgotten series of science-fiction novels. The art is superb, with bold, Don Bluth-like characters set against atmospheric painted backgrounds. Finally, the Roguelike structure makes it replayable: the main thrust of each protagonist’s story is largely unchanged, but randomised missions, characters, and encounters mean there are countless paths through them. And with a world this absorbing, we don’t need a second invitation to start over.

The concept of taking a conversation and applying the structure and cadence of a card battler to it is a clever one