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As in Invisible, Inc., killing is a serious business in this game. If you reduce your opponent's health below a certain point you can accept their surrender, or choose to execute them, which can have interesting consequences down the line. You can see your opponent's intention for the next turn, so can make moves to pre-empt it or defend against it the fun comes from finding synergy between cards to build combos, though you can only do this in a single turn and it might be a while before your deck accommodates it. Battle plays out very similarly to Slay the Spire, which is to say like a mashup of Magic the Gathering and an early Final Fantasy. This theme is reinforced by the bifurcation of the card gameplay into two strands: battle and negotiation. Love and hate come with buffs and debuffs, and characters' attitudes to you might change the flow of the story, too. All the colourful characters can like, dislike, love or hate you, influenced by your actions in the story and whether you make time to just buy them a drink. The most interesting thing about Griftlands is its web of personal relationships. It feels too crafted, meandering and long-form to be called a true roguelike, but it does have a lot in common with those games.
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Plus there's permadeath, so if Sal buys it, you need to start again. campaign, the story is dictated partly by script and partly by chance, with your picks from the semi-randomised missions on offer determining the direction of your build as well as the shape of the plot, and offering chances to take on extra risk for extra reward.
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This is the tale of Sal, an impetuous bounty hunter out for revenge against the crime boss who sold her into indentured toil on the oil platforms. The alpha presents you with one (not quite finished) storyline of an eventual three to play. It feels like the card system has been parachuted onto the game rather than laying the foundations of it. Griftlands, while a sharp piece of work even at this early stage, is different. Invisible, Inc., in particular, is a near masterpiece. But they have all distinguished themselves by bringing original ideas and cleanly designed, hard-edged systems to the mix. Its releases have followed many an indie trend: stealth in Mark of the Ninja, crafting and survival in Don't Starve, team tactics in Invisible, Inc., colony simulation in Oxygen Not Included.
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The genre-hopping Vancouver studio knows not only how to skip up onto a bandwagon with style, but how to bring something of value aboard with it. Not that Klei doesn't have form for taking inspiration. What I found was a beautifully illustrated tale of bitter rivalries, tough friendships and hard calls - like a scruffy science-fantasy Banner Saga - blended with a randomised deck-building roguelite, clearly inspired by the excellent Slay the Spire. (Though I suppose you shouldn't be surprised that any game is a card battler in 2019.) From early trailers I had expected something closer to a tactical role-playing game exploring this ramshackle, piratical offworld of bounty hunters, fish people and black markets.
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It was a surprise, on booting up Griftlands - the latest from Don't Starve developer Klei Entertainment, now available in a PC early access version from the Epic store - to discover that it was a card battler.
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