While successful Griftlands is a game that deserves much much more recognition than it got. While it lacks the replayability of other deckbuilders it is hands down the greatest experience I've had in a deckbuilder.

Why? Because it succeeds at telling amazing stories while doing it. This is a narrative heavy game with major choices and consequences in the story of each of the 3 characters.

The world building is phenomenal, each character is complex and really interesting with major major kudos to Smith, a complete train wreck of a drunken *sshole who surprised me in becoming one of my top 10 favorite game character of any game ever.

Some game design decision might be shocking: a run is 8 to 10 hours long and if you die, you die. What's on the line is big and when during the final boss your heart will be pumping. Now, the difficulty is also adapted to that: I beat all 3 stories on my first try and never had to redo anything. So this is a design choice that is scary but in my case I found it created a powerful tension that made me really care about my choices and immersed me really deeply.

The only caveat is that there is no Griftlands 2 and by the time I beat the game the only thing I wanted was more Griftlands and more stories about it's characters.

Oh yeah, and the soundtrack by Emmett Hall is absolutely incredible and haunting. There is so much care in it with a unique track for dozens of NPCs you barely meet for a few minutes, multiple combat and negotiation tracks for each character depending if it's day or night... Dynamic tracks during combats affected by which side is winning. It's kinda insane how good it is.

Don't underestimate this lil dice game. It is one of the smartest and most addictive deckbuilder roguelike out there.

You get 5 heroes and level them up or gain new items in between fights. Both will alter the faces on the hero's die. Plan them well to survive the different mechanics that the game throws at you (clean the poison, defend direct attacks, have range attacks for enemies in the backrow,...). The luck is mitigated by having several reroll and locking die each turn and there's a real tactical aspect to it. Heck on my 3rd playthrough from scratch for the release of v3 I stomped through most of the content on the first try, knowing the game well really makes a difference.

Akin to Terraria it's gone through massive free content updates. At v3 now, there are 128 hero classes, I dont know how many monsters and hundreds of items.
This isn't filler stuff too. It's a blast and each achievement you'll get unlocks more content.
I have pretty much 100% the game at every version on release and never get tired of it.

I'll be honest, the combat in this game gets pretty repetitive but damnson, is that world immersive. Fantastic music, textures and top tier low poly design. It's a FEAST I say!
The game has a super interesting concept of training your weapons against type of enemies or armor. And it works pretty well! I ended up training a trash dagger from the beginning so well against a type of enemy it like 3 shot the first phase of the final boss. So that was satisfying.

The story is kindof a mess but the speech bubbles are entertaining and if you play with a friend you can criticize the NPCs curious fashion choices at the same time. Win win.

Overall while the minute to minute gameplay wasn't mind blowing it's a game that still left a mark and resonated from creating a world I wanted to entirely explore and it's a real shame there's no sequel to expand on the systems!

True fact: If you wonder why there is an intro with belly dancing that has nothing to do with the game it's because of my friend who I catsit for who worked on that scene and got really into belly dancing at that time. It's a question that had weighted heavily on me and now that I've learned that I can die in peace. Hopefully you too.