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Video Game / Griftlands

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Sal in front, Rook on the right, and Smith on the left

Griftlands is a Deck Building Game / Rogue-lite set in an alien post-apocalypse neo-Victorian world, where the silver in your tongue is as important as the steel in your blades. Grifters must negotiate, intimidate, manipulate, fight, capture, and even murder the various, randomly-selected cast to earn money, cards, augmentations, and even relationship bonuses. Players must manage their money to build and maintain a playstyle that can take on giant monsters and seasoned professionals. Any decision can make or break a game, any zealously loyal NPC can turn on you in a flash if you betray their trust, and under the right circumstances, anyone can die - typically, you.

The game was created by Klei Entertainment, and an Early Access version was released for PC on June 14, 2020. The 1.0 version was made available a year later, on June 1, 2021; the game was also made available for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.


Tropes:

  • Aerith and Bob: Crops up all over the place, but best exemplified with the Banquod family; Vixmalli, Millifee, Theroux, and their brother... Smith.
  • After-Combat Recovery: Zigzagged. By default, health isn't restored between events, but you can buy upgrades to restore health after negotiations. Resolve, on the other hand, is partially restored after fights. However, both of these recovery methods are disabled at higher difficulty levels. Strangely enough, your enemies don't completely have this. This can lead into situations where you get into a fight with someone, find a random event involving that same person immediately afterwards, and start another fight only to realize they're one clean hit away from death/surrender.
    • The Mettle update gives you stronger after-recovery if you spend your Mettle Points on the corresponding upgrade.
  • Aggressive Negotiations: If a conversation battle is going poorly, you can almost always end it immediately by switching over to a regular battle. If a boss fight is inevitable, winning in conversation first can give the player an advantage, such as having one or more allies to assist you or applying a debuff to the enemy.
  • Bandit Clan: The Spree are a loose organization of brigands, thieves, and thugs stationed in Murder Bay. Despite their status though, they do have some scruples and are forthright with their dealings in compared to the self-righteous Admiralty.
  • The Bartender: Each character starts out with a bartender ally. Their interactions vary between characters, but generally they have consumable items for sale, drinks to restore resolve, and some weird edible goop that heals well and tastes like ass.
  • Black-and-Grey Morality: Sal's campaign in particular has almost no good people, just bad ones and worse ones. You have to team up with either a corrupt police force or a gang of bandits and take down the leader of the other faction, to get their help taking down a slave-trading crime boss. Your only reliable ally is a retired bounty hunter who creates illegal deathtraps in her bar and sees no problem killing an assassin for you after he loses the fight. The other two campaigns have shades of this, but at least have one side that appears morally better than the other.
  • Challenge Run: Prestige levels add modifiers like upgraded enemies or reduced recovery to your runs. Higher levels increase the experience earned upon that run's conclusion.
  • Corrupt Church: The Cult of Hesh believes in the existence of an Eldritch Abomination that ended the spacefaring age on the planet, and officially claims to pacify Hesh. They spend their tithe money on personal problems, destroy lost technology, and run off slave labor.
  • Corrupt Cop: Almost everyone in the Admiralty, though some are worse than others.
  • Cursed with Awesome: As typical of the genre, there are ways to take normally negative effects and use them to your advantage. One example of this is Smith and anything that causes him to take self damage, since this makes his Moxie stronger. Worst case scenario, the self-damage would be partially mitigated, and the best case scenario is a net gain of health (especially when combined with cards that Alleviate the damage he receives).
  • Cutting the Knot: Even quests that are designed with negotiation in mind usually give you the option of just beating people into submission, with or without killing them afterward. This often results in making more enemies, and might place you in fights where you're badly outnumbered.
  • Death World: Havaria, the planet the game takes place on. The citizens are harsh, the environments are hazardous, and everything is trying to kill you.
  • Deck Clogger: There are several Status Effects that manifest in gameplay as deck clogging cards. For example, when you drink alcohol or eat food to restore your resolve and health respectively, you get a Tipsy status card and a Bloated status card. Some status cards can't be played, but will exhaust after the turn they show up in your hand during a Negotiation or Combat. Others however cost energy to play and will not be removed from your deck until they are played. Tipsy and Bloated cost 1 and 2 energy to play, for example, though you can get rid of them by going to sleep at the end of the entire day.
  • Eldritch Abomination: Hesh, the Unknowable God, who single-handedly started the apocalypse and ended the Vagrant Age. His followers are convinced they don't truly know anything about him... yet, but that with enough donations they might be able to figure something out.
  • Equipment Upgrade: If you use a card enough times to max out its XP bar, you can pick between two versions to upgrade it to. Starting attack and defend cards have several different upgrades, of which two are picked from.
  • Fight Like a Card Player: Both the conversation and combat portions of the game are played using a deck of ability cards.
  • Frog Men: The Kra'deshi are one of the four races present in Havaria. They tend to be wealthy and influential, coming from strong matrilineal dynasties.
  • Game Mod: The game's PC version incorporates Steam Workshop support, allowing users to easily mod in new characters, abilities, and storylines.
  • Genius Loci: In Rook's campaign, the Bogdwellers in the Grout Bog occasionally believe that the bog has its own intelligence. A manifestation of that intelligence serves as the final boss. Also, in Smith's campaign, it's implied that the Roaloch island has a similar intelligence, and the god of the Cult of Hesh may have similar aspects.
  • Good Old Fisticuffs: When not using his hammer, Smith tends to prefer straight-up brawling.
  • Grievous Bottley Harm: Smith, as a drunken failson whose techniques mostly come from bar-room brawls, has an entire combat mechanic based around accumulating bottles in your deck by drinking a lot and then using them as weapons to do damage.
  • Guns Akimbo: Rook's weapon of choice.
  • Heads or Tails?: Rook's main gimmick is that most of his conversation cards involve flipping a coin, are affected by the coin's heads or tails status, or both. Flipping the coin itself can also provide its own benefits depending on which side it lands on. Rook even has the ability to trade in his starting coin for one that has different heads or tails effects.
  • Intoxication Mechanic: You can order alcohol at bars to replenish your Negotiation Hit Points. However, doing so adds intoxication cards to your deck that will not be removed unless played. These cards typically cost 2 of the base 3 actions you are allotted each turn, which makes playing these cards burn through the majority of your turn. Your character will slur their speech and sway for a few seconds after these cards are played.
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The flavor text for the card "Rummage":
    Rummage: 'I know it's in here somewhere, who drew all these pockets?'
  • Level-Up at Intimacy 5: Reaching "love" status with people will result in the player gaining a benefit, such as free equipment or healing upon curing status effects. Conversely, reaching "hate" status with people will result in the player gaining a detriment, such as increased shop prices or allies having less health in combat. There are two achievements linked to relationships - get 20 people to love you, or get 20 people to hate you. Good luck getting the second one.
  • Limit Break: Flourishes are particularly powerful abilities that need to be charged by playing cards and taking/dealing damage. Each character starts with two flourishes, one for battle and one for negotiation, and can unlock and upgrade more using Prestige Points.
  • Macrogame:
    • You earn Mettle by completing quests and winning battles and negotiations, which you can spend on character upgrades like increased health and resolve. Mettle is earned separately for each character.
    • Defeating a boss for the first time on a prestige level earns a prestige point, which is used to unlock new flourishes. While prestige points are shared among all characters, flourishes are character-specific.
    • By completing various feats, you earn Grift that you can use to unlock perks, which give benefits like automatically getting people to like you or automatically upgrading cards or grafts. Grifts and perks are shared among all characters.
  • Mandatory Unretirement: Rook is a former spy for the government that got out by faking his death. However, one of his old comrades knows the truth, and has called in a favor, starting off his plot.
  • Murder Is the Best Solution: If you piss someone off and you want to shake off their relationship penalty, you can provoke them into attacking you with a negotiation, and then kill them in 'self-defense'.
    [Character] is dead, and the grudge [they] bore against you has died with them.
  • Not the Intended Use: Certain cards will remove on debuff on whoever they target. While they can be used to remove wounds, bleeding, impairment, exposed or other debuffs, they can also remove the "remove power at end of turn" debuff to make a temporary power boost last for the rest of the fight.
  • The Place: The titular Griftlands are the wilds of Havaria, where everyone's seeking to make a quick buck at the expense of everyone else.
  • One Bullet Left: The card "Lucky Shot" can spend one charge to deal extra damage per empty cell - meaning it'll hit the hardest when Rook only has one charge left.
  • Pistol-Whipping: One of Rook's available cards is called "Pistol Whip", which costs 0 actions if Rook has no charge left.
    Pistol Whip: 'I thought he was reloading...'
  • Playing Both Sides: Rook's primary story mode has him going to Grout Bog to work with both the Spark Barons and their enemies, The Rise, with part of the quest line referencing this by name. Similarly, the results screen of Rook's Brawl mode has the subtitle "Playing All The Sides".
  • Railroad Baron: The Spark Barons are a space-variant, with them owning an old spaceport. Unfortunately, nobody remembers how to make the space trains work... yet.
  • Relationship Values: Most named NPCs have an opinion of you, including your enemies. This opinion starts at neutral and is changed by how you treat them. Characters who Like or Dislike you will back you or your opponent up respectively if you start a negotiation or battle when you are in the same room as them, whereas characters who Love or Hate you grant positive or negative effects no matter where you are.
  • Ridiculously Small Wings: The wings of the Flead Queen are described as "impossibility small" when she emerges to confront the grifter.
  • Schrödinger's Question: Averted at the start of Rook's primary story. The border guard asks Rook who called him in, and you can choose between two factions, suggesting that your answer determines this, but it's later revealed that the other faction had also contacted him before the start of the story, so either answer was always true.
  • Sibling Murder: Smith's story involves him going after his siblings when they disown him after the death of their parents. Smith plans on killing the rest of his family in retaliation, but depending on the player's choices he can change his mind before going through with it.
  • Speaking Simlish: Outside of the Narrator who also gives the Tutorial, everyone speaks like this.
  • Static Role, Exchangeable Character: As part of the game's Rogue-lite nature, the same NPCs may have different roles in different runs, from Gatekeeper to Assassin. This gets lampshaded with one specific role, The Enlightened, who knows they will change roles in the next iteration.
  • Story Difficulty Setting: You can choose to play on story difficulty, if you want to experience the tale without any untimely outcomes getting in the way.
  • Unscrupulous Hero: Sal, an adventurer motivated by profit and revenge.
  • Variable Mix: During battles, the music reacts to what's going on and more complexity is added as the fight progresses, reaching a peak when you're close to victory or defeat. Just compare the start of Smith's battle theme to when you're in trouble and when you have the advantage.
  • Verbal Judo: In addition to regular combat, you have a separate deck for conversation cards (as well as a second form of health, Resolve). Victory in parlay often avoids a battle altogether, and can improve your relationship with the other party. In boss fights, victory often involves completing objectives besides reducing an enemy's core argument to 0 Resolve, such as eliminating the enemy's arguments.
  • We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future: Both the Cult of Hesh and the Spark Barons rely heavily on indentured labor to produce lumin and retrieve Vagrant Age materials, respectively. Sal's backstory involves her working off her required servitude in record time.

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