 Early access is so often little more than a grift. A calculated money grab intent on screwing the players over little more than a promising idea, but that has not been the case with clay entertainment's previous games and it certainly isn't the case with the developers' latest. My own history with clay is paradoxical – I love their games and yet I have played very few of them past the opening several hours, either in terms of content or progression. Yet it's impossible to argue that games such as Mark of the Ninja, Oxygen Not Included and Especially Don't Starve have achieved not only cult status but mainstream appeal. They all bear the marks of clay's work and them and so does Griftlands in every aspect from the dirge of content to the signature hand-drawn art style to the addictive gameplay loop and memorable protagonists. In this video, I will examine two questions – one on the nature of Griftlands and the second on whether purchasing it in Early Access is a worthwhile move judging by what is currently included in this 17 euro package. Without further ado, let's get to it. 1. What is Griftlands? Griftlands is the latest game in a series of roguelite deck builders that have come out over the last several years, following in the steps of such genre-defining pioneers as Slade Aspire, developed by Megacrit. But where Slade Aspire aimed for extracting the essence of the engineering to its basic building blocks, tents and forgiving encounters, clay entertainments' aims are at once more ambitious and aimed in a very different direction. What Griftlands tents? It is a deck builder that doesn't only dabble in half-glimpse claw in the vein of Slade Aspire but attempts to create whole unique playthroughs based on modular stories. Lee Sheldon developed the concept of modular storytelling in his book Character Development in Storytelling for Games, and the way he defines it is as an overarching story that runs throughout an entire piece, but between the few points set in stone that give the framing of this story a isolated incidence, or modules, which change from one playthrough to another. Some of these modules can be interconnected, but most of them won't be. In pursuing this modular storytelling, clay entertainment has created dozens of quest archetypes and interaction templates between the player, character and the hundreds of different NPCs. In preparation for this video I've played over 30 hours of Griftlands and still I came across scenarios, quests or NPC interactions that surprised and delighted me as I came to the end of my playthroughs. It is true that I have also played through several repetitive beats, for example limited time events which asked me to step in and save a friendly NPC or watch on as they were killed. Each repetition did take away from the immediacy of something called a limited time event, but that's one of the sacrifices developers make at the altar of randomly generated content, modular or otherwise. Despite the negatives, this mode of storytelling is largely successful, at least for dozens of hours and several playthroughs. Part of it has to do with the atmosphere Griftlands creates. There's something of the Wild West here, in the way both playable characters, Sal and Rook, approach the issues they are faced with, and both Murderous Bay and the Bulk have plenty of character on their own, which on both occasions serve to ground the stories told in dirt, grit and iniquity. Treating is unique for good Wild West space shootout. That of course, and plenty of spoils. And where there's come and villainy, well, for grifters like Sal and Rook, there's coin and opportunity in equal measure. Detention between several powerful factions all aiming to advance themselves at the expense of all others creates an atmosphere perfect for the hustlers, whether they're tools, be blasters, blades or even words. But before I dig my own hole here, and spend several long paragraphs discussing the characters and world building, I'll attempt to break down the mechanical side of things. A narrative roguelike deckbuilder is an ambitious proposition in its own right. I've covered the narrative element already. Then we've got the deckbuilder and roguelike aspects to elaborate on. Roguelike is simple enough. Every time you die, you begin a new run. Having lost the progress you made previously. That said, with every playthrough successful or not, you will unlock certain bonuses. These include an incremental increase in quality through mastery levels, cosmetic outfits for your character, new cards and mutators, which if you so choose introduce elements to your game which will alter the experience in countless ways. Not necessarily good ways, some of them can be nightmarish, but ways all the same. In the sense that you still accomplish some longer term progression, Griftlands is not a roguelike, but as this term doesn't seem to endure as well as roguelike, I've subscribed to using the latter one. Among the biggest selling points for Griftlands is the existence of not one deck to shape the play with, but two. In addition to the combat deck, there is also the diplomacy or negotiation one, used whenever you attempt to persuade, intimidate or otherwise coerce an NPC. It's a refreshing way to engage in arguments and I applaud the idea. What's better is the execution ends up being surprisingly fun. Negotiation cards can be broken up into three groups, influence, aggression and manipulation. The first kind does a moderate amount of damage, evenly spread out, while the second has the capacity for stronger blows, but also for weaker ones. Influence will often offer positive effects to you, while aggression will yield negative conditions on the enemy. Manipulation cards don't do damage outright, but rather offer support cards and interesting gimmicks, which might work to synergize either or both of the other types of cards. Try and remember the three types, we'll get back to them a little later. I'm partial to the combat deck as well, the visual elements of the positioning of the player characters, their allies and their foes in particular reminds me of the turn-based Final Fantasy games, some of which I continue to replay to this day. The similarities with Slay the Spire are also evident. The combat gameplay itself is intuitive, far more so than the negotiation battles will be at first. With every victory you claim, comes the choice of an additional card to add to your deck, either for your battle or for your diplomacy deck, in the case of boss battles for both. You pick from three cards, as in Slay the Spire, but have the opportunity to forgo increasing your deck for the sake of a small sum of money. To paraphrase extra credits, the deck building is part of the gameplay, rather than just the meta gaming. It is a strategic decision, which affects your run in the long term, to that effect I would like to bring in some theory. At a minute the architect of games you should check his channel, it's fantastic, outlines three requisites for a good deckbuilder. One, the cards need to enable synergy. Two, they need to create interesting decisions in the long term, and three, the cards need to have a distinct identity. Let's break each point and how it relates to Griftlands. The first point, the cards need to enable synergies. Griftlands is firmly in the camp of deckbuilders, which make use of hard synergy. Which is to say, they demand you commit to a certain mechanic that is reinforced by the vast majority of the other cards in your deck. That mechanic can be, for example, the combo mechanic with Sol, which will ask you to build up combo and then unleash devastating finisher attacks which make full use of the points you have so far gathered. I will also talk about Rook's synergy, or one of them, in the next section. For now let's move on to the second point. The cards need to create interesting decisions in the long term, i.e. they need to offer a strategic dimension to more than just one battle or several. They must inform your own decision making, which I would argue is down through the hard synergy in the first place. Now on to the third and last point that Adam Millard brings up. The cards need to have a distinct identity. This I'm afraid is where Griftlands stumbles a little bit. The cards synergise well, choosing them very much shapes the long term direction of your run, but if I told you that they had an identity, I would do so with my eyes squint at ever so slightly trying to remember what exactly that identity is. There's flavour text to these cards, but it doesn't jump out in the act of playing. Just now in fact I went back and reread some of the text. And I was surprised to find a lot of it was funny, not laugh out loud funny, necessarily but amusing. Besides, the art is of a consistently high quality. Yet there's something understated about the identity of these cards and I wonder if the folks at Clay could do more to underline it, to give it feet to stand on. The cards are simply not exciting in the same way that those in Hearthstone, especially Magic the Gathering are. Rather than from the cards, the game's identity bleeds from the world in characters and now would be a good time to double back and talk about Sol and Rook and the world they inhabit. I love how much agency you, the player, have in choosing which factions to align yourself with. Each of the factions, of course, has its own dedicated NPCs, characteristics, engaging lore and even specific cards. Or rather certain cards you'll gain easier when aligned with one faction versus another. And as I said is tied to the characters of Rook and Sol. Excellent news as personality is one ingredient neither of these two lacks. I want both of their respective campaigns. Although I ended up playing with Rook quite a bit more as I kept dying and restarting. Sol is the easier character of the two, the one you'll want to start the game with. In fact you'll have no choice as you only unlock Rook after you've played with her. I'll share with you a few of my impressions of my first run with her. From my very own notes as I reflected back on each day of in-game time I survived after the fact. I've redacted and built on these for the purpose of this video, but bear in mind there are still my impressions at a rather early point in the game. 1. The negotiation battles are fun enough that I didn't want to end some of them. Eager to see how many negative effects I could stack on the enemy, how many positive conditions I could get on myself at any one time. 2. Not only do you get boons when you make friends, you also get banes when you make enemies. These force you to adapt and change your play style. This in turn adds depth similar to but not quite the same as the curse cards in Slay the Spire. You can remove banes only by killing the characters who hate you. And some of their effects are quite the deterrents. One for example forces you to draw one less card on your first turn of every combat which reduces your early choices and makes any opening just a twinge more challenging. 3. The sense of humour at this play is at times absolutely hilarious. 4. Very impressed with the final boss she killed me once and I had to restart the last day before managing to defeat her. She seems to have multiple strategies which make for a terribly engaging final encounter which also promises plenty of replayability. The modular design in the quests continued right down to the end. A series of events I was almost certain was scripted turned out to be just another set of modular scenarios. My experience both times was memorable and made for an exhilarating climatic. 5. Battle Rook in contrast is a tough nut to crack. He's a lot more reliant on an RNG than Sol is to begin with. So much of his negotiation deck relies on the literal tossing of a coin. Here we've got his core negotiation mechanic, the aptly named Head or Snails. Poetry that in either condition adds special effects to specific cards which make the blows, the old spine leashes, that much more potent. My first playthrough was mired with issues because I didn't immediately comprehend how to best make use of this mechanic. His starting deck seemed to me considerably weaker than Sol's, except of course it isn't. It's all about how you use it. An interesting build to attempt with Rook would be not to commit to either Head's cards or Snails' cards. One of the intriguing effects at his disposal allows him to set the coin. Since Rook's influence and aggression cards are committed to the heads and snails side of the coin, respectively you are forced to either commit to gambling or to attempt to avoid it. The set the coin mechanic circumvents all of that. You can now use both aggression and influence cards to their fullest extent. Before we wrap this up, a small side on the newest feature introduced in the July 2020 update, The Dailies. At the heart of every draft mode lies a simple idea, challenging the player through the random selection of cards he has been dealt. Drafting a beginner deck from random cards is all about seeing how far you can go with the hands fate has dealt. It demands you think on your feet and do your best to synergise cards that don't necessarily complement one another well. It's a challenge and it's rotating content that, while lacking a modular story, does offer replayability. Not my cup of tea, but something tells me someone would enjoy this one more than I did. I realise this has been a hell of a response to the first question with which I open the video. Hopefully I've managed to break it down into understandable enough sections. Now onto our second question, I promise this one will be shorter. Griftlands succeeds where so many games inspired by Slay the Spire fail because Clay sets its aims towards a different set of core goals than so many other deckbuilder roguelikes have. That is something Griftlands shares with other unique deckbuilders. I'd like to cover games such as One Step From Eden. Each of these games paves its own way. Griftlands does so through a dual deck model and through a narrative driven experience. I do not think this game has quite the strategic or tactical depth, thus Slay the Spire does, and perhaps it never will. But and that's a big but. It's more than makes up for that comparative lack of depth with the phenomenal aesthetics, the memorable world, the characters, the twist introduced via the diplomacy deck. That is also why the brawl in Daily Modes are somewhat weaker. The streamlined experiences lack the story beats that make up the unique identity Griftlands claims in its campaign modes. I hope it succeeds though and I hope to see plenty of new elements added in as early access continues. There will be a third character and I'm sure a third map coming with him as well as plenty of new events. Once to come after I do not know but I'm sure that Clay will offer something exciting. Until then, if you enjoyed this video please click that subscribe button down below, also ring that bell notification, leave me a comment down below. Did this video make you want to pick up Griftlands, why are you going to wait, are deckbuilders even your kind of game at all? Well they certainly are mine, I enjoy the mechanical depth at the core of deckbuilders and I think there's so much yet to explore, so many interesting directions to take the road like deckbuilder genre in. What do you think? Oh and also don't forget to like or dislike the video, depending on whether you enjoyed it or thought it could be better. Also tell me what I could improve, I'm always open to advice, ideas and wonderful things like that. Catch you later, bye!