Griftlands

This is a one of a kind Roguelike Deckbuilder, but with a massive emphasis on dialogue/diplomacy/persuasion. This game gives you 2 decks. One for combat, one for conversation. Your choices matter in your run, people in the world can have varying opinions on you based on your actions, and these will result in buffs and debuffs. You align yourself with certain factions. You can recruit different people to join your party, or fight solo. You can also buy or acquire various animal companions and robots to join you in battle.

I felt thrown in a season 6 of an ongoing show where tons of fantasy lore was use and I had no context. Once you arrive on the world map, still no clue why I would go to one city instead of another, then I'm on a fetch quest about a lore thingy I can't full grasp (because lack of context) then have to decide who to side with. Tutorials explained the basic of how to play your cards (attack, defense) but didn't explain how specialized mechanics worked, like I had no idea what the difference was between a red and a green card for negotiation, spent most of the time looking at explanations on each card. Worked great on steamdeck even though the game was clearly built with mouse in mind.

顶级肉鸽卡牌佳作，只有杀戮尖塔能与之媲美

游戏本身还算有趣，剧情也很丰富，但是卡组构建这一块让人不太满意。 最让我不推荐的一点就是单局游戏时间是在是太长了，真的太长了。

good fun. doesn't feel quite as replayable.

Neat concept but it's kind of half-baked. Negotiations are effectively just another form of combat using a separate health pool ('resolve') and a separate deck. So you're basically playing two deckbuilders at once, neither of them as interesting as a well-designed one. And if you specialise in one, your other deck suffers but there are still unavoidable encounters where you have to use it anyway (I did 20 negotiations and 7 battles, then lost fairly easily to the final boss because it wasn't a negotiation). It also doesn't feel like you have sufficient ability to shape and improve your decks during the course of a run. I got my negotiation deck up and running pretty early, and for the rest of the game I skipped nearly every card reward offered because they would have made my deck worse. For my battle deck, there are mechanics that I simply could not get to work because I never saw a card that enabled it (I got some early cards that become stronger when 'Improvised', then never saw a single card that let me 'Improvise' them for the entire run). The other issue is that runs are too long and repetitive to justify repeated plays to unlock additional cards and perks. From what I could see the additional card unlocks tended to be fairly dull anyway. The writing and presentation were decent enough, but the story was pretty thin.

This game is just so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ good, man. I'd put it on the same shelf as Slay the Spire, and thats someone who absolutely loves StS. It's just such an enjoyable time. Three distinct characters, with their own colorful personalities, builds, and campaigns. The world building is just so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fantastic, which is such an odd thing for a roguelike deckbuilder, but man. I want a full fledged RPG set in this universe so bad. Every single NPC and interaction is just filled with so much color and personality, and humor, and also plenty of dark stuff too. It's a great time. 100% worth your money. I'd pay double for this damn game. edit: man i was gushing so much i forgot to mention its main mechanic, of how you have a battle deck for battles, and then a negotiation deck for any speechy things you try to do. The battles are already great, but man the negotiations are SO much fun, and honestly make me laugh all the time with the ♥♥♥♥ the characters say. And the faces they all make.