But it sounds like a good direction for Klei. “We don’t want to build up expectations for work that is still very much in progress,” he says, adding that the game is, as ever, subject to twiddling and fiddling. It’s still an unfinished piece of privateering, he points out. Killing people can lead to mechanical repercussions down the road, and NPCs remember what you did to them in the past.” “Morale and NPC personality effects factor in heavily – many fights are not to the death, but rather until one side surrenders. “Individual fights are designed to be short and impactful,” says Forbes. Meanwhile, battles themselves sound like a mix of traditional turn-based timing (there’s a “front row” and a “back row” of fighters) but with an emphasis on subduing your enemies, not murdering them. So it sounds like your own heroes will be set in stone, with the rest of the world reacting to your dastardly deeds or friendly feats. The land and the factions that inhabit it are fixed, but their state and the front-line NPCs that populate the world are systems-driven…” “There is a small cast of written player-characters / companions who have their own questlines, but these take place in a dynamic world with procedurally generated NPCs. You are put into a simulated economy and set loose to make your fortune.” “It’s more of a pirate/mercenary sandbox than a sequence of story battles.

“Griftlands is much less directed than Banner Saga,” says Kevin Forbes, designer on the game. But it’s not as cemented in its storyline, says Klei. Looking at the town-to-town traipsing and Cartoon Network-ish animation, you might be forgiven for thinking of viking RPG The Banner Saga.

As expected, it’s a game of money-grubbing and turn-based battling, but it’s also a world where characters will hold grudges against you, say the creators. So I annoyed them with some questions and got a few more details. But developers Klei have a good track record with their cartoony games. We haven’t seen much of sci-fi RPG Griftlands, apart from a short trailerfeaturing a drunk frog-man getting turned in by his space pal for a sweet bag o’ cash.

Griftlands is a ‘pirate sandbox’, says Klei

Downloading Griftlands