Grail
In the codexIndieStrategy

Grail

In this deckbuilder your deck plays automatically. Upgrade, enchant and stickerize your cards to create clever cascading effects that defeat monsters and other players. Can you reach the Grail?

DEV: Sokpop CollectivePUB: Sokpop CollectiveAppID 3597200

Is Grail still being updated? — the short answer, with the evidence.

95.1
Excellent

Elixir Rating

87.1% of 434 Steam reviews are positive, which after adjusting for sample size gives a reception score of 83.6. The developers have shipped 6 substantial updates in the past six months, adding 11.5.

reception 83.6·support +11.5·Excellent

Computed from Steam’s own review tally and observable developer activity — never from anyone’s opinion of the game. How this is calculated

Should you look into this?

From Steam's own record

Current price

$8.99$9.99−10%

Development

Insufficient evidence

Last heard from developers

yesterday

Historical posting rhythm

every ~4 days

Substantial updates (6 mo)

6

Current silence

cannot be judged

Our news coverage needs a fresh check; missing posts are not evidence that development has stopped. 6 substantial updates recorded in the past six months, 3 classified as major. It is currently 10% below its usual price.

Last successful news check: Oct 7, 2026, 2:03 PM UTC. This is when we checked Steam, separate from when the developer last posted. A fresh check is needed before judging current activity.

Distilled by the oracle

Our coverage

1 dispatch written from this game’s announcements

releaseSep 3, 2026

Grail v1.0.0 Arrives Early to Catch Bugs Before Official Launch

Grail's 1.0.0 update is live now, published August 28, 2026 — a deliberate soft landing before the game's official release the following Tuesday. Author Tio describes the intention plainly: get a build into players' hands early enough to catch major bugs before the real launch. Smaller fixes will continue in the interim.

The free demo remains playable until full release, at which point it will be removed. Save data from the demo should carry over to the full game.

What changed

New content

  • The cardopedia now displays traits
  • Tutorial has been fully remade
  • New mechanic: over-heal
  • Three new cards: Mabel's Halter Weight and Carrot Bites, and Zappy's Steam Pack
  • Seven new traits: Insulated, Antifragile, Forewarned, Pyrrhic, Flammable, Galvanic, and Destructive

Quality of life

  • A supplemental cloud saving system now runs alongside Steam's own cloud saves
  • Speeding up battles now triggers brief slow-motion on meaningful hits
  • White flashes removed from ending cutscenes when Reduce Effects is enabled

Bug fixes

  • The Grail card can no longer be destroyed by other cards or effects
  • Fixed several event and trait misfires, including the Loyal trait damage/shield cap, Blazing applying to rainbow stickered cards, and the global leaderboard failing to update at Deity rank run endings

Deity rank scoring

  • Points awarded for wins now scale downward as a player's Deity rank score rises, interpolating between +20/+30 (at 0 points) and +5/+7 (at 1500+ points) for normal and perfect wins respectively

For players approaching the top of Deity rank, that scoring compression is the most structurally significant change — progress at the summit will slow considerably.

Two years of development

■ substantial ■ routine

Nov2025FebMayAugNov2026FebMayAug

29 announcements · 6 substantial · 17 months with nothing

Recent Transmissions

30 entries in codex

Community AnnouncementsOct 6, 2026
v1.2.1 small patch

Fixes- Fixed 2 hard crashes- Fixed upgraded 'Ruby' not working as expected- Fixed a bug where 'Rock' gets energized like 'Bomb'- Fixed 'Grapple claw' not working as expected- Fixed 'Arm wrestle' enchants not working as expected- Fixed 'Pill…

Community AnnouncementsOct 2, 2026
macos hotfix

Fixed some crashes on macos

Community AnnouncementsOct 1, 2026
v1.2 hotfix

Due to the increase in players the rank decay code on the server ran too many times and this caused various issues.We've fixed the problem now and manually set the ranks to what they should have been set to.Some people have gotten additiona…

Community AnnouncementsSep 30, 2026
October update (v1.2.0)! & Grail OST available

Note: Some changes and new content won't kick in until October 1st.Hello everyone!First off, Jaco's soundtrack for Grail is now available as DLC!The October update is a bit early so I could add the cosmetics for the October reward track. Th…

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Community AnnouncementsSep 10, 2026
v1.1.1 Hotfix

v1.1.1 changelogFixes- Fixed not being able to switch between fullscreen and windowed mode with alt+enter anymore- Fixed resolution option not getting set back to 'display' when changing windowed mode to fullscreen- Fixed being able to obta…

Community AnnouncementsSep 9, 2026
v1.1.0 - Exploit fix, balancing

Hey everyone,This patch is mostly here to fix an exploit that someone reported. I felt it was necessary to fix it as soon as possible even though I believe not many people found out how it worked.All ghosts have been cleared to avoid being …

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Community AnnouncementsSep 4, 2026
v1.0.3 - Faster rank climbing

There was a crash in the build, so I disabled it and immediately uploaded a fix. If you got the crash, please update the game! Hey everyone, the first few days of the release have passed am we're so happy that people enjoy the game!Over 10.…

Community AnnouncementsSep 2, 2026
v1.0.2 - cheaper character unlocks!

Hey everyone, thank you all for the great feedback and reviews. I'm so happy that the game is released and it's really heart-warming to see how much fun people are having with the game :)Here is a small update for the game with some fixes.H…

Community AnnouncementsSep 1, 2026
Grail is out now!!!

It's finally time!Grail, our 112th game and my biggest game ever is out now!!I want to thank everyone for your support and especially for all the feedback. It has been very valuable and helpful in knowing what features to add, which bugs to…

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Community AnnouncementsAug 28, 2026
v1.0.0 update

Hi everyone!Here is already the 1.0 update so we can make sure there are no major game breaking bugs before the official release next week!I'll continue working on fixing smaller bugs in the meantime.Demo version will be removed on full rel…

Read our dispatch on this

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Community AnnouncementsAug 27, 2026
Maintenance tomorrow: servers will be down

We have scheduled maintenance tomorrow at 08:00–09:00 UTC on 28 August. Be sure to finish your run before that time to not lose progress!

Community AnnouncementsAug 15, 2026
v0.39.1 freeze/lag hotfix

Fixed severe/lag freezing that happened during some transitions.Fixed the bug that ultimately caused the lag where in the end screen where you see which cards you have unlocked it would show a nearly endless series of the same card.Fixed a …

Community AnnouncementsAug 14, 2026
v0.39.1 hotfix

QoL- Removed from visual effects in the final boss cutscenes when having "reduced effects" enabled in settingsFixes- Fixed 'Family portrait' giving a lot of energy- Fixed 'Marron glace' having hidden shield values- Fixed a rare crash during…

Community AnnouncementsAug 13, 2026
v0.39 - Final boss and iconic cards

Hello everyone!This will likely be the last (big) update before the official release of the game September 1st! I'm trying to get as many things in the game before the release, but there is little time left aahhh!! Luckily I have a lot of t…

Rock, Paper, ShotgunJul 14, 2026
Deckbuilder Grail quells the fear in my heart of playing the wrong card by pinning all of the strategy on the deckbuilding

There is an anxiety to deckbuilders that I don't find with many other games, in that I get incredibly stressed about which cards I should play. I feel this way about card games in real life too, for reasons I truly cannot understand. It's j…

Community AnnouncementsJul 9, 2026
Grail is releasing September 1st!

Hey everyone!Grail is releasing September 1st!You can watch the new release date announcement trailer here:What you can expectThe full game will have Mabel and Zappy as additional playable characters. You will need to unlock them with troph…

Community AnnouncementsJul 9, 2026
v0.38.1 (hotfix)

v0.38.1 changelogFixes- Fixed 'Arboris oil' not burning anymore when ripped up- Fixed a hard crash when checking if a card crits- Fixed 'Woods' still spawning on the first day- Fixed a rare hard crash when clicking on cards- Fixed Farmer's …

Community AnnouncementsJul 8, 2026
v0.38 - new locations (+many other changes)

Hey everyone!We're moving fast towards the full release (some information about that soon!) and here is one of the last big updates before that.Some cards/strategies that were very dominant (cheese cards for example) have been nerfed and th…

Community AnnouncementsJun 26, 2026
v0.37.1 (hotfix)

!!! There was a crash and a bug with energizing taking additional energy !!!This is fixed, so please update the game if you can!Full changelog v0.37.1QoL- Added a "don't show this again" option for the feedback promptFixes- Fixed battle ski…

Community AnnouncementsJun 25, 2026
v0.37.0

-Battle skip-Monster/enemy battles can now be "skipped". It is not instantly skipped due to some technical limitations, but it's still quite fast.-Legacy store-When getting a duplicate cosmetic you now get 'trophy dust' instead of normal tr…

Community AnnouncementsJun 16, 2026
v0.36.1 hotfix

QoL- The new day messages (+health, +coins) now go away faster if you click the screenFixes- Fixed 'Windmill' not energizing- Fixed 'Windmill' shuffle not triggering shuffling sickness- Fixed 'Family recipe' removing enchantment from chosen…

Community AnnouncementsJun 16, 2026
Steam Next Fest and a thank you!

Hello everyone!The demo is now 2 months old, and since then 16,000+ people have played it. It’s absolutely wild to us that many of you have already put hundreds of hours into our weird little autobattler deckbuilder!! I love working on this…

Community AnnouncementsJun 12, 2026
v0.36

-Slight poison change-Poison remains the weakest and least played archetype, that's why I've decided to make a small change to poison!Poison values have been doubled across the board and when you shuffle poison now loses half its stack on t…

Community AnnouncementsMay 22, 2026
v0.35.1 hotfix

Fixes- Fixed some missing characters in Chinese fonts- Fixed No-Play, Sun and Moon stickers not working as expected- Fixed a bug when picking the tinker at the workshop events when you don't have enough resource cards- Fixed being able to p…

Community AnnouncementsMay 21, 2026
v0.35 - Wizarding tower

This update mostly introduces a new location event, the Wizarding Tower. There is a bunch of new content, fixes and balancing and playtesters can now test Zappy!New- New shock enchant- New Zappy card 'Gimbal'- New Zappy card 'Peanut'- New Z…

Community AnnouncementsMay 8, 2026
v0.34 - Leaderboard/matchmaking changes!

!!! We're updating the server, so it will be down for a few minutes !!!Leaderboard has changed! It is no longer sorted on winrate, but rather uses a point system at the highest rank. You now also see your ranking position even if you're not…

Community AnnouncementsApr 29, 2026
v.0.33 - Poison change!

Poison now deals double damage to shield instead of ignoring shield. This is because poison ignoring shield hard counters shield and makes shield buildsvery dependant on RNG matchups with opponents. It also cause situations for poison build…

Community AnnouncementsApr 24, 2026
v0.32.0 - Shuffling sickness, Moon king

New mechanic: shuffling sickness! After shuffling your deck you will skip another turn. It doesn't happen at the start of battle. You also don't gain energy during shuffling sickness. We added this because small decks are very strong right …

Community AnnouncementsApr 17, 2026
Update v0.31.0

Hey everyone!I’m incredibly excited to celebrate the launch of the demo. In just 2 days, over 5,000 players have already tried the game! It even made it into the trending free games list! Seeing so many of you playing for hours, enjoying th…

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Community AnnouncementsApr 15, 2026
The demo for Grail is out now!

Hello everyone!We've just released the demo for our new game, Grail! It's a fantasy deckbuilder where your deck fights for you!Travel through the woods, upgrade your deck, find synergies and sharpen your strategy. Take on foes in pitched ca…

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