Buy Graveyard Shift: A Sage's Last Stand PC key

Graveyard Shift: A Sage's Last Stand is a dark pixel-art roguelike deckbuilder. You play Aldric, Sage of the Veil, who has been hiding from his past in a mortician's job. After the Veil tears and the dead stop staying dead, you must survive 22 nights across four weeks of escalating horrors. The dead on your table become the cards in your deck, which you can forge toward their final Ascended forms as you uncover what waits behind the Veil.

Make choices at the morgue

Each corpse gives you a choice. You can bury up to two cards permanently, or embalm a body to reveal five cards from one family, keep one preserved at rank 1, and heal as the body leaves. Dissection yields four Veil cards and one Mystery. Full Release severs a soul and opens a pack of five cards, from which you keep two; a Friend or Legendary may answer, but the Veil remembers each door you open.

Some corpses are possessed. Defeat what is inside and a Legendary soul may fight beside you for the rest of the run; lose and it joins that night's wave. A rare Generous Soul gives you ten cards and lets you keep four. A rarer Gambler's Soul deals ten face-down and lets you flip three, with whatever you find as the result. You can reject any card you did not ask for, but the gravedigger's price rises with every refusal.

Build your deck

The game has 158 handcrafted cards across six families, with 67 named combos:

• Vengeance: direct, forceful attacks.
• Chaos: dice, gambits and unpredictable effects.
• Wisdom: patient engines built to outlast the night.
• Plague: effects that let rot kill for you.
• Veil: forbidden power with a cost.
• Mystery: effects hidden until you play the card.

Chain cards to trigger named combos, which appear on screen with a score multiplier that rewards style as well as survival. Cards progress along a six-star rank track of authored upgrades that can change their numbers, cost and eventually their entire effect. You can inspect a card's full upgrade path before committing by right-clicking it wherever it is offered.

Legendary companions can become Ascended when raised to the top rank, gaining silver-electric forms and evolved signature abilities. Skyrend's pillars fall from the sky and cannot be missed or blocked. Grimm's every strike carries the rot his prey is already dying from. The Wound Remembers makes a dying body's bleeding crawl into whatever rises next, dealing a blow of its own.

Survive the nights

Poison, Bleed and Burn damage enemies over time. Virulence intensifies the afflictions already on a body, while Volatile Fuel adds to what is still burning. Enemy marks show which afflictions are killing them, and the largest horrors give slow-building effects more time to work.

Under the Blood Moon, enemies attack in packs. Front-liners can be protected by support lines of healers and casters, who heal them or put poison into your future hand. You can target the healer first, strike across the whole line or try to kill the front-liner before healing overtakes your damage; cards that hit every enemy become a key part of the plan.

The Veil is the game's widest card family and includes most Legendary companions, as well as cards for drawing, damage and control. Full Release is the quickest way to access it, but releasing too many souls in succession brings a debt due during the run: the next creature through the tear arrives twice as strong.

Face the bosses

Each week ends with a boss that changes the rules. The Coroner mirrors your attacks and, when enraged, begins stealing cards from your deck. The Quarry King covers himself in fresh stone each turn until his blows crush through Block. The Veil Tyrant cannot die until he unfolds, spreads wings that blot out the candlelight and turns his breath to fire.

The fourth week brings a different threat. The month ends under either the Blood Moon or the Wild Hunt, each with its own creatures, gate and master, followed by something that was never meant to have a name. More than 100 kinds of dead, elite waves and omens that alter the rules after dark stand between you and dawn. Survive the month to discover what the Veil has hidden.

Unlock lasting power

Defeating a Master earns a Mark, which you can spend on medallions in a permanent talent tree. Its three paths offer lasting powers, from thicker skin to the Midnight Forge, and each ends in a capstone that changes how future runs begin. The Founder's Reliquary lets you choose a Legendary to include in your starting deck permanently.

Deeper in the tree, the Ledger lets you buy permanent boons with what you have banked, or sign debts against yourself. Debts can hide enemy intents, prevent all healing for a run, or stop your draw pile from refilling. Each one multiplies your score and payout; taking every debt creates a ×35 challenge. The Ash Page leaderboard records the debts you signed.

Track your shifts

The title screen has three leaderboards: The Clean Month records your best campaign; The Weekly ranks players on the same weekly contract and seed, with a new board every Monday; and The Ash Page tracks those same runs with signed debts and their multiplier. The Ash Page stays locked until you find the Ledger. Selecting a name shows that player's deck, most-cast cards, fight, purse, elapsed time and any Morgue upgrades, talents or terms they used.

Each Monday's Weekly contract sets one debt carried throughout the month, two boons lent by the house and one seed shared by every player. It covers all 22 nights and uses the house profile, with no Morgue or talents and no Ledger choices beyond the contract; every card is in the pool. You can play it repeatedly during the week, and your best score is posted if the run finishes before Monday's bell. An unfinished run expires without posting, and Weekly play does not change your campaign records.

Manage the morgue

Between nights, you can upgrade the morgue through four tiers of permanent tools that carry across runs. The final tier remains locked until you clear the third week. The Collection tracks every card, all 67 combos, 18 lore notes, 30 trophies and your highest-scoring shifts.