Review: Graveyard Keeper

Hi guys,

Today I'm going to tell you about Graveyard Keeper, a nice simulation game I spent 60 hours on which will receive a new DLC in a few weeks!

I can't wait to get back to it.

Overview

In Graveyard Keeper, you play a character who is sent in the Middle Ages and who must somehow manage to return to the present time.

To succeed, you'll have to become friends with some wacky village characters like the astrologer, the inquisitor, and the merchant. They all have a series of quests that must complete and that quickly becomes complex enough.

The emphasis of the game is on gathering resources, unlocking technologies and crafting stuff. Think of a more complex, darker and more chaotic version of Stardew Valley …

Crafting stuff

You start your first quests with some resources and a few techs unlocked from a massive technology tree.

Soon, you'll need to clean your land to build different crafting structures. There are about thirty different structures and a large number of resources, and some production structures can only be built in specific areas of the game.

It quickly becomes confusing!

Something really good is that crafting structures use resources from your storage chests rather than into your character's inventory when the required resources are there.

And you can more or less build as many chests as you want. This will quickly become necessary later in the game when you become completely cluttered with resources.

Farming

There are about twenty different vegetables that you can plant and harvest, but farming is simplified compared to Stardew Valley. It has much lower importance.

And forget the cows and chickens. You can't have animals here.

You can, however, cook your vegetables (very useful for recovering life and energy) and, later in the game, you can trade with the merchant who will give you a ton of gold in exchange for your veggie boxes.

This aspect of the game is very profitable and quite fun, especially since it's possible to completely automate your production with zombies.

I will give details on the automation system a bit later.

Diggin’ the graves

In the beginning, your graveyard is a pile of dirt stuck under dead trees.

You'll hate to make graveyards great again.

A great graveyard will earn you the graces of the Episcop (another character with a series of quests), which will eventually give you access to the church and appoint you a preacher.

Getting donations from sermons each week is one of the best ways to get a ton of gold in the game.

The development of the cemetery looks like this …

• Get a new corpse
• Embalm the corpse as best as possible using various techniques and potions produced with a complex alchemy system
• Get digging and add a crafted tombstone

As the game progresses, you'll refine your methods and replace old corpses and old tombstones with better versions.

These will give you a score, which is directly related to the donations received during sermons and to the completion of the bishop's quests.

Automation with zombies

I mentioned a little earlier the possibility of automating processes.

This is a feature that did not exist at the exit of the game but was added after many complaints from players who found the game too grindy and tedious.

Basically, you can transform corpses into zombies that can assist you in your tasks. These zombies are a blessing and can be placed just about anywhere!

They are most useful to automate the gathering of the hundreds (or thousands) of logs and rocks that you will need during the game.

But eventually, you can also use them to automate farming, crafting, hauling stuff from point A to point B and so on.

If you would like an overview of the automation possibilities, check out the guide I wrote about it

My opinion

The graphics of Graveyard Keeper is excellent, it's beautiful pixel art.

Animations are a bit robotic.

Even though there is not a lot of variety, the music is quite good and the main theme is very catchy.

Regarding the story, many players liked the humor but I found the texts a bit too simplistic. They seemed more of an excuse to advance the quests so personally, I did not pay much attention!