It’s Alive…It’s ALIIIVE!
I was late to the party when it came to playing the original Graveyard Keeper game. But what I ended up finding was a darker version of the Stardew Valley formula. Sure, you can farm but your job is literally to take care of the dead. Beyond that there was a pretty interesting story being told in Graveyard Keeper but the game itself was really bogged down by the million and 1 tasks that it asked players to do to complete a quest. Does the sequel do anything to resolve that error; kinda sorta.
In Graveyard Keeper 2 players will awaken chained up in a dungeon which players of the first game will remember is exactly how you met the first zombie you ran into; that’s probably important. But after your talking skull buddy fills you in that there is a whole zombie apocalypse that has happened and you may or may not have been the root cause of. Narratively speaking the Keeper, as he’s referred to here is trying to get his memories back. There are flashes of the first game that shows how he came to this world from our time in the present, his quest to open a portal to get back and more. But it isn’t long before players will be back to tending the graveyard and running back and forth doing quest after back-breaking quest.
MSRP: $24.99
Platforms: XBOX (reviewed), PlayStation, Switch, PC
Price I’d Pay: $24.99
One of the biggest improvements in Graveyard Keeper is the addition of the fully voiced characters. Don’t get me wrong, the original had some chuckles with the mumble voices, which the developers have added here for the purists among you. But you will miss out on a lot of the charm without the voice acting, I found myself laughing quite a bit at the dry wit that’s present in the game. Even though the stakes are higher in this game with the fate of the world hanging in the balance, there is a lot of humor to be found, some of which is 4th wall-breaking.
When it comes to gameplay GK2 has a lot of variety for players. In addition to the grave keeping duties players will complete there is also exploration, production, farming, combat, fishing and more. I’m not going to lie; it becomes overwhelming with the number of things and directions there are to go in during the game. Just as in the original as players perform tasks, they will earn colored tokens that they can use to unlock more things to build and research to further their progress. The other big addition to the game is the ability to resurrect the corpses as zombies whom players can put to work around their home and control in combat to push back their zombie brethren.
For the most part developer Lazy Bear Games has seemingly made Graveyard Keeper much more approachable with the inclusion of the voice acting and combat alas there is still some pain points though. Like most of these games there are many mechanics that are either not explained or poorly done. It doesn’t help matters the the UI can be vague at times but the greatest sin has to be the fact that you can only save when you sleep. So many cozy games have come out in this genre that allows players to save anywhere, its disheartening to see GK stick to the old traditions.
Despite the issues that I have with Graveyard Keeper 2, I enjoyed the game overall. Since the game has no real time limits on tasks players are free to go in any direction that they would want. There are quite a few quest lines to go through before all the tasks open up but once they do, players will have lots of variety in gameplay. I don’t think there is any patching for the vagueness of some instruction but I’d love to see something done to the UI. Either way though if you are a fan of cozy games and want to try something a little different, you should tray Grave Keeper.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.