Graveyard Keeper 2 Review: Dark Humor | The Gamerheads Podcast

Platform reviewed: PC (Steam)

Also on: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2

Price: $24.99 USD

I didn’t play Graveyard Keeper, but I heard good things about it. I love farm sim games, so why wouldn’t I love Graveyard Keeper? I wasn’t sure if I needed to play the previous game before jumping into Graveyard Keeper 2, but I found that I enjoyed the game even without playing the first entry. I also learned that I tend to focus on unlocking new abilities rather than playing through the story…not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

Graveyard Keeper 2 opens with my character locked in a dungeon. I escape with the help of a talking skull. One of the things I love about this game is that it’s fully voice acted, and the voice acting is really good. Soon, I realize that the entire castle that I escape from is overrun by zombies. I find refuge in a town and promise to bring happiness to the people by…well, by providing the comfort of knowing that they will be buried with respect.

The graveyard is a mess, so I need to clean it up. I start to unlock new tools and new skills. There’s a skill tree showing me what I need to do to unlock new talents. And there are several different categories: farming, building, smithing, and anatomy, just to name a few. I need technology points to unlock new talents. So cutting down trees, burying bodies, building things, and crafting things all earn me points. What I found is that I wanted to just focus on unlocking these skills rather than playing through the game. Graveyard Keeper 2 knows that this is a temptation and locks certain talents behind story beats in the game. Smart move.

I also learn anatomy by dissecting bodies. Doing so earns insanity. This is displayed as a purple bar at the end of my energy bar. Like other farming games, I expend energy by doing different tasks, and I need to eat or sleep to regain those points. The insanity bar cuts into that. There are two ways to get rid of the purple stuff. One is by working to exhaustion and sleeping. Upon waking, the purple bar is gone. The other way, my favored way, is by drinking.

The people of the town want me to do different tasks for them, thus moving the story forward. Honestly, I didn’t want to do any tasks. I just wanted to focus on cleaning up the graveyard, building new furniture, and farming. But as I said, there are talents locked behind completing these tasks, so I complete them. The characters in the town are interesting and a bit quirky. The game’s focus is rebuilding their town, and the more I do, the more I rebuild their lives.

Zombies are a big factor in the game. Sure, I have to fight off swarms of zombies, but after a while, I can actually have zombies work for me. This makes the farming and crafting much more manageable.

There’s also a mystery behind the game. My character is not from this world or time, and there are moments in the narrative that reflect this. For players who want a more narrative approach, there is definitely a lot here, but for me, I’d rather play farming sims by focusing on my homestead and taking my time.

My only criticism is that the game doesn’t allow me to move objects once they are placed. I need to destroy them and rebuild them. It’s not a terrible thing, but it would have been easier to just pick up an object and move it to where I would rather have placed it.

Final Grade: A-

If you are a fan of farming sims, Graveyard Keeper 2 will definitely scratch that itch. But there’s a lot more narrative to the game than I expected. That’s not a bad thing, but I tend to play these games at a slower pace. Graveyard Keeper 2 does allow for this, but at times, it forces me to play through the story to unlock new talents. The dark humor and quirky characters kept me interested in the story, even when I just wanted to focus on my homestead instead.

Review code provided by tinyBuild Games