In the world of sandbox life sim games, nothing comes close to the morbid charm of the Graveyard Keeper franchise. With Graveyard Keeper 2, the series doubles down on its delightfully macabre energy, delivering an even more unhinged story of a cemetery manager waltzing through a town ravaged by a zombie apocalypse.
The sequel follows the same formula – bringing satirical and deadpan humor to a fantastical world of fairies, zombies, plague doctors, and more.
Apart from the theme, Graveyard Keeper 2 features a promising gameplay loop with a bit of everything – RPG mechanics, tower defense, farming, automation, building, and more.
As someone who was aware of the first Graveyard Keeper but never played it, I went into the sequel with a relatively fresh perspective. That gave me a chance to experience Graveyard Keeper 2 on its own merits, without constantly comparing it to the original.
You’ll find humor in every corner in Graveyard Keeper 2
Right from the start, Graveyard Keeper 2 makes it clear that it doesn’t take itself particularly seriously. The game wastes little time introducing its playful tone through its storytelling, characters, and bizarre situations.
Each NPC is well-written, perfectly complementing the main character throughout. Almost every single line of dialogue has a punchline, mostly hitting the spot.
The contrast between the dark atmosphere and the lighthearted quips (read: unhinged jokes) is the soul of Graveyard Keeper 2. You’re managing corpses, dealing with zombies, and exploring a world dealing with the aftermath of a plague, yet the game somehow makes all of this feel oddly charming.
Diving into the core gameplay loop
Simulators always need a satisfying gameplay loop, and this cemetery sim delivers on it tenfold. There is always another task waiting to be completed, another resource to gather, another building to construct, or another area to investigate.
What makes the loop particularly effective is how interconnected everything feels. Unlocking one area of the map touches or improves upon almost everything else, making you want to enter a discovery phase at every step.
Graveyard Keeper 2 seamlessly weaves mystery into its progression system, showcasing a massive tech tree, perks, and a long questline, keeping engagement at its maximum. It always feels like you have done so much, like managing your graveyard, performing sermons, crafting in your yard, finishing quests, working at your vineyard — and yet there’s always more to uncover.
The non-linear progression system, combined with its depth of content, encourages you to explore and discover at your own pace. However, it could also be a double-edged sword, as its depth may be too much for someone not accustomed to it, especially given that the game needs some improvement in its intuitiveness, which will be discussed later.
With its web of interconnected systems, Graveyard Keeper 2 can quickly feel overwhelming in a single sitting. Manually sifting through its massive tech tree just to pinpoint which unlocks advance your immediate objective is a time-consuming process—even for the most detail-oriented players.
Graveyard Keeper 2 lacks key quality-of-life features
With all the great things Graveyard Keeper 2 has to offer, I noticed that there are some annoying systems and mechanics in place. One of the most frustrating parts of the game is trying to make money. The story being gated by currency is fine, but when the traders get so picky with what they buy from you, it feels like an annoying chore you can never finish.
You spend all this time tending to your farm, gathering and processing materials, working hard as the best mortician in town, only to find that most of these items have no way of being sold to a trader.
Other mechanics, like completing work orders and performing sermons using high-quality money prayers,do help you make more money, but not nearly enough to meet your needs, restricting your freedom in the process.
Apart from the difficulty of selling, it is also hard to determine which items a trader will buy, forcing you to use a mundane trial-and-error approach to figure out what these traders really want.
I also felt that the tech tree and blueprint system is confusing and unintuitive. There are hundreds of unlockable crafts through the tech tree, but it isn’t always clear where these buildings become available for crafting.
For instance, you can unlock an upgrade for the brewery, waste some time looking, and find out that the craft unlocks after progressing through this part of the quest or unlocking a new area.
There are a few more hiccups, but nothing as major as these two. The content depth does compensate for these weaknesses, but completely subjective to each player’s patience level.
Final verdict: Is Graveyard Keeper 2 worth it?
In all, Graveyard Keeper 2 is an incredibly ambitious cemetery sim that somehow manages to make running a graveyard, farming crops, dealing with zombies, and figuring out ridiculous ways like selling burial certificates to make money feel oddly cozy.
Its humor, massive progression system, and variety of activities create an addictive gameplay loop that can easily keep you invested for dozens of hours.
