Graveyard Keeper Review

Graveyard Keeper is developed by Lazy Bear Games and published by tinyBuild.

This game is a gem. Your character starts by getting hit by a vehicle and wakes to find a creepy red eyed man. He proceeds to inform you of your new status as a graveyard keeper. Thus the tutorial begins.

I have played over 50 hours, and have yet to be bored. There is always something to be done, whether it is to prep for making items the next day or clearing out space to beautify your graveyard. From cooking to harvesting (crops or organs), the game has so much to offer. While writing this review, I had started the game again to grab pictures. I ended up playing several hours completely immersed in the game.

Once you have finished your first few days, and met the majority of the villagers, you’ll soon be sorting out your place. You can customize where work stations are placed around your house and where you bury the corpses when the lovely donkey delivers them. One of the first tasks is to beautify the graveyard so the church can be opened. It is my recommendation this is placed high on your priorities. The church opens up so much for you to advance in, not only in the skill tree, but as well as the story line. With a robust amount of characters to meet and different parts of the map to unlock, you will always be doing something. Mining, farming, cooking, caring for the dead, and managing the graveyard should keep anyone busy.

Graveyard Keeper has an interesting level up system. You earn points for doing actions. The points represent different aspects: red for physical, green for nature, and blue for spiritual. As such, different actions net you different points and different amounts of points.

One issue I have come upon is the difficulty in obtaining blue skill points. It was only when I combined paper with the study that everything clicked into place. When you view an item, at the start it will state the study has not been completed. Placing the item in the study will show that you have the faith points but not the science points. Unfortunately, this was not explained clearly on how to obtain the science points. Once I found out it was from paper, getting blue points was a breeze.

Listening to the music is almost hypnotizing. I have lost myself completely to the game, feeling so immersed the crickets outside seemed to have been part of the game. I’m amazed at how well it is done. I can say the music has a very natural feeling.

From light and whimsical to deep and gruff, all characters have different tones, almost musical in nature, when spoken to.

As seems the trend, this game is done in simplified graphics, as seen in Stardew Valley. This is in no way a negative. I feel this is a great fit for Graveyard Keeper. Simple and neat.

I have enjoyed Graveyard Keeper immensely. From the music to the story, it is an excellent fit. There is always something to do and discover.

At this time, there is a Live Streaming button that shows you Mixer and Twitch. Clicking on Mixer gives you a code to link Graveyard Keeper and Mixer together, but as of yet, Twitch streaming is still greyed out. There has been no updates from the developer thus far.