Here’s the first of those quick-fire new game reviews I promised to keep doing as and when they came up, after my long-running Weekly Spotlight features came to a natural conclusion last month, and I can’t think of anything better to begin with… As much as Stardew Valley is one of my favourite games ever, there’s no denying it lacked dead bodies, which is why I was such a big fan of the original Graveyard Keeper as well! Pretty sure it was a day one purchase on PlayStation 4 when it came out in 2018, and this sequel was no different. Well, except I jumped ship to Xbox this time, but I think it’s available everywhere. The first game took the now-familiar farming and life-sim formula and gave it a suitably macabre twist, replacing crops and community projects with autopsies, donkeys delivering the dead, corpse management and an endless stream of morally questionable decisions.
Graveyard Keeper 2 takes that same idea but goes way further, once again putting you in charge of a cemetery while gradually uncovering the supernatural (and generally madcap) mysteries surrounding its strange medieval world. This time around, there’s a much bigger story going on underneath all that digging, chopping, crafting and burying, with new locations to discover, stuff to unlock and expand upon, characters to meet, zombie armies to manage, more quests and side quests than you think you’ll ever be able to keep track of, even more systems on systems on systems, and plenty of dark humour along the way… And you’ll want a bit of that to keep a smile on your face when one of your regular jobs involves deciding which bits of a corpse are worth keeping!
For all the additional complexity, it’s definitely more accessible than the first game was, and does an amazing job at keeping everything manageable, as overwhelming as it can still seem at times over the first couple of hours. Nothing too troublesome for too long though, and on the whole, the various systems here are far more streamlined once you get going, and while in reality there’s probably even more busywork going on, it’s far more varied, deliberate and purposeful, and also seems less of a hindrance to progression than before. And that progression, in turn, is also easier to follow. Still loads of running back and forth though!
There’s eventually a bunch of automation available (involving your all-new undead workforce!) to reduce or remove repetitive tasks, which frees up your attention for exploration of what’s now a pretty big area, crammed with even more people to engage with and things to do, including a whole town-building and defending thing adding a whole other layer on top. Conveniences aside though, you’ve still got an awful lot to get your head around, from gathering resources and crafting to research and tech-trees, farming, gardening, fishing, building, repairing, trading, all kinds of managing and, of course, preparing bodies and improving your graveyard, but it all comes together in a way that quickly makes the constant stream of jobs a real joy and a hell of a time-sink!
Graveyard Keeper 2 sticks with the detailed and very modern pixel-art style of the original, although everything is noticeably more detailed this time around, and I reckon noticeably more Stardew Valley too. There’s loads going on in the environments, from the lively taverns, misty woodlands and dimly lit graveyards to the even darker areas you’ll soon find yourself exploring, and it gives the world a very distinct atmosphere without losing the offbeat sense of humour that runs through the game. The soundtrack fits well too, switching between suitably melancholy melodies and more whimsical village themes, while the sound effects can make even the most mundane jobs grossly entertaining, which also goes for the thoughtfully voiced characters you come across. Almost forgot, some nicely drawn and fully-voiced static cutscenes too, fleshing out Keeper’s story, how he ended up chained-up in a medieval dungeon on the way home from his modern-day job in the first place, and then the zombie apocalypse that followed, which you’re now cleaning-up after!
As previously alluded to – and just like its predecessor – Graveyard Keeper 2 is very good at convincing you that you’ll just get one more job done before calling it a day, only for that job to lead to three more. The well-trodden but always highly addictive farming and management-game loop is still very much at the heart of it, albeit in very much its own sinister fashion, but this sequel builds on the original rather than simply giving you more of more of the same (and yes, that’s what I meant to write). A good few hours in, I’m nowhere near uncovering everything it has to offer, but so far it’s proving to be exactly the follow-up I was hoping for, and giving me even more reasons to spend my evenings managing dead bodies instead of growing turnips!
Good game, good game. And probably the first mover and shaker in the disturbingly fast approaching Game of the Year consideration since my Halfway Hotlist countdown back at the end of June! While I’m here, I’ll take the opportunity to quickly plug another top ten countdown feature from last Wednesday, where I finally got around to my Top Ten Favourite ZX Spectrum Arcade Conversions! Took some serious deliberation too – my entire teenage years are wrapped up in these! Which reminds me, in case you also missed this one, do check out Retro Rewind: September 1986 in Computer & Video Games, where we head back exactly forty years and flick through everything in the original magazine together. And there’ll be another of those shortly when October 1986 rolls around. Hopefully see you then!
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