Have you ever wondered what it would be like to join the elite few that work in a graveyard? I have a mortician in my wife’s side of the family, and I can assure you, it’s not nearly as interesting as you may think; it will result in your friends and family making jokes about you behind your back. If you don’t believe me and want to check out the profession from the comfort of your own home, you’re in luck because Graveyard Keeper seems to accurately portray the lifestyle, albeit with a few less than realistic changes.

The game begins with our unnamed protagonist, only referred to as the Graveyard Keeper, meeting his premature death while running an errand. He awakens in a foggy, dilapidated area greeted by a strange being who proclaims he is the new grave keeper. The stranger advises the player to find Gerry and mysteriously vanishes, leaving you to find your way around your new surroundings. Once locating the forever bouncing skull known as Gerry (who reminded me a lot of Birdy from Conker’s Bad Fur Day), you’ll begin a brief tutorial that shows you most of what you would want to know about being a mortician/grave keeper – including cutting bits off of the corpses and selling them to the townsfolk as hamburgers.

After completing the tutorial and meeting some of the townsfolk, you’ll be set off to freely explore the game world, completing quests or upgrading/maintaining your graveyard. The quests are of the standard variety, primarily requiring crafting, speaking with an NPC, or simply locating specific items within the environments. Early into the game there is a handy yellow arrow that points you in the direction of your active quest, but this seems to disappear early on. Most games utilize the early hours to allow you to build XP and get the mechanics down, whereas this will often stack more and more quests on your plate early into the game, as new objectives are added before even a few are completed.

While we’re on the topic of lacking direction, the game never comes out and tells you that you need to sleep to save. This resulted in me having to complete the opening hour or so multiple times prior to actually digging into the meat of the game. Sleeping not only saves your progress, but refills your character’s stamina, which is drained when you complete any action other than walking, talking, or breathing. Once you get into the actual grind of resource gathering, this hits even harder. While I know from experience that cutting down a tree is no easy chore, this isn’t real life, and having to sleep every five minutes makes getting buried alive sound more appealing. Between frequent naps, you will have to regularly check an area outside of the graveyard for dead bodies that will decompose at an alarming rate if left unchecked. Again, with no notice that the body is present coupled with your character’s speed of travel being that of a fast paced snail, this is about as much fun as taking a shovel to the face.

The crafting itself is a bit cumbersome, as the tiny icons that inform you of what resources are needed to craft something are hard to decipher. Due to this, I found myself just interacting with any item I could, just trying to progress and hoping I struck a winning combination. The game seems to forget its own rules at times, telling me that I am unable to cut down specific trees, stating I lack the resources when I had just cut down its twin brother two digital feet away. Adding to the frustration, you will have to maintain your tools that are needed to gather resources or they will break at regular intervals. With the initial crafting station only being available at your home in the middle of the graveyard, you’ll often have to turtle trot your way to and fro multiple times in short periods of time, as there is not an easy way to determine the overall durability or condition of your items.

It boasts some highly detailed visuals while retaining a true old school tone, with the low point being the text boxes which use a point size that is way too small, thus straining my eyes if played for long periods of time due to the lengthy conversations that occur regularly. One annoyance is the dense fog that comes and goes; while it is a nice touch, it makes navigating the world entirely too difficult, often putting Silent Hill to shame. I was grateful for the fact that the NPCs differ greatly from each other, which turned me off from similar games such as The Escapists. This made finding the right NPC to turn a quest in much easier after finding out who’s who. The controls and sound effects are passable, with the meandering pace being my biggest issue in this aspect.

If you’re looking for a building sim in line with A Kingdom for Keflings that your friends won’t make fun of you for playing, or simply enjoy the grinding aspect that these types of games offer, this would be a good title for you (editor’s note: reading this over, you may enjoy it if you like Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley as well). If you’re looking for something at a faster pace, I would leave Graveyard Keeper buried.

5 out of 10

Pros

• Detailed Visuals
• Varied NPCs

Cons

• Overly Grindy
• Lacks Direction
• Save Mechanic is a Nightmare
• Some Visual Elements are Entirely Too Small
• Character Walks at a Snail’s Pace

Graveyard Keeper was developed by Lazy Bear Games and published by tinyBuild Games. It launched on PC and X1 on August 15th, 2018 for $19.99. The game was provided to us for review on X1. If you’d like to see more of Graveyard Keeper, check out the official site.

 

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