Bought this game expecting something along the lines of RuneFactory or Stardew Valley, except instead of a farm it is a graveyard. What I was not really expecting is that for a game about graveyards, you still have to do an awful lot of farming. In fact, I'd say the graveyard is probably the worst part of the game.

This genre of game has a pretty set in stone gameplay loop. There should should be a set of repeated tasks the player is intended to perform, for instance in Stardew Valley its tending to your farm. These tasks should be time gated, and while you're waiting the player is encouraged to go out and explore the rest of the game world, talking to npcs fighting in dungeons shopping etc.

But in Graveyard Keeper that pattern is broken and not in a good way. The titular Graveyard requires little to no actual upkeep. You're incentivized by the games systems to only ever build the highest quality graves. Once you set it up its more or less good to go indefinitely. This wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if it weren't for this game's horrific and nightmarish crafting system.

Graves give better ratings for higher quality components used to decorate them. The grind is unavoidable as the sheer number of ingredients you will require to properly outfit your graves is very high. But the worst part is just figuring out what exactly you need. The convoluted and eccentric tech tree is filled with needlessly complex crafting sequences that employ far too many similar but not interchangeable crafting work benches that I found myself needing to put together a spreadsheet just to remember what the hell I'm even trying to do and make. Getting very close to completing a recipe only to realize the last ingredient you need is going to require yet another crafting station along with several more in-game days of grinding feels deflating and demoralizing.

What was quite funny to me is how the devs seem to have forgotten what game they were making too, as pretty much as soon as you've started to get the hang of organs and grave adornments, the confused developers are constantly throwing new systems at you. There are sorcery mechanics, you become a church leader, there's a tavern you can manage, and that's just scratching the surface. Most of these systems don't interact with one another in any meaningful way, feel very disjointed and I can't help but think that whoever is in charge of the creative direction of this game is regretting making a game about graveyards and desperately wants to branch out.

All of that said there are definitely things I did like. The communist donkey is a standout memorable character that gave me a good chuckle in just about all of his dialogue sequences. The rest of the characters range between interesting and not super memorable. The colourful and peaceful setting of the game that hides the more sinister undertones is thematically appealing. The way the game incorporates some genuinely dark and gritty concepts and story archs without resorting to cheap gore effects and maintaining that pseudo-happy atmosphere is pretty impressive at times.

At the end of the day its a game about doing chores. But instead of feeling satisfying and accomplished, it just feels like a chore.

The game is very enjoyable, albeit a tad grindy. There's a lot of different things to do (open a tavern, enslave zombies, cure ghosts, help refugees, etc...) but almost everything gets thrown at you at the same time, so you'll have to juggle 3-4 different main quests and storylines simultaneously.

The game unfortunately has some game-breaking bugs: e.g. the donkey, who brings you corpses and therefore is a core part of the game, has the tendency to get stuck on the road and will stop delivering corpses due to a glitch. This issue has been known and shared on the discussion forum since 2019 and is still present today.

I still ''recommend'' the game because I still have a lot of fun with it despite the bugs and infodumping, but be ready for some frustration nontheless.

A nice vintage graphic and a lot of things to do and to learn.
... and all my free time is now gone playing like a teenager