![]() Eventually.īefore I got accustomed to Graveyard Keeper‘s ways after clocking in day after day to prep resources to craft this, which leads to that, which lets me do the other thing, only to forget what I was doing in the first place, I found the purgatory-esque village mildly unsettling. The laughably tangled-up spiderweb of NPC quests that almost all need to be completed near-simultaneously will get resolved. Again, all is not what it seems in this world with a talking skull and donkey, regular witch burnings, and burgers made of sliced-off cadaver flesh. The lack of clear in-game answers for basic gameplay elements, mixed with the morbid subject matter and dark humor in the dialogue, leads to this semi-offputting yet strangely compelling vibe. You’re also going to wonder what’s up with the “blue points” and how to reliably earn more of them to flesh out your tech trees, among a hundred other granular searches. For new players, the weekly schedule is the first of many, many encounters with the aforementioned wiki, as much of Graveyard Keeper is left up to you to figure out. Your in-game clock is based on the seven deadly sins, and it uses astrological symbols, with each one corresponding to a special roaming NPC who will appear on that day and that day only. Instead of following an intuitive seasonal calendar, you - a present-day dude who’s stranded in a mystical medieval-village fever dream - will rely on a six-day cycle. The main story path revolves around six characters, all of which have their own day of the week. ![]() There is a surprisingly twisted (and quirky!) story to slooowly uncover that truly goes places you wouldn’t expect, doubly so with the lore-expanding Stranger Sins and Game of Crone DLC that fill in some gaps that maybe shouldn’t have been there in the first place. Also, you carve up corpses, supply a snack stand for witch-burning audiences, and run a sketchy for-profit church. Sure, there’s a farm, and fishing, and a bit of sword-swinging combat in a cordoned-off dungeon, but you aren’t out to whoo any of the locals with their favorite gifts each week, and the story is more expansive, and far more out-there. This is more of an RPG in terms of convoluted technology trees and XP to painstakingly earn. Graveyard Keeper has and will continue to be likened to Stardew Valley, but it’s such a different experience, even if there is clear conceptual and mechanical overlap. There’s also a lot to dislike, depending on your tastes, your willingness to always play with a wiki by your side, and your tolerance for, let’s be real, blatant padding. If you’re okay with that - if you can stick with a multi-month game that’s meant to be chipped away at, not brute-forced - there’s a lot to like about it. ![]() This is a crafting game through and through, one that’s full of boring-yet-relaxing busywork every conceivable step of the way. Graveyard Keeper turned three years old this month, and coincidentally, I’ve been playing an unholy amount of it lately. Now I can confidently, satisfyingly delete the game from my PS4 and never look back - unless they rope me in with another story-based expansion, which I could absolutely be convinced to play. I’ve passed the “everything that counts” progression threshold in Graveyard Keeper, and I even caught 200 fish for a silly trophy. I’ve spent an unreasonable amount of time unwinding with this game, and I don’t regret it
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