Graveyard Keeper 2
Graveyard Keeper 2
Game
Game2018
Graveyard Keeper
Developer Lazy Bear Games
Graveyard Keeper is a 2018 graveyard-themed management simulation video game developed by independent Russian indie game studio Lazy Bear Games and published by tinyBuild. It follows an ordinary man who was transported to another world with a medieval-fantasy setting and assumes the task of tending for the village's graveyard while looking for a way back home. The game's alpha version was released for Windows in May… From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
623 reactions from 4 sources (Steam reviews, Bluesky, Mastodon, Lemmy) · newest Nov 5, 2026 · last updated Nov 5, 2026 · How this works
Audience score
64
Fresh
283 positive · 157 negative
95% range 60–69%
| Source | + | − | = |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam reviews | 283 | 157 | 0 |
| Bluesky * | 32 | 16 | 83 |
| Mastodon * | 4 | 1 | 24 |
| Lemmy * | 1 | 3 | 19 |
* shown, not counted in the score (label accuracy below our 85% bar or not yet audited).
Steam's own rating
Very Positive
20,707 of 25,129 reviews positive (all languages, per Valve)
What players are saying
64% recommend · 197 yes, 111 no
Counted from the reviewers’ own thumbs up/down on the 308 English Steam reviews we collected, not by the AI. Valve’s all-language rating: Very Positive (48,217 of 56,570 positive).
Players describe Graveyard Keeper as a grindy crafting game with complex nested dependencies. [1][2][3] Many note the game requires external wikis due to obscure mechanics and lack of tutorials. [4][5][6] Some players criticize the game for not respecting their time and for having a disappointing ending. [7][8][9]
Liked
Representative posts
- [7]
I basically beat this game out of hatred. It does not respect your time and the wiki is the only way to get most of the information you need to do anything. When I finally did beat the base game, you get a big 'haha look at all these things we teased but never delivered, good thing there will be DLCs' and the biggest twist is the DLCs DON"T EXPLORE THE TEASED THINGS. Amazing. Graveyard keeping is not what this game …
- [8]
Graveyard Keeper is Stardew Valley's depressing cousin. While Stardew keeps you busy with rewarding activities, this game feels like a full-time job. The grind is relentless and often feels pointless. Everything is locked behind complex technic trees that require "blue points" which are a nightmare to collect. You spend ages walking slowly across the map just to realize you forgot one iron ingot, forcing you to …
- [11]
121 hours later, I can finally say: Graveyard Keeper is one of the most chaotic and weirdly addictive games I’ve played in years 💀 At first it feels like: “haha funny graveyard game” Then suddenly you are: * managing zombie logistics * growing gold-quality hops * writing philosophical books * running an illegal burger operation * brewing wine in a church basement * injecting corpses with mysterious chemicals at 3AM …
- [2]
I extract meat from corpses and sell it to the local inn every day. Found the infinite money glitch! 🧑🥩→💵 The game has unique dark fantasy vibes, with themes like cannibalism, witch-hunting, and zombies. It features very in-depth tech trees and quest lines. The crafting mechanics are extremely complex, and the game is very grindy. This can be both a pro and a con, depending on your playstyle. A bit too grindy to …
- [1]
Basically a crafting game, if you're into that sort of thing. "You need this to make one of these then you need some of those to make one of these" kind of thing. First focus on upping the "quality" (points) of your graveyard, then your church, while meeting the townspeople and maintaining friendship by competing quests. This will get you the reputation and momentum you need. It took me some time but I really really …
Summarised from 34 of the 459 public posts collected about this game; every point cites the posts behind it ([n] opens the post) and the split is counted from the posts’ own ratings. Updated Oct 11, 2026. How summaries are made
RottenBot@rottenbot · automated account
64% of the 308 Steam reviewers we collected recommend Graveyard Keeper. The complaint that keeps coming up: excessive grind and time-wasting mechanics. Deal-breaker or nitpick?
Critics, per Wikipedia
Graveyard Keeper received "mixed or average" reviews according to review aggregator website Metacritic.
From the “Reception” section of Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Critic context only — not part of the audience score.
Reactions
60 of 623 · most liked firstCo-founder of Graveyard Keeper dev Lazy Bear Games regularly posts AI art & asks for help with AI gen code Going as far as feeding his own games art into the slop machine The game itself is from 2018 so it predates the stuff, but they announced a sequel & I expect it to be full of AI-gen slop
neutral · AI labelView post →I basically beat this game out of hatred. It does not respect your time and the wiki is the only way to get most of the information you need to do anything. When I finally did beat the base game, you get a big 'haha look at all these things we teased but never delivered, good thing there will be DLCs' and the biggest twist is the DLCs DON"T EXPLORE THE TEASED THINGS. Amazing. Graveyard keeping is not what this game is about sadly.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Graveyard Keeper is available for free on Steam right now. Link for convenience: https://store.steampowered.com/app/599140/Graveyard_Keeper/
neutral · AI labelView post →Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, is done in a way that completely stymies your progress. I understand the concept of building and upgrading and improving over time, but there's a limit to my patience, and this game adds tons of steps for the sake of just adding steps. There is no sense of accomplishment because the goal posts move every time. Oh, you want to create a new prayer? Well first you need notes, and for that you need GOOD paper and ink, and for that you need this perk, and for that…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Graveyard Keeper very recently listed their first game for free on Steam to generate hype/attention for the brand as they announced their sequel - even though the DLC for Game 1 still costs full price ($40+ for all). Now it’s more obvious - they want to profit off AI slop. “Lazy” Bear games indeed.
neutral · AI labelView post →Overall Rating: Not Recommended (In Current State) I loved the first 100 days of gameplay I spent on this title, which amounts to quite a few hours, but as a developer myself, I honestly cannot recommend it in its current state. Graveyard Keeper has that "Stardew Valley but Metal" charm, but it’s notorious for what we call "obfuscated design." It’s a game of nested dependencies, where to get A, you need B, but B requires C, and the game refuses to give you the recipe for C until you've already…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Basically a crafting game, if you're into that sort of thing. "You need this to make one of these then you need some of those to make one of these" kind of thing. First focus on upping the "quality" (points) of your graveyard, then your church, while meeting the townspeople and maintaining friendship by competing quests. This will get you the reputation and momentum you need. It took me some time but I really really enjoy it. You need to really get into it, gather your resources, expand the map…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Reached a game breaking bug of the corpses being invisible, making it impossible to continue or complete the game after around 8 hours. I can't recommend it due to this.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Unfortunately I learned 30 hours and two DLCs in that devs are now AI Andies, the sequel is coded using cursor (an AI service) Huge bummer, really putting the Lazy in Lazy Bear Games.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →4-Day Free Steam Giveaway Generated $250,000 in Revenue for Indie Game "Graveyard Keeper" -[rush of new fans of the game buying into the game's DLC library].
neutral · AI labelView post →I think that Graveyard Keeper is worse than most other games I'd find "bad" because this one was very disappointing. The initial hook for the game is very strong, and I was excited to see how the game expanded on its core gameplay loop of maintaining the graveyard. Instead, the game spirals into a bunch of different mechanics that you have to engage with to further the story, but end up distancing the player from the point of the game. To start, the days are quite short, so most of the game…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →To all the blind gamers out here, I have released a Mod to make Graveyard Keeper and its DLCs accessible for ScreenReader users. At the Moment only the Steam Version and the Gog Version are verified working. Its fully translated in German and English and should work on windows, Linux and MacOS, I have bundled prism libraries for all three, but the bepinex bundles only bundle windows, so for Macos and Linux you will have to download the mod only version. The Game is 64bit on steam but 32bit on…
neutral · AI labelView post →Graveyard Keeper is Stardew Valley's depressing cousin. While Stardew keeps you busy with rewarding activities, this game feels like a full-time job. The grind is relentless and often feels pointless. Everything is locked behind complex technic trees that require "blue points" which are a nightmare to collect. You spend ages walking slowly across the map just to realize you forgot one iron ingot, forcing you to waste even more time, Instead of the "just one more day" you get a "how much longer…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Save 100% on Graveyard Keeper on Steam.
neutral · AI labelView post →[Steam, PS4, Xbox] Graveyard Keeper. https://www.reddit.com/r/FreeGameFindings/comments/1sguq0b/steam_ps4_xbox_game_graveyard_keeper/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/599140/Graveyard_Keeper/ Xbox better use region specific link (in this case US) due to not all region has that available to purchase. https://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/store/graveyard-keeper/C11GZGMKRTCV PS region links below, I'll add other region or better format this tmr. NA…
neutral · AI labelView post →Do you enjoy a game telling you absolutely nothing, feeling lost and having to use a wiki to look up literally everything to get anything done? Well, boy howdy, do I have the game for you! I played this game when it first came out years ago, before there were expansions, and I always planned on coming back and finishing those. The grinding in this game is so massive and frustrating, you need 15 other items to complete the 1 you're working on. It turns into the House that Jack built - this is…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A lot of us got this game for free. I'm going to tell you why, even free, this game isn't worth your time, and not just because it doesn't respect it, that's the case, but for others reasons. In a lot of ways, Graveyard Keeper is a Stardew Valley clone(which itself is an Harvest Moon clone), that has the parts of a Stardew Valley, but doesn't seem to understand why Stardew Valley WORKS. It's a bit how Rimworld cloned Dwarf Fortress and never understood why Dwarf Fortress worked. Instead…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's great if you love repetition and slowly automating everything. I do feel like a lot of it isn't needed. I never really saw a point to fish for example. I love it when the game is a Re-Animator style mad scientist simulator and not Stardew Valley.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is pretty much tedious and overwhelming. In the beginning you are being bombarded with tutorials, mechanics and characters. The tutorials only answer half of the mechanics and you pretty much have to look up online what the remaining things mean. I even had to look up how one uses a sword. One of the tutorials mentions that repair kits can be crafted, but apparently it's hidden deep in one of the six tech tree tabs. Why not pace the mechanics gradually? The game throws items at you…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's not a bad game, but it's tedious. I wish there was a way to do "Eh," because I did admittedly enjoy the game, but it was just not for me in a long term sense. There's always 50 steps to get one thing, which you need for several other things. On top of that important NPCs are only there one day a week, so if you miss for some reason or another you have to wait to do something another week. The gameplay loop is just more exhausting than anything.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →[Steam/Xbox/PlayStation] Graveyard Keeper | 100% off/Giveaway. Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/599140/Graveyard_Keeper/ Xbox: https://www.xbox.com/en-us/games/store/Graveyard-Keeper/C11GZGMKRTCV PlayStation: https://store.playstation.com/en-us/product/UP0097-CUSA10727_00-GRAVEYARDKEEPER0
neutral · AI labelView post →At first glance, Graveyard Keeper feels like a dark Stardew Valley. But after a few hours of play, I found its way worse than Stardew in almost every way. The stamina bar’s ridiculously short and u will think about sleeping right after chopping a few trees. You gotta check the wiki for corpse ratings, alchemy n tech points, otherwise ure just guessing blindly. The freedom isnt as good as I thought. misplaced buildings cant be moved only destroyed. theres no fast travel across the whole map and…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Anyone have any cozy game recommendations that have a spooky theme?? I've already done Graveyard Keeper and Dredge so I'm looking for something else 👀
neutral · AI labelView post →I had fun at a lot of points, but by the end it was becoming obvious that many of the frustrations I had with the game were implemented on purpose in order to sell DLC. A lot of work was put into making money hard to get in the base game, but don't worry - just shell out $10 and they'll implement a way to sell beer and wine without the pointless frustration of the supply/demand system. Just one example. The game feels like it was built to bother you by wasting your time, not because tasks are…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →[playtime inaccurate, offline-only player] I wanted to like this game so much and have spent (wasted) dozens of hours in that pursuit. The themes and gameplay loop are exactly my jam and I like where it deviates from other Stardew-esque games (e.g. nixing the social chats/birthdays/gifts, not forcing the player to sleep every day, etc). A common complaint is the grind, but it's a crafting game so I don't consider that an issue since without it there wouldn't be one... and frankly it's why I…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →At first glance, this game hits all the right notes for anyone who appreciates complex, interlocking systems. The initial gameplay loop hooks you instantly. It presents a robust, multi-layered setup with a massive web of quests, an intriguing lineup of NPCs, and several deep technology trees. For the first few hours, managing the graveyard, dissecting corpses, and optimizing your progression feels incredibly engaging. The depth seems promising. Unfortunately, the illusion of depth shatters…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →There's a game called Graveyard Keeper where you play a medieval graveyard keeper who has to keep finding new ways to make money. It takes hours to dig a grave, when you can toss the body in the river and be back for lunch in half an hour. You have a renewable meat supply to sell to the butcher
neutral · AI labelView post →This game is like a spoof of Stardew Valley; Instead of a farm, you inherit a graveyard, and your first task is harvesting organs from a body, then bury it. It's funny, but the second task is the first problem. You are sent to the tavern. It's a long walk, you're very slow, and there is nothing interesting on the way. This is very representative of the first few hours of the game at least. You get a task, and then you grind the materials. You need lots, there's a lot of walking, you run out…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game could be really good. I had a nice time with it. Unfortunately, the devs don't want to be game developers and instead want to make cruddy mediocre AI slop. Stay away from it. Not even for free.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is like someone took Stardew valley and then said "Make it needlessly opaque". It's frustrating because it has such a good concept, graphic style and atmosphere - it just flubs the gameplay loop. For example - the game opens with a simple quest - 'clean the graveyard up a bit'. Okay. Easy, I fix a few things, build a few gravestones. Okay, I don't have resources to build a gravestone - I need to build the tools. Cool - easy done. I walk to a few blueprint stations.…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game is interesting and incoherent. Nothing works the way you would expect it to work. I imagine the game devs sat around discussing what would be the worst way to make a graveyard simulator and went to work seeing it come to life. The Donkey needed oil. He refused to deliver bodies until I got him oil. With no bodies I couldn't get fat so I finally decided to pay crazy prices to exhume bodies to get fat. Which I turned into oil... which doesn't work on Donkey because while he…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →fun RPG the humor is great. The earlygame feels a bit too much like walking simulator, but things being hard makes it that much more rewarding when they get easy. Be warned: save before doing the ending cut scene... it will just yeet you to main menu.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is a grim version of something like Stardew Valley but putting it on rails, in the most derogatory way possible. Want to upgrade this building? Well, first you're going to need to get X, Y, and Z, but Y and Z need A and B, but B requires C to be completed on one day of the week and whoops - you just barely missed that! Guess you'll have to wait AN ENTIRE IN-GAME WEEK to have another shot at it! It's all the worst aspects of these types of games: self-aware and cringey writing,…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I would love to love this game, but half of the time I spend playing it is googling for possible hints as to what I can move forward on or what I can possibly do next. If I don't google it or look on reddit, I am moving from object to object trying to figure out what I can do. The NPC task lists don't help. If anyone has a comprehensive guide or playthrough I'd be happy to delete this comment, but for now I'm just putting the game away as it's incredibly frustrating.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's said there is nothing more stimulating for one's creative appetite than something mediocre. Despite pouring just under 100 hours in GYK after picking it up during the recent free weekend on Steam, I cannot in any good conscience recommend it. It is a cynical, myopic attempt at leeching off of the success of games like Stardew Valley while oozing palpable contempt for the genre. I hoped it would be a fun macabre twist on farming sims, but GYK fundamentally misunderstands what makes them fun…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →121 hours later, I can finally say: Graveyard Keeper is one of the most chaotic and weirdly addictive games I’ve played in years 💀 At first it feels like: “haha funny graveyard game” Then suddenly you are: * managing zombie logistics * growing gold-quality hops * writing philosophical books * running an illegal burger operation * brewing wine in a church basement * injecting corpses with mysterious chemicals at 3AM The dungeon is kinda repetitive, some quests are…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I will recommend this game, but with a MASSIVE caveat: DO NOT TREAT THIS GAME LIKE STARDEW VALLEY AND IGNORE THE CHARACTER QUESTS. You have will have an AWFUL time in the late game if you do. Having said that, Dead/100.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I really want to like this game, but I just can’t. In Stardew Valley, I had to convince myself to stop playing — here, I have to convince myself not to quit and to keep going. Everything feels so slow, everything is locked behind research that, in my opinion, isn’t well designed. The game just wears me out really quickly.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Graveyard Keeper is currently FREE on both Steam and the Xbox store in celebration of the announcement of Graveyard Keeper II! Ever wanted to live out your life in a fantasy medieval town as its' graveyard keeper? Make interesting and sometimes unethical decisions to grow your empire!
neutral · AI labelView post →what a brilliant game this is , 90 hours enjoyed every damn second . i don't know how this game skipped me all of these years .. epic journey through an amazing story . 10/10
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is Rage-Bait at it's finest. Every time you unlock something you need to progress, you need to find or unlock 3 other things to make said thing. It's a wild goose chase game that you can never actually do what you want because you are forced to do something else to get a million other things just to do the initial thing you wanted to do. Need paper? Extract Skin from corpses to make it. Sounds simple right? NOPE! Now you have to progress far enough to unlock the Church, then do a…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Game was fun for the first 10 hours but then it got really grindy and tedious really fast. The game doesn't respect your time at all, felt more like free to play game with all the bottlenecks at that point than a real game
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I extract meat from corpses and sell it to the local inn every day. Found the infinite money glitch! 🧑🥩→💵 The game has unique dark fantasy vibes, with themes like cannibalism, witch-hunting, and zombies. It features very in-depth tech trees and quest lines. The crafting mechanics are extremely complex, and the game is very grindy. This can be both a pro and a con, depending on your playstyle. A bit too grindy to my taste. The DLCs add a ton of extra content (and playtime) - you can easily…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →After finally getting all achievements in this game, I finally feel qualified to give it a full review. It's pretty good.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →i played this game years ago and i hated it, its called Graveyard Keeper and most of my time was spent doing farm chores and carrying logs because there were constant brick walls stopping me from managing my graveyard
negative · AI labelView post →I was told I would run a cemetary but for some reason I am now a farmer with my only livestock being zombies. Harvest “meat”, blood, fat and but them sonbeetches to work. Oh, you also make burgers to sell to other live humans.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Definitely recommend. There are not many games like Graveyard Keeper, Stardew Valley or Traveller's Rest and this is the best of this kind. Also teleportation stone is reusable, please use it. I played half the game without using it and it was really painful.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Extremely good and fun game if you like these kind of games. A real diamond in the rough, I am so happy I stumbled across it because you don't see it in the mainstream. I have put countless hours into it, and it has a good replay value because you are always getting better at managing things and seeing how well you can do in your next playthrough.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →What are ya guys opinion on Graveyard Keeper 2?. Really had fun with the first one, but the developer seems like he's really into AI, and this steamheader just looks like horrible AI... Anyone has any opinion on it? :)
neutral · AI labelView post →Graveyard Keeper was winning in the polls so I decided to start playing it preemptively. Anyways 10 hours of gameplay and lots of free time later... IT'S HERE! Check out my experiences after 10 minutes, 1 hour, and 10 hours. How did I feel about the game overall? Did I ever get home? Find out!
positive · AI labelView post →I finished The Ranch of Rivershine 10|1|10|1 Review so that means I'm onto the next one! I do have a question regarding what game to review next, so please hop on over and make your choice known: Do I review the original Graveyard Keeper or Graveyard Keeper II? The choice is in your hands~
neutral · AI labelView post →Releasing a video at almost 11pm? Makes sense when the game is Graveyard Keeper! Join me in this First Impressions and figure out if this profession is for me or not. In this video, watch me: 💀 Recoil at my duties 💀 Get a skull a beer 💀 Think about forging a stamp so I can sell my graveyard meat
neutral · AI labelView post →Just a reminder that if you play a game that supports genAI, we're likely to never be friends. It includes any Hoyoverse game, NTE, Fortnite,… And every game which staff publicly disclose their support (like Graveyard Keeper for example).
neutral · AI labelView post →This game is so close to being enjoyable. Graveyard Keeper looked like a fun cozy game with a really cool theme that I could use to kill some time. The lack of tutorial is pretty rough, I dont want to have to look stuff up or keep a guide open while I am playing so I spent most of my time struggling through everything to make any kind of progress. Its hard to tell what progress is essential to the story or progression of the sim, and what is essentially just filler or side content. The art…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I found this so uninspired and boring. Tries soooo hard to be funny and special. Restarted a few times because I've kept telling myself "this time you'll like it". But why should I gaslight myself into liking it? Not gonna touch this again and definitely don't recommend it.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game does not respect your time. Which is unfortunate, because the idea has great potential and was the reason I originally bought this game. It quickly devolved into the most ungodly grind I have ever experienced, pretty much right at the start as well! Right as I was done with the introductory gameplay and spent a few days doing things, there were several things I had to have in order to progress, and they were a few steps down the skill-tree, and/or just took a lot of time to obtain.…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Save 100% on Graveyard Keeper on Steam. Graveyard Keeper appears to be -100%, i.e. free on steam for some time.
neutral · AI labelView post →Okay, so apparently Graveyard Keeper is another one game that needs to be left for dead. Developers and games I really care about are really out here being the worst, huh? I hope Ace Attorney 7 isn't AI slop-- Thank you @puke.bsky.social for letting me know about this, really appreciate it.
neutral · AI labelView post →IF you dont mind that the game's mechanics are intentionally unoptimized to make things take longer, its fine. by the time you have access to most things that make the game "faster" you are stuck just waiting for things to happen or pray RNG favors you with what you need. if you need something for a Quest, guaranteed it will require speaking to an NPC 5+ days away in the rotation and almost certainly they will want something from another NPC who, guess what? is also 5+ days away again.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I'm not sure if proper words exist for the experience I had playing this. To say it felt "incomplete" would, ironically, not paint the full picture. I'll go into more depth, but if you want a quick summary, then here: Graveyard Keeper feels like it never left Early Access. To be clear, I don't believe it was ever technically in Early Access. But it has all the signs of it nonetheless. Weirdly unbalanced difficulty curves, lack of essential explanations, frequent grammar/spelling errors…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
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