Graveyard Keeper - Stardew valley without the schmaltz

[Buddist Monk]

I've been playing this for the last couple of days..

..it's been in dev for a while but they've made their first full release. If you've played SV and liked it then you'll want to give this a look.

It's quite complex for the size of the game (it comes in at just under 200Mb). The first 10-12 hours are you getting started, there are the usual skill trees covering wood, metal and stone working, there is farming and fighting mobs and it's all wrapped up in the classic SV style graphics.

Ultimately your job is to dispose of bodies, either by scavenging them for parts and using or selling on those parts, or by burying them. Burying them requires you to make graveyard adornments which in turn increase your graveyard's quality. It starts at a negative number with you needing to remove or repair the existing graves. Once you get the value into a positive you can open a church and get people to pay alms.

Each resource or action will involve a material of some type (wood, metal ore, body parts, etc), a crafting station (anvil, chopping block, mason's bench, etc) and will generate one of three types of "gems" for the lack of a better word; red, green and blue and a combination of these allows you to move up your skill tree and buy new crafting stations. All this tempered by a familiar stamina system that can be restored by eating or sleeping.

For an idea of the complexity of the game then check out the wiki: https://graveyardkeeper.gamepedia.com/Graveyard_Keeper_Wiki

 

Edit: Oh, I forgot to mention, there is an underlying story arch of you trying to leave the place, but it's a slow burner and it seems like it's pretty convoluted to get through.

 

 

 

[Buddist Monk]

1 hour ago, BigFatTabbyDave said:

How's Graveyard Keeper? Saw that pop up on Steam recently and thought it might be a decent laptop game to play a bit of now and again.

Most of the negative reviews I've seen seem to be complaining about it not being finished, rather than about the actual gameplay.

It really comes down to whether you like Stardew Valley, it's essentially the same game, albeit I find it less cutesy. It "plays" well because it's exactly what you expect. There is a shit ton in it, have a look at the wiki page I linked.

In terms of not being finished? I've not followed the storyline at all really. Only at the start to unlock a few things that are necessary (you'll see what I mean if you try it) and from start to having a good part of the tech tree, and associated workbenches/tools/skills etc, unlocked I'd say there is 20-30 hours ish playtime (depending on how dedicated you are). From there? I suppose you need to follow the storyline. Perhaps that's the bit that's not finished. As I say it's not something I've really done yet.

 

[Tri-TON]

Liked the look and sound of this but not on PlayStation unfortunately.