Graveyard Keeper Review

What if Stardew Valley or Harvest Moon wasn’t focused on farming? What if it had you doing a more sinister job…like running a graveyard! Welcome to Graveyard Keeper for the Nintendo Switch. You are the new graveyard keeper. You’ll be burying bodies, digging them up, selling them for parts, fishing, crafting graves, possibly farming, and other  things. Will you have fun while doing all this or should Graveyard Keeper rest in peace?

Graveyard Keeper’s story is basically a way into the game’s grave digging concept: a guy (possibly) dies and then gets the job as the Graveyard Keeper for some far off place. He wants to go home but in the meantime, he’ll have to dig graves, deal with the towns people for various things, and investigate his surroundings.

Much like any “farm” sim with a story, its a very slow burn story. You can basically play as the Graveyard Keeper forever and not worry about the game’s story too. So the real question becomes: Is Graveyard Keeper fun?

In Graveyard Keeper, you may have to do some disgusting things, like autopsy a body and possibly sell parts of a body. Thankfully Graveyard Keeper is not a gross looking game. When you autopsy a body, you just pick a part to take out, press extract, and then Y to work. It doesn’t actually show you removing parts. This all sounds more gross than it actually is in the game.

Oh and you don’t actually have to sell body parts in this game. Its up to you how you play Graveyard Keeper. You could just dig graves, put bodies in, and fix your graveyard and homestead up. You don’t have to sell body parts or eat them or any of those other disgusting sounding things. Just like Stardew Valley or Harvest Moon, you are in control of how you manage your “farm”.

I should note that you can actually have a regular farm in Graveyard Keeper too. And you can fish, look for bugs, and many other things. There is a skill tree in Graveyard Keeper that you can upgrade to learn new ablities like bug hunting, building new things, or learning how to pick apart a body better…

Yeah, I’m getting a little disturbed even writing about some of the darker things you can do in Graveyard Keeper. The game does play these darker things with a bit of humor, but personally, I still find it a bit gross and disturbing.

If you’ve played Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley, then the controls in Graveyard Keeper should be very familiar. There really isn’t anything different as far as its controls. They work fine but don’t take advantage of the Switch’s unique aspects, touch screen or motion, at all.

Graveyard Keeper is a really unique and intersting game. I like Stardew Valley and Graveyard Keeper’s take on the whole “farming sim” is similar in some ways and very out there in other ways. The game is worth a look, as long as you can stand or avoid the darker aspects of the game. There is fun to be had in Graveyard Keeper!

Not only does the game control like Stardew but graphically it looks like a darker verison of the aforementioned sim.

Graveyard Keeper’s graphics are like a less colorful Stardew Valley. Both games have a very old school 2D look on the surface, but you will notice how very detailed each game is. Graveyard Keeper, especially, is really well drawn. There is some stuttering in the Graveyard Keeper’s animation though and some items, like trees, that pop-in at times. None of this breaks the game, but it is noticeable.

The music in Graveyard Keeper, meanwhile, is very subtle and unmemorable. I wish it was creepier, especially at night. The sound effects in this game are not bad though.

Graveyard Keeper, overall, is a very strange game. Its concept should be cringe inducing and yet its just as addictive as Stardew Valley.

Graveyard Keeper is what you get when you put Stardew Valley in a blender with some “interesting” ingredients that you know you don’t want to eat. This game shouldn’t work, but it does. If you can get past or embrace the darker elements of Graveyard Keeper, you’ll find a game that you can spend hours upon hours on.

Somebody really should show Stephen King this game. I wonder what he would say…

Graveyard Keeper gets an 8.0 out of 10.

Thanks to TinyBuild for providing a digital code for this review. Graveyard Keeper is available now on the Nintendo Switch eshop!