I’ve been busy going through some games from the tinyBuild studio. We’ve reviewed one game from the publisher in Punch Club by its Lazy Bear Games studio. Now we’re looking at another mobile title—also available on console and PC—in 2018’s Graveyard Keeper.
Graveyard Keeper
GK is a management RPG based heavily on titles like Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley. It veers closer to Stardew Valley because of the (slight) combat element but takes the resource gathering element of SV almost to the extreme.
The main character is struck by a car and ends up in a fantasy world where he is placed in the role of a town’s graveyard keeper. Everything in this game costs money and money is slow to come by early on.
As the Keeper, you gain cash by doing burials but more money is made with almost every other activity outside of that. Selling a lot of ore, produce, fish, meat, leading sermons—all of that actually generates coin faster than the activity in the title.
The background story is just enough to keep you grinding through the game but just like any isekai tale, eventually you forget about getting home to your world and family.
As a matter of fact, the only time I remembered I was supposed to be getting back to my world was in some dialogue where the Keeper could ask how to do so.
Outside of that, it kind of fades into the background but luckily the game doesn’t try to brute force you towards that path.
Verdict: 8.5/10
While I totally dig this game and the backstory for it, it’s not without flaws. Actually, I wouldn’t even call it a flaw so much as just being an endless grind for materials.
Action and adventure take a backseat to the crafting and management aspect of the game—which is fine. I mean this is Graveyard Keeper and not Crypt Keeper Quest.
Adventure is here in the form of exploration but even then, the main reason to explore the land is to find materials for crafting. If you look at the game as a management/building sim, this is almost flawless.
However, the story and ability for combat kind of make it a management RPG, and the farming material side of grinding just becomes tedious after a while.
Especially when you make some progress on one project and realize you have to do more out of the way to progress another crafting project.
This is balanced with Graveyard Keeper being a rewarding game. There’s a sense of real achievement from the crafting end of things that makes it worth going out to harvest stuff.
Outside of that issue, even though the quests float between meh and “This is pretty fun”, players won’t run into a brick wall of a hard-to-complete quest.
The quests in GK aren’t the things that make you frustrated and that gets a thumbs up from me.
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