{"id":280115,"date":"2021-08-19T15:30:39","date_gmt":"2021-08-19T20:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jbsgame.com\/?p=280115"},"modified":"2021-08-19T13:01:24","modified_gmt":"2021-08-19T18:01:24","slug":"graveyard-keeper-grind-that-keeps-giving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jbsgame.com\/graveyard-keeper-grind-that-keeps-giving\/","title":{"rendered":"Graveyard Keeper is the grind that keeps on giving"},"content":{"rendered":"
I did it. It’s finally done<\/em>. I’ve passed the “everything that counts” progression threshold in Graveyard Keeper<\/em>, and I even caught 200 fish for a silly trophy. Now I can confidently, satisfyingly delete the game from my PS4 and never look back \u2014 unless they rope me in with another story-based expansion, which I could absolutely be convinced to play.<\/p> Graveyard Keeper<\/em> turned three years old this month, and coincidentally, I’ve been playing an unholy amount of it lately. This is a crafting game through and through, one that’s full of boring-yet-relaxing busywork every conceivable step of the way. You, uh… you in?<\/p> <\/p> It is a no-joke *grind*. If you’re okay with that \u2014 if you can stick with a multi-month game that’s meant to be chipped away at, not brute-forced \u2014 there’s a lot to like about it.<\/p> There’s also a lot to dislike<\/em>, depending on your tastes, your willingness to always play with a wiki by your side<\/a>, and your tolerance for, let’s be real, blatant padding.<\/p> Graveyard Keeper<\/em> has and will continue to be likened to<\/a> Stardew Valley<\/em>, but it’s such a different experience, even if there is clear conceptual and mechanical overlap. This is more of an RPG in terms of convoluted technology trees and XP to painstakingly earn.<\/p> <\/p> 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. Also, you carve up corpses, supply a snack stand for witch-burning audiences, and run a sketchy for-profit church.<\/p> 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<\/em> and Game of Crone<\/em> DLC that fill in some gaps that maybe shouldn’t have been there in the first place.<\/p> <\/p> The main story path revolves around six characters, all of which have their own day of the week. Instead of following an intuitive seasonal calendar, you \u2014 a present-day dude who’s stranded in a mystical medieval-village fever dream \u2014 will rely on a six-day cycle<\/a>.<\/p> 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. For new players, the weekly schedule is the first of many, many<\/em> encounters with the aforementioned wiki, as much of Graveyard Keeper<\/em> is left up to you to figure out.<\/p> 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.<\/p> <\/p> 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. 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.<\/p> There are payoffs, and answers. The laughably tangled-up spiderweb of NPC quests that almost all need to be completed near-simultaneously will<\/em> get resolved. Eventually.<\/p> Before I got accustomed to Graveyard Keeper<\/em>‘s ways after clocking in day after day to prep resources to craft this<\/em>, which leads to that<\/em>, which lets me do the other thing<\/em>, only to forget what I was doing in the first place, I found the purgatory-esque village mildly unsettling. I got the nagging sense that, aside from all the obviously bleak shit around me that the protagonist can’t help but go along with, something was… off. Not in a bad way, though.<\/p> Do you generally feel “comfortable” inhabiting the doomed world of Majora’s Mask<\/em>? I sure don’t! But once you’re sufficiently acclimated, both games can be cozy in their own right.<\/p> <\/p>