Graveyard Keeper 2 review – Bigger, better and more grizzly than ever

Fancy burying some bodies after performing questionable autopsies? How about discovering a hidden alchemy chamber and reanimating corpses as zombies to do your busywork? Or perhaps you’d rather lead an army to defeat hordes of the undead? If something a bit quieter is more your pace, you can simply cultivate your garden and grow a bunch of crops. Yeah, that’s Graveyard Keeper 2 in a nutshell, and I’m loving it.

If you’ve played the first Graveyard Keeper, you’ll immediately be able to hit the ground running. This feels very familiar, for better or for worse, but developer Lazy Bear Games has made some key improvements to make this feel bigger and better in all the ways that matter. It’s important to note that you don’t need to have played the first Graveyard Keeper either; if you’re brand new to the franchise, this is a perfectly acceptable place to start. And while I did dabble in Graveyard Keeper a few years ago, I feel like it would be hard to go back to now.

Waking up in a strange dungeon, your playable character soon adopts the moniker of the ‘Keeper’ and, before long, you’re lead to an abandoned Inquisitor Camp. There, you’ll find somewhere to lay your head, some ground to build upon and tend to, and most importantly, a graveyard to bury the dead.

Although despite being called Graveyard Keeper 2, dealing with corpses makes up only a small part of the experience. You’re just as likely to be spending time cultivating crops, crafting bricks, cooking meals, and fiddling around with complicated alchemy systems.

There are an awful lot of systems in Graveyard Keeper 2 in fact, and so for the first few hours it’s likely to feel like Overwhelm Simulator 2026. An improved quest system helps keep you on top of the goals you’re working towards, but you’re still largely thrown into everything the game has to offer head-first. Sure, tooltips will give you the basics, but you’ll still often find yourself flicking through crafting menus trying to figure out how you make polished marble.

Within just a few hours, you’ll have access to multiple tools, all used to craft various objects. And look in your main menu and you’ll find dozens upon dozens of new crafting abilities that are waiting to be unlocked. It’s a lot, then, but take it one step at a time, focusing on the objectives that you can achieve, and you’ll soon get the ropes.

More than that, Graveyard Keeper 2 can be absolutely wonderful when you’re well and truly in the groove. The cycle of crafting – which often requires multiple items to be made first before you get to the final item that you need – is rewarding when it all goes right, though pesky things like your energy running out serve to get in your way. In its favour, developer Lazy Bear Games has tried to dole out unlocking certain features of the game over the first several hours of the game so you’re not too bewildered to begin with. But there’s still enough to be getting your head around.

It helps that the story scenes of Graveyard Keeper 2 are fully voiced, giving it a wonderful dose of personality and charm beyond what games of its ilk typically have. You’re no longer simply reading dry text boxes, with dialogue being delivered to you in style. The actors on board all do a fantastic job, with a range of regional UK accents offering the game a great deal of character.

Also helping in that regard is just how stunning Graveyard Keeper 2 looks. It was one of my favourite things about the first game, and it seems Lazy Bear has taken the adage of “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it”. The gorgeously detailed pixel art has returned, and if it’s possible, it seems even more beautiful this time around. It makes simply existing in the world an absolute joy.

The only problem, though? Graveyard Keeper 2 can feel like a bit of a grind. Crafting is the key focus here, with systems that feed into other systems. In fact, if you upgrade everything enough, you can automate those systems altogether with a series of conveyor belts, zombie workers to do the grunt work, and more. The trouble is: will you have the patience to persist until you get to that point? My instinct says yes, because everything is designed so well that it’s hard not to get fully entrenched in the grizzly, murky world of being a graveyard keeper.

This review of Graveyard Keeper 2 is based on the PC version of the game, with a code provided by the publisher. It’s available on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2 and PC.