Graveyard Keeper 2 takes the already unusual premise of its predecessor and makes it considerably more elaborate. Published by tinyBuild and developed by Lazy Bear Games, the sequel once again turns the business of dealing with the dead into the foundation for a management RPG, but this time the player is caught up in a much larger crisis. The story begins with the protagonist trapped in a dungeon before he escapes and eventually assumes the role of a graveyard keeper and, somewhat surprisingly, a Grand Inquisitor. From there, the mystery surrounding his identity becomes intertwined with an undead outbreak and the rebuilding of a struggling town. It is not an especially sophisticated narrative, but it does not need to be. The deliberately ridiculous situations, macabre subject matter and dry humor give the story enough personality to keep the many hours of management from feeling completely mechanical. The talking skull Larry is particularly effective in this regard, while the increasingly absurd situations provide a welcome counterweight to all the resource management.
The cemetery remains the foundation of the experience, and this is still where Graveyard Keeper 2 feels most distinctive. Bodies arrive at the morgue and can be processed in several ways, with their remains becoming useful resources rather than simply something to bury. Fat, bones and other materials can feed crafting and production, while particularly suitable corpses can be brought back as zombie workers. At the same time, the quality of a burial affects the cemetery itself, creating an entertaining tension between extracting as much value as possible from a body and actually giving it a respectable final resting place. It is a suitably twisted management loop, and one of the sequel’s strongest ideas because it constantly makes the player consider what a corpse is worth. The downside is that some of these systems are not explained particularly well, leaving too much experimentation to the player when a poorly understood decision can consume resources that are difficult or time-consuming to replace.
That tension becomes more important as the game expands beyond the cemetery. Graveyard Keeper 2 introduces a much greater emphasis on automation, allowing zombies to take over repetitive jobs such as gathering materials and working at production stations. Eventually, production can be organised into increasingly elaborate chains involving machines and multiple undead workers. This is a meaningful improvement over the first game’s more laborious approach, where much of the late-game progression could turn into an exhausting exercise in walking between workstations. The sequel also improves traversal with a faster-moving protagonist and unlockable fast-travel points, although the underlying grind has certainly not disappeared. In fact, it can take considerable effort before the automation systems become powerful enough to genuinely remove the manual workload.
There is a satisfying progression hidden inside that grind, however. Almost everything the player does contributes towards some form of development, whether that means gathering resources, crafting, building, working with corpses or researching new technologies. Different activities feed different progression systems, while inspirations and technology unlocks gradually expand what can be constructed and produced. The problem is that Graveyard Keeper 2 can be remarkably opaque about how all these systems connect. Certain technologies are tied to quests, particular resources are needed for several competing purposes, and the calendar can determine when NPCs or activities become available. That can turn progression into a process of trial and error rather than deliberate planning. The improved quest tree makes the enormous collection of requests easier to follow than in the original, but there are still plenty of occasions where the game expects the player to work things out independently.
The town itself gives all of this more purpose. Rather than simply maintaining a cemetery on the outskirts of a village, players gradually help restore buildings and services while completing quests for the inhabitants. This creates a broader sense of progression and makes the various production systems feel as though they have somewhere to go. Farming, fishing, crafting, exploration, trading and alchemy all feed into the larger structure, and the sheer number of activities means there is rarely a shortage of something to work towards. That variety is one of the sequel’s greatest strengths, but it can also be overwhelming during the early hours. There are so many resources, technologies, machines, quests and potential upgrades that it is not always obvious which objective deserves attention first. For players who enjoy discovering systems organically, that can be part of the appeal; for everyone else, the lack of explanation can become a genuine source of frustration.
The other major addition is combat, with parts of the town occupied by hostile undead forces. These encounters are structured more like short tower-defense or territory-control scenarios than conventional action sequences. The player can deploy mercenaries and eventually zombies, prepare equipment and construct defences before attempting to capture strategic points. This works reasonably well as a change of pace from the slower management loop, particularly because the rewards feed back into the wider economy. At the same time, the combat is clearly not the reason to play Graveyard Keeper 2. The battles are relatively simple, and the preparation and management surrounding them can sometimes be more cumbersome than the actual fighting. The idea has potential, particularly because the economy, zombie workforce and military can theoretically form one interconnected system, but the combat layer occasionally feels more like a useful diversion than a fully integrated part of the game.
On PlayStation 5, the most important aspect of the control experience is therefore less about precision action and more about how efficiently the player can navigate and manage all these overlapping systems. The faster movement and unlockable fast-travel points are welcome because the sheer amount of traveling could otherwise become exhausting, while the basic management interactions are straightforward enough to keep the focus on planning rather than execution. Unfortunately, that convenience does not completely eliminate the micro-management. Moving individual zombies around, organising their equipment and preparing them for different jobs can become surprisingly laborious, especially once the undead workforce grows. The same problem appears when preparing an army for battle, where several otherwise useful systems require a lot of manual intervention.
Visually, Graveyard Keeper 2 retains the colorful pixel-art identity of the original while giving its world a more polished presentation. Characters and environments are more detailed and expressive, and the animations help the town feel considerably more alive without losing the deliberately strange appearance that suits the game’s dark comedy. The isometric presentation is also well suited to construction and management, making it relatively easy to see the spaces being developed and the different activities taking place around them. The audio is similarly effective rather than spectacular, with a suitably relaxed soundtrack and appropriate sound effects. The biggest improvement is the addition of full voice acting, which gives the eccentric cast more personality and makes the jokes land better than they would through text alone. Larry’s presence in particular benefits from actually being voiced, reinforcing the deliberately absurd tone of the adventure.
Graveyard Keeper 2 is ultimately a sequel that understands what made the original unusual while being willing to expand the formula considerably. The cemetery remains its most distinctive element, but automation, town restoration and the undead workforce give the management systems much greater scope than before. There is a genuine satisfaction in watching jobs that initially require constant manual attention gradually become part of a larger production chain. The problem is that the game still asks the player to tolerate a substantial amount of grinding and experimentation before those systems reach their full potential, while its explanations do not always keep pace with the complexity of the mechanics. The combat also adds variety without quite reaching the same level of depth as the management side. Even so, the combination of dark humor, unusual resource management, colorful presentation and an almost absurd amount of content makes Graveyard Keeper 2 an entertaining and distinctive management RPG. It is at its best when the various systems finally start working together like the slightly dysfunctional undead machine the game has spent so long asking the player to build.
Score: 8.1/10