Graveyard Keeper 2 Key Art
Image: Lazy Bear Games & tinyBuild

And today wraps up with a big, long-awaited indie release. For years, Lazy Bear Games' Graveyard Keeper was the feather in tinyBuild's cap - a creepy-cozy farming and management game where you played as a humble graveyard keeper turned amateur necromancer, plying your trade while researching the forbidden on the side to make a little extra scratch. Today, Graveyard Keeper 2 launches, and if the player numbers on Steam are any indication, this one's a huge hit already.

While the original Graveyard Keeper introduced automation elements in the mid-game, it seems that for the sequel, the theme is undead industry. As well as tending to your own lands, you've got to help liberate the town from rampaging zombies, armoring up and hacking and slashing your way through the hordes causing problems, and then raise enough dead of your own to fuel your rebuilding efforts, and eventually make your new home a place where the living live in luxury, and do most of their labor post-mortem.

While grim, that's exactly what I'd want in a sequel. Graveyard Keeper took a long time to get into the nitty-gritty of zombie horde management as a business opportunity, so launching straight into the interesting stuff, with less of a focus on keeping your corpse-raising shenanigans on the down-low. This time, so long as your deadheads keep the living on the right side of the soil, the locals seem happy to work with you.

Combat is a heavy focus of this sequel too, with defensive battles to capture and hold areas of the town, setting up barricades and assigning your zombies to holding the line while you intercept faster-moving threats. While the original game had some fighting, it was mostly just minor skirmishing, while this one has you organizing a full-on military campaign, recapturing districts one at a time to increase your business opportunities.

Graveyard Keeper 2 is out now for £22.49/$25, with a 20% discount if you own the original game. Sadly, the demo has been pulled from the store, but given that there are over 42,000 players and rising already on Steam alone, I don't think tinyBuild is going to be worried about getting players on board. The game is also out on Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, Epic, and GOG, so it's available just about everywhere.