I know that on my last gaming post I said that "normal" games do not longer motivate me, this is still true but I found one game that has caught my attention and I'm quite addicted to it. The game is called Graveyard Keeper and it's close to a farming simulator like Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley, but twisted and a little creepy. This is an indie game so they do take a lot of freedom in the game and also make some very funny references. The game graphics are simple, that is a good thing because my laptop cannot run any of the new games or games that require a good graphic card. Below I will tell you about the game without spoilers.
The main plot:
The game follows the story of a normal guy that is returning home from buying some groceries, after being hit by a car he wakes up in a very strange town and is welcome by someone with red eyes. You are told that you have become the new Graveyard Keeper and are instructed to wake up Gerry, a talking skull (literally just the skull) for more instructions. Your job, among other things, is to take good care of the graveyard and to prepare the corpses that are delivered to you. One of the things that are very creepy is that you can take the meat out of the dead bodies and prepare it to eat it. Your main objective it to find a way back home.
Gameplay
Like many simulation games in Graveyard Keeper there is a night and day cycle, but what I like about this game is that there is no calendar and you can take you time to complete all the tasks. Other games like Stardew Valley or Harves Moon have a time pressure element because you follow a fixed calendar, here I have passed several days doing random tasks without any penalties. Besides taking care of the graveyard you can also chop down trees, mine for resources and fight enemies. There is a small town nearby where you can interact with several interesting characters and most of them will give you tasks that you must accomplish in order to make progresses in the game.
After you have reached certain goals in your graveyard you can also become some king of priests and on Sundays you can give sermons and obtain money and other useful things, let's call them faith points. I have just reached a part where I can enter a dungeon to fight with enemies and earn resources.
I have to say that the game is a little difficult at some times, there are not a lot of tutorials or guides to follow but with a little effort every task is intuitive. There are a lot of things to craft, technologies to learn and resources to use. You also have a health bar and an energy bar, this second bar can deplete very fast so it is important to cook the meat from the dead folks at your morgue and also you can cok bread, cakes, jelly and many other type of foods.
The game is very complete, Tiny Build, the developers behind this game really made a very good job. It can be seen that they were heavily inspired by Stardew Valley and similar games. I like the humor and I like the freedom that I have in the game. The only things that could be a little frustrating are that the energy bar is depleted very fast, that the resources used for crafting are sometimes hard to get and that someimes I have felt a little lost in what to do next. From time to time I am saturated with all the things that I must do that I feel a little lost.
My impressions so far
I am still playing the game, I don't think that I am anywhere near 50% of the game yet. I had aleady played this game last year but on Xbox One. With some of the Steem that I sold I decided to but this game on Steam (the gaming platform) and it was only 10 USD, so it was not bad.
I like the game, I play it for a n hour or two each day and after sometime I get tired and decide to rest. The music is very good, even Gris liked it. The graphics are simple but pretty and the story is creepy but very interesting. It is a game that keeps inviting me to go back. I really like this type of games where I can upgrad emy characters and my skills. In the game there are three type of experience points, they are like little gems. We have the red gem that is linked to use of the tools and crafting. We also have the green gem that is linked to nature and the blue one that is linked to spiritual stuff.
I recommend you this game, below I will share some screenshots and also some videos of the game.
Official Launch Trailer:
Screenshots:
You can get the game on Steam for PC or also in Xbox One (when I played it it came with the Game Pass), Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, iOS and Android.
So far I will give this game a score of 8.5 out of 10.
Graveyard Keeper Official Wiki
Official Website and Source for the images:
I invite you to like the Hive Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/hiveblocks/
I got this with my Humble Bundle a couple of months ago -- I was so excited about it too! Because it caught my eye on Steam when I was looking for things similar to Stardew Valley and the store page seemed to have an excellent sense of humour.
Unfortunately my urge to play games vanished a little with recent events. Need to give myself a mental kick and finally give it a try. 😊