Graveyard Keeper Xbox One [Review]: Confusing, yet charming

Management simulators are typically nearly farming for crops, selling goods to not-player characters (NPCs), and restoring former locations to working order. Graveyard Keeper includes all of these tasks, but with a unique twist of its own: collecting dead people, chopping their bodies up for meat, and tossing what'due south left into a grave.

As you might expect from this unashamedly morbid premise, the game is chock full of dark humor. Yet, the complex gameplay underneath the jokes feels extremely confusing.

Come across at Microsoft

What practise you do once again?

Primarily, the goal of Graveyard Keeper is to fill and maintain a cemetery of (you guessed it) graves. To start with, you lot're given some basic materials, tools, and a few worn-downward graves to repair. Once you run out of the initial resources, you'll demand money. Thankfully, you go corpses delivered to the cemetery ofttimes, and meat is valuable in the hamlet market ... you can see where this is going.

Substantially, you lot take the ability to cut people upwards before burying them, and then sell the meat fresh to unsuspecting traders. This nets you lot a decent corporeality of income, and you can use said income to get more materials for grave maintenance. Down the line, you can augment your moneymaking with crop farming, mining, and through the apply of the donations citizens make to your church (one time you restore it).

The problem with Graveyard Keeper is that everything flies by earlier you go a chance to figure everything out. Within the beginning 15 minutes, the game rapidly introduces y'all to the complexities of the mechanics, and then afterwards you're left completely on your own. To make matters worse, you don't even get a journal that you can apply to keep track of what yous're trying to learn or any of your quests. You're just expected to instantly understand.

More ofttimes than non, this led to frustration and boredom that made me want to turn off my Xbox. After several hours of attempts, I was only able to fully figure everything out by looking things upwards on the fan-created wiki.

Gorgeous and humorous

Despite the abysmal pacing, Graveyard Keeper's visual style and humor make it very enjoyable from a presentation standpoint. The graphics are pleasant and colorful, which makes the game world feel alive, and the comedic writing adds a lighthearted tone to the experience that contrasts the dark activities you partake in. From the communist donkey who complains nigh his capitalist owner to the talking skeleton who demands yous bring him a beer, it's hard non to smile at Graveyard Keeper.

From a performance perspective, the championship runs well for the nigh function, though there are some noticeable frame-rate drops whenever there's a large amount of NPCs, crops, or other items on the screen at one time.

Should you buy Graveyard Keeper?

If y'all don't mind doing all-encompassing spider web enquiry in order to sympathize the ins and outs of Graveyard Keeper'due south gameplay progression, you'll be able to bask the best of what the game has to offering. However, if you would rather not bargain with the hassle, I recommend passing on this 1 and checking out Stardew Valley instead.