Graveyard Keeper 2 review: Cozy, if you like spreadsheets

This isn't your average work simulator game.

I never know what to think of management simulation games. I get the appeal of tinkering around with something you don’t have access to in real life in a gamified sort of way, like running an airport or a farm. But the ways in which these games can make work and labor cute, especially within the “cozy” subset of all this stuff, never sits well with me in my gut. It’s a facet of escapism, I guess. What if this thing I hate doing in real life was adorable and fun instead? Sure, but now you’re basically working two jobs except instead of not making enough money for rent, you’re grinding for twinkling doodads and pastel colors. On top of not making enough money for rent. Anyway, we’re at the point where we’re subverting the subversion, and we’re seeing more morbid or cynical takes on this space. Enter Graveyard Keeper 2, a labor simulator that seems profoundly confused about what it wants to be or what it has to say, but is plenty comfortable asking players to grind until their wheels fall off. Also, there’s a funny talking skeleton.

Truck-kun strikes again?

You wake up in a strange dungeon, arms chained to the wall. A fairy appears out of nowhere, insists you’re special, and breaks one of the chains. She doesn’t have the juice for the second one though, and before she dips she tells you to figure out how to summon her again. An odd voice from out of sight encourages you to buck up and yank the second chain yourself, and after a few tries you manage to free yourself. The voice belongs to a disembodied skull, which has plenty of jokes and is probably a thinly veiled Planescape Torment reference. The two of you decide to hit the bricks, and after exploring the seemingly abandoned town outside you learn there are zombies. You run into the local army, offer to help, armor up, fight some zombies, run away, and then decide to spruce up the nearby graveyard. And become a farmer. And learn pottery. And, I dunno, a whole bunch of other stuff. Also there are visions of working at a desk and getting hit by a truck before waking up here. Graveyard Keeper 2 is an isekai, I guess.

That's going a little further than embalming, pal

It’s hard to get a strong bead on Graveyard Keeper as it gets rolling, because it seems to be trying to do so many things at once. And it does the bare minimum of onboarding, and the storytelling and dialogue seem to just be a little off. Your main guy just kind of decides to do things for the sake of doing them, with the vague goal of saving the world and finding that fairy again holding it up. And this guy is a sociopath for no reason, as the game just has you matter-of-factly dismembering bodies when you get them for burial for the sake of making other things with the resources you’ve broken several codes of ethics to obtain. And you just kind of go along with it, although you don’t really have a reason to at first, because the heaps of information and things to do piled upon you don’t come with context or explanation very often. It all feels very Stardew Valley, but morbid and cynical for the sake of some good old-fashioned irony. But it isn’t particularly charming or stylish either.

There is... so much... of everything

What really stood out to me about Graveyard Keeper 2 is how deliberately tedious it feels. Everything you do is a weirdly multi-tier process. Some of the basic things you’d expect from a farming sim or likewise sort of game take a step or two on one or more skill tree-like menus to access. Or you have to make your way to building and utilizing multiple gadgets that work together to achieve the thing you need, like a plank of wood. Everything is absurdly complex, and that seems to be the marquee feature, the defining aspect that makes Graveyard Keeper 2 itself rather than another thing like it. It isn't complex in an interesting, brain-stimulating way; it's just for every one task you want to perform, there's a gaggle of prerequisite tasks you have to go through first. I reckon there’s some kind of elevated sicko audience appeal thing happening here, for the people who look at Story of Seasons and think it’s for babies, and yearn for a labor sim game that has digital friction akin to the real damage done to your bones and muscles by manual labor in reality. Those folks are out there, certainly.

Personally, I’d rather jump into a grave in real life than go through a laborious process to build one in a video game. There aren’t enough jokes in the world a comical floating skull could crack to make that an appealing use of my limited time. I don’t even like Planescape Torment that much. There’s probably an audience for Graveyard Keeper 2, the kinds of people who achieve fulfillment from spreadsheets and min/maxing every ounce of video game they ever lay hands on. That’s descriptive; I’ve met people like that. More power to them and their immaculately programmed Excel columns. But even on top of that, with the weird ways this game delivers its scenario and means of progress, there wasn’t much else on top of the grinding to motivate my continued presence in this world. I’d rather play something that doesn’t feel like unpaid employment.

Graveyard Keeper 2 is available on September 22, 2026 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, and PC. A PC code was provided by the publisher for this review.

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Review for
Graveyard Keeper 2
7
Pros

• Lots of things to do
• Takes management sim to a whole new level
• Funny skull man

Cons

• Takes management sim to a whole new level (of grinding and menial task-making)
• Odd tone and onboarding makes motivations and storytelling awkward and unclear
• Feels like a second job