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Graveyard Keeper is a slightly amusing game that has you manage a medieval graveyard while facing ethical dilemmas and making questionable decisions. It's officially out now with Linux support.

About the game:

Graveyard Keeper is the most inaccurate medieval cemetery management sim of all time. Build and manage your own graveyard, and expand into other ventures, while finding shortcuts to cut costs. Use all the resources you can find. After all, this is a game about the spirit of capitalism, and doing whatever it takes to build a thriving business. And it’s also a love story.

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My key was only activated today (provided by the publisher before release), so I haven't had a chance to spend a lot of time with it. Even so, I want to highlight a few issues that I've encountered.

Firstly, the fancy software cursor they use is a little sluggish. You can switch to a hardware cursor (your system cursor) in the settings, but this will make it invisible until you restart the game. There's also some pretty harsh performance drops in certain areas too. Walking through the wheat fields for example on the way to the town, dropped performance hard down to 30FPS and below making it rather sluggish. Even in better areas, it still needs some improvements with a fair bit of micro-stutter.

It advertises full gamepad support, although through Steam and also trying out SC Controller, the Steam Controller wasn't picked up by the game at all. My Logitech F310 was also not picked up, so that's not great. I don't consider that a major blocker, since it plays great with a keyboard—still annoying though.

Features:

  • Face ethical dilemmas. Do you really want to spend money on that proper burger meat for the witch-burning festival, when you have so many resources lying around? 
  • Gather valuable materials and craft new items. Expand your Graveyard into a thriving business. Help yourself -- gather the valuable resources scattered across the surrounding areas, and explore what this land has to offer. 
  • Quests and corpses. These dead bodies don't need all those organs, do they? Why not grind them up and sell them to the local butcher? Or you can go on proper quests, you roleplayer.
  • Explore mysterious dungeons. No medieval game would be complete without those! Take a trip into the unknown, and find discover new alchemy ingredients -- which may or may not poison a whole bunch of nearby villagers.

What's interesting, is that it actually uses a similar system to Lazy Bear Games' last title, Punch Club, whereby doing different activities gives you coloured points towards learning different things in the skill tree.

So far, it seems quite relaxing. I've been able to do quite a lot, even in my relatively short play time. I've managed to learn a number of skills, clear out a lot of junk from around my graveyard and cut up some bodies into tasty meat. I'm currently attempting to get a fake seal of approval for my tasty human meat, to be able to sell it to a local in the nearest town.

It does seem like a fun game, certainly reminds me of Stardew Valley with a more amusing (and slightly gross) setting. So if Stardew Valley wasn't your cup for being to sweet, this just might be what you're after.

You can grab it from Humble Store and Steam. It's also on GOG, but once again GOG doesn't have the Linux build at release.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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24 comments
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HerrLange Aug 15, 2018
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Just bought it a minute before you released the posting based on your last posting. :-)

If tux give bux.
HerrLange Aug 15, 2018
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By the way, I had a 25% off coupon for this game on steam. Any idea where it came from? How can I find out?


Last edited by HerrLange on 15 August 2018 at 7:48 pm UTC
norg Aug 15, 2018
Quoting: madchaotikanBy the way, I had a 25% off coupon for this game on steam. Any idea where it came from? How can I find out?
I had it, too. I would guess I had it due to owning Punch Club maybe?!

I can't confirm the cursor issue and the performance issue on my ArchLinux systems with Intel GPU and Nvidia GPU. Might be a driver/version issue?
micha Aug 15, 2018
Quoting: madchaotikanBy the way, I had a 25% off coupon for this game on steam. Any idea where it came from? How can I find out?

I had the same.. maybe if you wishlisted it?
mulletdeath Aug 15, 2018
Wishlisted it, though I'll probably get Stardew Valley first. I also typically prefer to play with a controller so I hope its controller support issues get patched.


Last edited by mulletdeath on 15 August 2018 at 8:19 pm UTC
Ehvis Aug 15, 2018
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Quoting: micha
Quoting: madchaotikanBy the way, I had a 25% off coupon for this game on steam. Any idea where it came from? How can I find out?

I had the same.. maybe if you wishlisted it?

Nope. I had it wishlisted for a long time, but no coupon. So most likely you own something else from them.
Avehicle7887 Aug 15, 2018
The Mac is also missing from GOG, I hope the Linux version makes it there too as I like these pixelated management sims.
14 Aug 16, 2018
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Three cheers for a same-day Linux release! Great news!
riusma Aug 16, 2018
Quoting: madchaotikanBy the way, I had a 25% off coupon for this game on steam. Any idea where it came from? How can I find out?

Same here! I do not have any game from the dev but I have one from the editor (The Final Station) so it should came from here I think! :)
silmeth Aug 16, 2018
Hmm, the gameplay video looks a lot like Stardew Valley – with the same fishing mechanics, similar dungeon crawling, and even farming on your land – but with corpses, cemetery-related skills, and witch-burning instead of countryside festivals.

Do they have / plan any form of multiplayer (Stardew Valley coop is quite fun, when you can share your farming, fishing and adventuring duties with somebody else)?

Anyway, it looks cool, probably gonna buy it, but I too would rather see working gamepad support.
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