Graveyard Keeper 2 Review: Bigger Cemetery, Same Old Grind

What it is

Graveyard Keeper 2 is the sequel to the 2018 cult hit that turned corpse disposal into a management sim, developed by Lazy Bear Games and published by tinyBuild. It launched today, September 22, 2026, on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch and Switch 2. Standard price is 24.99 EUR, with a 20 percent launch discount bringing it to 19.99. The free demo covers the first three to four hours and your save carries over, which is exactly how a sequel like this should be sold.

How it plays

You are no longer a lost keeper who woke up in the wrong century. This time you are the Grand Inquisitor, a title that sounds a lot more powerful than it feels when you are digging your first grave with a rusty shovel. The core loop is the same and still excellent: a body arrives, you decide how much of it becomes fertilizer, meat, science or a decent burial, and every decision feeds a web of tech trees that keeps expanding for dozens of hours.

The headline addition is the Town. Rather than a handful of NPCs standing in fixed spots, you rebuild a settlement quest by quest and unlock production chains as you do. Automation is far more generous than in the original, and the zombie workforce is no longer a late-game reward but the backbone of the economy. Setting up a corpse-powered lumber mill and watching it run while you go fishing is peak Graveyard Keeper.

The second big change is combat. The realm is under a zombie apocalypse, and you raise your own undead to push it back, building towers and fortifications for the raids. It is tactical enough to be more than a distraction, but it is clearly the newest and least polished system here.

The highs

- The writing is still the driest, most cynical thing in the genre. The clergy, the merchants, the inquisition itself - everyone is a hypocrite and the game knows it. - Automation actually respects your time now. The original's endless carrying of buckets is mostly gone. - Ethical dilemmas have real consequences. Sell rotten meat to the town and the town remembers. - The pixel art has grown up: more detail, better lighting, real atmosphere in the crypt.

The lows

- Grind. Lazy Bear has not lost the habit of gating a tiny upgrade behind three separate resource chains and a full in-game week. - The combat, for all its ambition, is stiff. Units get stuck on terrain, and there is not much to do once the fight starts except watch. - Tutorialization is thin. Veterans will be fine; newcomers will spend the first evening on a wiki. - No Croatian localization, though it ships in 11 languages including German.

Who it is for

If you finished the first game and its DLC, this is the sequel you wanted and you can stop reading. If you bounced off the original because it wasted your time, the sequel fixes about half of that and keeps the other half on purpose. Newcomers should play the demo first - it is a genuinely honest slice.

Verdict

A better, bigger, more comfortable Graveyard Keeper that still refuses to be a comfortable game. At the launch price it is an easy recommendation for fans and a fair gamble for everyone else.

Score: 7/10

Image: Kieran Campbell / CC BY-SA 2.0, source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Old_St._Mary%27s_Church_and_Graveyard,_Balscaddan_-_geograph.org.uk_-_766769.jpg