The dead have risen – now send them back to their graves! In Graveyard Keeper 2, billed as the 'most accurately inaccurate medieval cemetery simulator', players must return to the graveyard. This time, there's automation, a zombie-led city recapture and much more beyond that.
The story picks up a few years after the events of the first instalment. The protagonist wakes up in a prison cell and discovers that he must save the kingdom from a zombie apocalypse and protect the town. Building heavily on its predecessor, the game offers a macabre take on traditional farming simulations such as Stardew Valley. Alongside typical farming activities such as tending to crops and livestock, digging graves and gathering everyday materials as well as more morbid items such as hearts, bones and brains, the game offers a variety of tasks ranging from dark to humorous and ethically questionable, all set in a world featuring grotesque characters, twisted humour and a talking skull. Humour is subjective, and some of it hits the spot while other parts are a bit much. On the plus side, though, the dialogues are now fully voiced in English. The German version only offers German subtitles and interfaces.
Graveyard Keeper 2 © Lazy Bear Games & tinyBuild
Players, also known as Keepers, dissect corpses and use human remains, such as blood and fat, to craft items. They can manage their graveyard, craft items, upgrade abilities, complete storylines, fish, trade and customise their character, among other things. While unlocking new technologies in previous games was a lengthy process, resources and new skills are now available more quickly. However, the sheer volume of tasks and crafting options has increased significantly. There is a lot to do in the world, and exploration plays an important role, as players are not always led by the hand. Nevertheless, there are a few bottlenecks in the game that slow down progress. At least traversing the environment has been improved, with a fast-travel function via waypoints and a clearer, flowchart-style tech tree.
Alongside the traditional upkeep of the medieval cemetery, automation becomes more important later on. Keepers can set up production lines using unusual machines crafted from resources such as human remains to automate the extraction and processing of raw materials – thereby making repetitive tasks easier.
As in the original game, the Keeper has a wide range of tasks to perform, the most important of which are linked to specific days of the week. One of these weekly tasks is liberating the town, with city battles only taking place on a specific day. These battles do not take place in special arenas, but right on the streets. Following triumphs, the streets will come to life with townspeople and market stalls.
Rather than simply using zombies as unskilled labourers, players can now assemble their own army of the undead. These troops must be equipped with armour and weapons forged by the player in order to lead them into tactical battles against the approaching zombie hordes. Players use materials to build barricades and towers, and zombies become their "soldiers".
Overall, the combination of cemetery management, town reconstruction, and battles with a personal army of the undead offers a larger and more varied experience in Graveyard Keeper 2, not to mention the additional side quests. Incidentally, user reviews on Steam criticise that the game's artworks appears to have been created using AI, which is not mentioned on the store page.
The game was developed by Lazy Bear Games, an independent game studio based in Lithuania. The studio is known for Punch Club, Swag and Sorcery, Bandle Tale: A League of Legends Story, Bloomtown: A Different Story, and of course Graveyard Keeper. The publisher is tinyBuild. Although based in Seattle, USA, the company has established a presence with studios in the USA, the Netherlands and Eastern Europe. Starting out as an indie game developer, the company has evolved into a developer-publisher committed to 'creating long-term partnerships'. They have published dozens of games, including Hello Neighbor, Graveyard Keeper, SpeedRunners, I Am Future, The King is Watching, and many more. Two potential blockbusters are in the publisher's line-up: the immersive RPG sandbox Streets of Rogue 2 and Kingmakers. The wild mix in Kingmakers has attracted a lot of attention. It is an action/strategy sandbox game set in the Middle Ages featuring time travel and an extensive array of modern weaponry, including machine guns used against knights.
Graveyard Keeper 2 © Lazy Bear Games & tinyBuild
Graveyard Keeper 2 launched on 22 September 2026 for €24.99 on Steam, Epic Games Store, GOG, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2. Within two days, the game had sold over 400,000 copies across all platforms.
The game's success on launch day on Steam can be attributed to the popularity of the original and some clever marketing ideas. Graveyard Keeper, released in 2018, reached almost 17,000 concurrent players at launch — a strong figure — but the highest value of 46,305 was achieved in April 2026, when the game was released as a free-to-keep title. To date, the game has reached over ten million players. A demo was released shortly before Graveyard Keeper 2, which had 30,290 simultaneous active players, and progress could be carried over to the full version.
Shortly before the launch, Alex Nichiporchik, CEO of tinyBuild, wrote on X: "Already at over $3m / 190k pre orders and 1m wishlists. We announced it by giving away the original for free, creating a new Steam meta. Wishlists spiked immediately and last month we launched pre orders. The idea was to do pre orders while the demo is live, and to have the demo have a transferable save file. Players can try it, and pre order if they like it for some pre order bonuses like an in game SAUNA. This also allowed us to see how players like the first few hours of the game which are critical to get you into the long game. Demo players will pick up where they left off (...). "
Following the release of Graveyard Keeper 2, the peak CCU count rose to 60,538 over the first weekend. This set a new record for the publisher, far surpassing Sand: Raiders of Sophie (41,679) and ReStory: Chill Electronics Repairs (19,647). These two games were also released by tinyBuild in 2026.
Graveyard Keeper 2 refines and expands upon the macabre concept of its predecessor in many ways, such as through automation and the reclaiming of the town.
