REVIEW: Graveyard Keeper: Game of Crone


Title	Graveyard Keeper: Game of Crone
Developer	Lazy Bear Games
Publisher	tinyBuild
Release Date	October 27th, 2020
Genre	Adventure, Farming, Indie, Simulation, RPG
Platform	PC (Steam), Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Android, iOS
Age Rating	ESRB: T for Teen
Official Website

Game of Crone is the third DLC for Graveyard Keeper (the first one was a free update). The graveyard keeper soon finds himself helping escaped prisoners of the Inquisition to survive on their own in the wilderness. He’ll have to collect the needed resources and craft others in order to build structures in the camp, like a well. As he continues to help those who have now entrusted their lives to him, he’ll also uncover a dark truth. A cruel game became the Great Blast, leading to the return of the Ancient Curse!

Graveyard Keeper: Game of Crone | Meager Beginnings — The camp starts out with just a few tents, a camp fire, and a storage area.

At the start of the refugee story line, they only have a couple of tents, a fire, and a storage area for food. There are only a couple of refugees, as they don’t yet have the resources to support more. One is the camp leader, Teodoro. The graveyard keeper will need to bring them food and water at first. Keeping the camp stocked allows happiness to increase. This is important, because each structure you build also requires a certain level of happiness. When you build a structure, happiness is spent like a currency. As a result, you’ll have to wait awhile for it to rise high enough again to build another structure. As you build things like the well and the farm, the camp becomes more self sufficient and doesn’t need you to bring them food and water yourself much anymore. This may sound tedious early on, but they actually don’t go through food and water as fast as you might expect.

Graveyard Keeper: Game of Crone | Camp Location — The refugee camp is along a road that leads due north from the church. You can just see the steeple of the church at the bottom of the map, while the camp is near the top of the map.

Teodoro will give you most of your early tasks to do around the camp, but soon one of the new refugees, an old lady, will give you some as well. She wants you to build her a kitchen area. This, of course, allows the camp to produce some better food items. Once you get basic facilities up and running (the well, farm, kitchen, beehives), you’ll be able to upgrade some of them. You’ll still have to wait for camp happiness to get high enough to build each thing, though. This stat updates several times per day, so you’ll be waiting a while. As a result, you’ll have plenty of time to leave and work on other stuff, or craft items needed for the next camp task.

Graveyard Keeper: Game of Crone | Basic Structures — Here, several basic structures have been built. In fact, the kitchen (at the right), and the well just below it have been upgraded.

The Graveyard Keeper: Game of Crone DLC also adds some new items to the game, while improving some others. For example, there are seed bags that let you carry more stuff. You can put seeds in the bag, so they take up less space in your inventory. You can also obtain new dishes to craft and eat, sell, or give to the camp. It adds some more story elements to the game, such as secrets about certain characters, and the mysterious death of your predecessor. You’ll find yourself investigating a vampire attack on the local village, and gain the ability to craft new fences and gravestones for the graveyard. You can also get handy teleportation scrolls. Why walk everywhere when that is so slow? There are also some new character perks to unlock, and multiple endings to the camp story. Some of the perks are earned depending on which ending you get, so you have to choose which one you want.

Graveyard Keeper: Game of Crone | Construction At Night — This is camp construction at night, because I was still there anyway. The only useable option is bringing in another new refugee, as I didn’t have enough materials left for the other options.

In the sound and music department, the refugee camp has a chipper theme song that plays as soon as you walk into its area. It embodies the refugees’ hopeful outlook on the future. The sound effects in the area are mostly simple sounds of the refugees (such as Teodoro occasionally coughing), you building things, or weather effects. Both the music and sound are well done.

Graveyard Keeper: Game of Crone | Talking to Teodoro — Teodoro thanks the graveyard keeper for a task well done.

Graveyard Keeper: Game of Crone is a nice addition to the game, though it is of course not as engrossing as the base game. I’ve spent over 30 hours with the game so far, and a chunk of that was getting far enough to start diving into the DLC. That is not even close to the total amount of gameplay here, though, as that is not including a big chunk of main game content that I haven’t gotten into yet, since I am reviewing the DLC. You can start playing this expansion fairly early on in the game. To be honest, you don’t really need any advanced technologies to build out the refugee camp. Later on, you will need some steel, though. This also means the gameplay in this expansion doesn’t feel quite as grindy as the main game, as a lot of the materials you need are easy to get. The Graveyard Keeper: Game Of Crone DLC is available on Steam for $9.99, while the base game is $19.99. Overall, the game and this expansion are fun, and you can sink quite a lot of time into them. Are you brave enough to help the refugees, even though it may put an Inquisition target on your own back?