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Other Projects => Other Games => Topic started by: Jimmy on August 24, 2018, 05:45:14 pm

Title: Graveyard Keeper - Can You Dig It?
Post by: Jimmy on August 24, 2018, 05:45:14 pm: The Official Site (https://www.graveyardkeeper.com/)
The Steam Site (https://store.steampowered.com/app/599140/Graveyard_Keeper/)
The Launch Trailer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zd5S5rlKf_M)

(https://i.imgur.com/OoyKQjq.gif)

So what do you say about this game?

Essentially, it's in the genre of a Stardew Valley style resource management and building sim, but instead of a farm, your main focus is growing your graveyard.

That being said, there's a sideline of farming, though without the details of watering or growth time, a fishing minigame ripped straight from Stardew Valley, and a lot of grinding.

Seriously, do not play this game if you don't like performing the same tasks over and over for incremental increases. The core mechanic of the game uses three types of 'tech points' to gate your advancement in the technology tree, and whilst red and green are plentiful, the blue tech points are artificially scarce, stretching out the game's playtime if you're the type that wants to unlock all the late game goodies.

If you don't mind this, the overall aesthetic of the game is great, with tongue-in-cheek gallows humor at every turn. You dissect cadavers for parts, which are just another resource you can use to craft upgrades. Need paper and ink? Take some human skin and turn it into vellum, then mix the cremated ashes of a corpse with the oil pressed from human fat to get a vial of black ink. You can use these to pen down notes for a new sermon at your church!

I've had fun with it, spending a few days learning how best to bury bodies for fun and profit. Anyone else tried it?
Title: Re: Graveyard Keeper - Can You Dig It?
Post by: Frumple on August 24, 2018, 09:48:00 pm: Haven't tried it, but I've been watching gameplay vids off and on. It does look interesting, and it's been tempting me. Also yeah the aesthetics are pretty on point.

... that said, if I ever do get around to playing it step 1 will be pointing cheat engine at it and freezing the stamina bar at full. It looks like it'd be notably more enjoyable without having to deal with that, heh.
Title: Re: Graveyard Keeper - Can You Dig It?
Post by: Gabeux on August 25, 2018, 04:39:54 am: I played some hours of this and it's really fun for folks that like the general flow of Stardew Valley (or similar games).
But since the social aspect is pretty much nonexistant (very barebones friendship bar that goes up as you do pre-defined scripted quests), it might not be guaranteed that someone who liked Stardew Valley will like it.

If you really wanna advance, you will be working on questing, building, crafting and so on 100% of the time. There's very few "downtime" moments (I haven't heard of any festivals/holidays in-game, although it's on the game description so it must be some later game event). There's no social cutscenes and all that to give you a break from the flow (or grind).

All that said, if you do see that usual Stardew Valley 'grind' as enjoyable ('flow') then definitely the game is for you. There's always something to do and there's good humor and weird, funny mechanics in the game. I really like it.
Specially if you play it blind (without spoiling yourself).

Funny enough I took a break on it to start playing My Time at Portia, which is under the same genre.
I also wanted to make a thread about Graveyard Keeper but..too lazy these days. :P
Title: Re: Graveyard Keeper - Can You Dig It?
Post by: alexpoysky on August 25, 2018, 06:47:00 am: It's pretty fun, but the mid-late game becomes an absolute slog.

There's another point that kinda stumped me, and it was when transitioning to blue research points, until finding out I had to research things in my cellar using points I'd only get once a week and specifically had to investigate THAT thing, I was grinding out sand to make glass which would give a whopping 1 point. Maddening!

Besides that the game is pretty fun as I said, enjoyable for the first ten hours or so. I won't be beating it due to the grind however, but my review is quite positive.
Title: Re: Graveyard Keeper - Can You Dig It?
Post by: Jopax on August 26, 2018, 04:37:29 am: I played it for a bit and decided that it ain't for me. I love SV and I don't really mind that there's grinding involved, but, just like in Punch Club the devs insist on making the majority of the grind an uninvolving waste of time. Having shit both take time and cost energy is dumb and only there to prolong the grind needlessly, pick either and stick with it, doing both is incredibly annoying, especially since it mostly comes down to holding down a single button while the dude whittles away at one of the workstations.
Title: Re: Graveyard Keeper - Can You Dig It?
Post by: heydude6 on August 27, 2018, 07:29:25 pm: One thing about this game that surprised me is the speed-running opportunities it offers. One of the first tasks in the game is to be able to smelt iron ore and craft your own metal parts. Problem is, to make an anvil and a forge you need metal parts. Kind of a catch 22 you know? Thankfully you can buy metal parts at the blacksmith.

Now the stupid way of seizing the means of production is to keep grinding bodies for burial certificates until you get enough money to buy the 6 iron parts which will be enough to build both the anvil and the forge. This will require 3 burial certificates to accomplish and a minimum of 3 in-game days assuming you didn't accidentally use your parts or coins on something else. Though even then, the donkey will sometimes skip a day meaning it could take even longer.

A smarter way to handle it would be to buy two metal parts from the blacksmith after killing the slimes, then when you get home you build a wooden anvil. The next day after you bury the body, you go to the blacksmith and instead buy a metal ingot and another part. Use your anvil to convert the ingot to parts and voila, you are now capable of forging your own iron. This only takes two burial certificates, two days (minus the short time spent grinding for the exp required to unlock the smithing gear), and leaves you with a decent amount of spare change

Thing is, the game offers other opportunities to speed yourself up. If you find that it takes too long to go to the town for example, then you can clear out the blockage in your cellar to unlock a tunnel that can take you to the town faster. My problem though is that there are plenty of times when game will give you options that when taken will end up slowing you down significantly. The first thing you want to buy with blue points for example is the ability to build church benches. This will improve the chances of your first sermon succeeding granting you more faith and allowing you to do more studying to get more blue points. The first thing you will want to study as well will likely be organs harvested from corpses, those give a decent amount of blue points. I didn't do any of that unfortunately (I bought the church worktable instead, hoping to make flyers for a quest and not realizing that I first needed some way of making paper) and I was forced to slowly grind until I could unlock those correct options I listed above. That's not fun. Slowly grinding is never fun.

Anyway that's all I have to say about it. Hope the game develops a speedrunning community one day. Don't know if I could recommend a purchase.
Title: Re: Graveyard Keeper - Can You Dig It?
Post by: Gabeux on August 27, 2018, 10:43:41 pm: Yeppers, as I, for some reason, like this sort of thing (finding the fastest/best strategies and understanding the 'flowchart' of a game), it was fun finding ways to cut through the grind as fast as possible. But after many in-game days doing it, I couldn't still find anything other than that to do. It's really weird.
I really do appreciate the art/sound/style/mechanics in the game. Having your own church, giving sermons, while managing the graveyard outside and planting more crops and smelting more metal than a dedicated farmer and blacksmith!?

But damn, it kinda feels like if someone punched through and ripped Stardew Valley's heart and spirit off, replaced it with more industry/crafting/gathering stuff and moved away.
I'm still really enjoying My Time at Portia (I'm surprised) and haven't come back to this yet...weird enough MTAP is in Early Access while this came out as a finished game.. ???
Title: Re: Graveyard Keeper - Can You Dig It?
Post by: The Dystopian on August 29, 2018, 12:19:00 am: I've been playing it for a while now and it's not without it's flaws but I like it.

But anyway, I just realized that I got a steam coupon for it worth 25% OFF that's only good until tomorrow, If someone want's it just send me a PM (with your steam account name) and it's yours.
Title: Re: Graveyard Keeper - Can You Dig It?
Post by: Sergius on August 29, 2018, 04:39:12 pm: Played it until the last mission, I'm stuck because of some bug the Merchant didn't acknowledge a previous mission and won't let me finish. So that's there, I don't feel like starting a new game with the latest version (my game was started with the first release and I've been patching it), there's just too much grind for some things like money to buy Aristocrat titles and whatnot, and sometimes you only have one thing left to do and can only do it once a week, so waiting for the next week over and over is painful.

I do love most of the game. Getting super awesome 9+ quality graves is neat.
Title: Re: Graveyard Keeper - Can You Dig It?
Post by: Jimmy on August 29, 2018, 06:46:36 pm: A weird thing I've noticed is that if you get a 2 red/4 white skull corpse, then pick the right important organ to remove the two red skulls, if you then remove the fat and blood afterwards, it'll contribute a passive +2 graveyard rating when it's buried, even if there's no decorations on the grave.

I'm thinking this is a bug, maybe?

Anyway, I'm currently grinding out books, and I've got a 10% chance of making a silver star notes from bronze stories, and gold star notes from silver star stories. It's a hell of a grind, though, with a ton of restarts to succeed.
Title: Re: Graveyard Keeper - Can You Dig It?
Post by: Rakonas on August 29, 2018, 07:26:27 pm: Quote from: Jimmy on August 29, 2018, 06:46:36 pm
A weird thing I've noticed is that if you get a 2 red/4 white skull corpse, then pick the right important organ to remove the two red skulls, if you then remove the fat and blood afterwards, it'll contribute a passive +2 graveyard rating when it's buried, even if there's no decorations on the grave.

I'm thinking this is a bug, maybe?

Anyway, I'm currently grinding out books, and I've got a 10% chance of making a silver star notes from bronze stories, and gold star notes from silver star stories. It's a hell of a grind, though, with a ton of restarts to succeed.

So they don't ever in game explain it to you, but removing intestines/heart/brain has removes a few random skulls, while removing fat and blood actually turns red skulls into white skulls.

So you should always, always from the start of the game remove the blood and fat as part of corpse preparation.
Title: Re: Graveyard Keeper - Can You Dig It?
Post by: Jimmy on August 29, 2018, 09:57:21 pm: Yeah, I knew that part. I'm talking about adding bonus graveyard points to a corpse before it's buried.

Try this: Take a corpse with 2 red skulls, and four white skulls.

First, remove either brain, heart, or intestines to remove the two red skulls (reload if required, it's always the same every time).

Your corpse should have only 4 white skulls left at this stage.

Second, remove blood and fat.

Your corpse should have 6 white skulls now.

Bury the corpse in your graveyard.

The corpse should grant +2 quality to your graveyard even without any additions to the grave, while still allowing a maximum of 6 white skulls of quality improvement.
Title: Re: Graveyard Keeper - Can You Dig It?
Post by: Sergius on August 29, 2018, 10:54:52 pm: Removing an organ actually substracts and adds skulls, doesn't really exchange for each other. The bug is that if you have zero red skulls, and substract one red skull, there's like "-1 red skulls". You can sorta see it because the skull bar is off-center. Red skulls lower the current score, but don't actually affect the maximum (so it's not important to have zero red skulls if you have enough decoration to offset them), but the operation that adds white skulls usually deletes red skulls anyway.

Having negative red skulls add to the current score, but you can't go over the maximum (which is decided by white skulls), so it just means you need fewer decoration to reach the max score.

The best fence plus the best gravestone add like 12 decoration, the highest amount of white skulls I've reached is 10 (maybe you can get more with a specific sermon that add both red and white skulls), you could probably get away with 10 white and 2 red skulls or 11/1 (if that's possible). There's one late-game research that tells you exactly which organ removes and adds what, corpses with lots of skulls you usually can't remove an important organ without deleting at least 1 white skull so probably better to skip 'em.
Title: Re: Graveyard Keeper - Can You Dig It?
Post by: lastverb on August 30, 2018, 02:56:14 am: Assuming 2/4 corpse is standard you use for burying, you can only get 11 with such corpse. Removing red skulls is easy and there is only so many things you can do to add whites. +2 from blood/fat and 5 from injections: +1 glue, +1 lye (+1 red), +1 silver (-1 red) and +2 gold (-2 red).
Then you can rarely get 1/5 corpses from donkey allowing for 12 (I assume it's max from grave interface). You can't get better graves than that, but sermon (I have never used, so don't know for sure) is supposed to add skulls to that socialist donkey's corpses. Also I think i had 6 whites on one of starting burried corpses (none of them have any processing) - the one ghost wanted me to dump.
Title: Re: Graveyard Keeper - Can You Dig It?
Post by: Sergius on August 30, 2018, 04:30:05 pm: I was almost sure you can't mix injections tho, maybe I should have tested that instead of trusting the internets. I normally only bury corpses that arrive with 5 or 6 white skulls.
Max grave is +7 from gravestone and +5 from fence, should be 12 unless exploiting the negative red skull bug.
Title: Re: Graveyard Keeper - Can You Dig It?
Post by: lastverb on August 31, 2018, 09:27:40 am: I have also read that stupid thingy with injections, but there is much false stuff from beta and such circulating. It also implicated you can use many injections as long as they are same type. I tried to get big boost as soon as I got glue injections and found out it's other way around. I couldn't put in 2nd glue, but did put a preservative injection.
Title: Re: Graveyard Keeper - Can You Dig It?
Post by: Jimmy on August 31, 2018, 08:31:28 pm: I've yet to begin with working on my corpses using embalming. It's gonna be a long slog working through my graveyard and retreating all the corpses there, especially since gold is so scarce. I'm holding off until I build up a decent stockpile of treatments so I'm not repeating myself later.

In other news, I just murdered Geralt of Rivia! That was a fun easter-egg.
Title: Re: Graveyard Keeper - Can You Dig It?
Post by: Jimmy on September 08, 2018, 11:39:38 am: Finally beat the game!

258 game days, with a 433 graveyard rating and 82 church. I was aiming for a completion inside a game year, and it turned out it wasn't that hard to achieve.

I definitely could have optimized my playthrough better, but overall I'm happy enough to call this one a win and shelve this game.
Title: Re: Graveyard Keeper - Can You Dig It?
Post by: forsaken1111 on September 17, 2018, 04:06:14 am: Is there any reason to optimize for speed? Does the game have a soft time limit like stardew valley?
Title: Re: Graveyard Keeper - Can You Dig It?
Post by: heydude6 on September 17, 2018, 06:37:22 am: Minimizing tedium is one reason why you might want to do it. You get to unlock more options sooner. Also, if you’ve ever played a zachtronics game you’d know that optimization is inherently enjoyable.
Title: Re: Graveyard Keeper - Can You Dig It?
Post by: Yolan on September 17, 2018, 11:41:16 am: I found a really good way to minimize the tedium actually...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
I stopped playing this terrible game. *badum tish*