Video Games · Review Aggregation · Game Design · Reception ExplainerReviews published 14 Sep 2026 · game not yet on sale · record to 20 Sep 2026
Eight years of a game two audiences could not agree about
The Verdict Before the Game
Graveyard Keeper came out in 2018 and its two audiences have disagreed about it ever since: 85% of fifty-five thousand Steam reviews are positive, while 30% of forty critics recommend it. On 22 September its sequel goes on sale. Seven critic scores for it already exist, and eleven published reviews, and two aggregators that answer differently — and nobody has played it.
What Happened
A verdict without an audience Every figure here was read at its own address on 20 September 2026. Aggregate scores and review counts move, so the reading date is part of the fact.
- 0Player reviews of Graveyard Keeper 2, which goes on sale on 22 September
- 7Critic scores Metacritic averages into the 71 it publishes
- 11Reviews OpenCritic lists for the same game, while publishing no average at all
- 526Steam reviews of the free demo — the only player signal that exists
| Standing | What | On whose record |
|---|---|---|
| Confirmed | Graveyard Keeper 2 has no player reviews. Its Steam page offers a pre-purchase and states “No user reviews”; the storefront’s own review endpoint returns a total of zero. The release date given on the store page, in the publisher’s announcement and on Metacritic is 22 September 2026. | Steam; Metacritic |
| Confirmed | Metacritic publishes 71 for the sequel from seven critic reviews — three positive, three mixed, one negative. All seven are dated between 14 and 18 September, before the game is on sale. | Metacritic |
| Confirmed | OpenCritic lists eleven reviews of the sequel and publishes no score. Its average, its tier and its percentile are all unset; it reports two of the eleven as Top Critics and 73% recommending. The page renders the missing percentile literally, as a ranking in the “-1th percentile”. | OpenCritic |
| Confirmed | The two aggregators share only four of their reviews. Both carry DualShockers, Shacknews, IGN Portugal and Gameliner. Metacritic alone carries GameSpew, SteamDeckHQ and The Wand Report; OpenCritic alone carries seven others. Four plus three is Metacritic’s seven; four plus seven is OpenCritic’s eleven; fourteen outlets in all. | Metacritic; OpenCritic |
| Confirmed | The one negative review in existence sits only in the set that publishes a number. The Wand Report’s 40 is on Metacritic and absent from OpenCritic, whose seven exclusive reviews are all positive or recommended, including a 10/10. | Metacritic; OpenCritic |
| Confirmed | The free demo, published on 14 September, carries 526 Steam reviews, 463 of them positive — 88%. It is the only thing players have been able to say anything about. | Steam |
| Confirmed | The first game’s two receptions are far apart and have stayed so. 85% of its 55,663 Steam reviews are positive; 30% of the 40 critics OpenCritic counts recommend it, which places it in the 28th percentile and the tier OpenCritic calls Weak. Metacritic has it at 69 from critics and 7.2 from 290 users. | Steam; Metacritic; OpenCritic |
| Confirmed | The mechanic players complained about most survives into the sequel, and the developer says so itself. Its combat dev log of 18 September states that city battles “will only be available on a certain day of the week”, and that the sewers are open “6/6” — the weekly gate and the six-day week, both intact. | The developer’s own dev log |
| Confirmed, not verifiable here | The April giveaway is reported to have taken the first game to a Steam peak of 46,305 concurrent players, nearly three times its previous record. That figure is attributed to SteamDB, which refused this record’s requests, so it is carried second-hand and no peak is stated at source anywhere on this page. | WN Hub, citing SteamDB |
| Unconfirmed | “Over four million units” sold of the first game. This is the publisher’s own figure, from its announcement press release, and it was repeated by the trade press explicitly as coming from that release. No independent sales figure was found. | tinyBuild’s press release; Nintendo Life |
| Unconfirmed | 120,000 Steam wishlists within twelve hours of the announcement, and 400,000 within the week. Both are the publisher’s chief executive posting on LinkedIn and X, relayed by trade press. One of those reports adds, on its own account, that a wishlist does not guarantee a sale. | Gamereactor; WN Hub |
| Guesswork | That the two aggregators differ because they sampled differently, rather than because they weigh the same reviews differently. This is a reading, and it is marked as one — but its premise is countable rather than interpretive: the overlap is four outlets of fourteen. | This page’s inference |
| Not public | Why the one negative review appears on one aggregator and not the other, and whether the sequel’s key art was made with generative AI. On the first, nothing read gives a reason. On the second there is an accusation from players and a denial from the studio’s co-founder, and nothing that settles it. | — |
The standing column is doing real work here. The measurements — review counts, aggregate scores, player counts, prices — are the strongest kind of fact this page has: each was read directly from the record that owns it, and a reader can reproduce any of them in a minute. The commercial figures are the weakest: every one of them is the publisher describing its own success, and none has been checked by anybody outside the company.
That ordering is the opposite of the one a reader might expect. Sales and wishlist numbers sound like hard facts and look like measurements; review counts sound like opinion. In this case the review counts are counted and the sales are asserted.
- 85%of the first game’s 55,663 Steam reviews are positive, across all languages
- 30%of the 40 critics OpenCritic counts recommend that same game
- 0player reviews of the sequel, two days before it goes on sale
Timeline
Eight years, four Halloweens and a launch that has not happened Dates from the developer’s own announcement feed and the storefront’s own listings, except where a row names someone else.
- 15 Aug 2018Graveyard Keeper releases. Lazy Bear Games develops, tinyBuild publishes. List price USD 19.99.
- 22 Aug 2018Eurogamer’s Malindy Hetfeld declines to recommend it: “Arcane busywork leaves little room for genuine pleasure in this fascinating and frustrating genre oddity.”
- 29 Oct 2018Breaking Dead ships free and folded into the base game: a Resurrection table and zombie workers who automate stone, wood, crafting, gardening and sales. The announcement ends “Happy Halloween!”
- 28 Oct 2019Stranger Sins, the first paid expansion, USD 9.99. It now stands at 81% of 496 Steam reviews.
- 27 Oct 2020Game Of Crone, USD 9.99. It stands at 69% of 529 reviews — Steam calls that Mixed.
- 27 Oct 2021Better Save Soul, USD 9.99 — the fourth expansion in four consecutive Octobers. It stands at 48% of 442 reviews, the only Graveyard Keeper product with a minority of positive reviews.
- 9 Apr 2026Graveyard Keeper 2 announced at the Triple-i Initiative Showcase. The press release advertises “enhanced pixel-art visuals” and says the first game has “sold over four million units”. The first game is made free to claim.
- 11 Apr 2026PC Gamer reports that players have read the key art as machine-generated, and that Lazy Bear’s co-founder has answered: “You may not believe me, but we’re not using the AI in Graveyard Keeper 2.”
- 13 Apr 2026The free claim period closes. Trade press relays the publisher’s wishlist figures: 120,000 within twelve hours, 400,000 within the week.
- 20 May 2026Dev log: zombies, first introduced in the original’s first DLC, now also run “semi-automatic machines in underground factories” and fight.
- 16 Jun 2026Dev log: The Town, the locked location teased by the first game’s Town Pass, is confirmed enterable and restorable.
- 30 Jul 2026Dev log, headed “Farewell, 2D compromises”: “we decided not to hold ourselves back and built everything in 3D”, with the camera angle fixed. The April press release had called it pixel art.
- 26 Aug 2026The release date is announced as 22 September and pre-orders open, with a sauna building and a platform-specific outfit as bonuses.
- 14 Sep 2026The free demo is published on Steam, Xbox, PlayStation and Switch 2, with saves that carry over. The first reviews appear the same day — five of Metacritic’s seven are dated to it.
- 18 Sep 2026Dev log on combat: city battles “will only be available on a certain day of the week”; the sewers are open “6/6”. The last of the seven Metacritic reviews is dated this day.
- 20 Sep 2026This record. Metacritic: 71 from seven. OpenCritic: eleven reviews, no score. Steam: no player reviews, and 526 on the demo. At 10:03 UTC the demo held 17,396 players and the 2018 game held 5,088.
- 22 Sep 2026Scheduled. Graveyard Keeper 2 goes on sale at USD 24.99 on PC, PlayStation, Xbox and both Switch generations. This has not happened.
Four expansions, four consecutive Octobers
Breaking Dead on 29 October 2018, Stranger Sins on 28 October 2019, Game Of Crone on 27 October 2020, Better Save Soul on 27 October 2021. The developer is explicit about why: the Breaking Dead announcement signs off “Happy Halloween!” It is a small thing, and it is the clearest evidence on the page that the expansions were scheduled to a calendar rather than to the game.
The last line of the timeline has not happened
22 September 2026 is a scheduled date, not a recorded one. It is on the page because the storefront, the publisher and both aggregators all state it, and it is marked as scheduled everywhere it appears. Everything above it was read from a record of something that had already happened; this row was read from a plan.
The Argument
Two aggregators, one set of reviews, different answers Attributed to the two sites’ own published pages. The reading drawn from them is marked as a reading.
On the same game, in the same week, Metacritic publishes 71 and OpenCritic publishes nothing at all. Neither is malfunctioning. Metacritic averages the seven reviews it has; OpenCritic holds a score back until it has enough Top Critic reviews, and it has two. One site answers a question it can answer badly, and the other declines to answer it.
The more useful finding is underneath both numbers. The two sites are not reading the same reviews. Fourteen outlets have published on this game; Metacritic has seven of them and OpenCritic has eleven, and only four appear in both. Metacritic’s exclusive three include the only negative review anyone has written — The Wand Report’s 40, which calls the game “laborious and filled with unnecessary and unoptimised grind”. OpenCritic’s exclusive seven are uniformly warm, up to and including a 10/10.
So the 71 is not a more pessimistic reading of a shared body of opinion. It is an average of a different, smaller, more negative sample — and a reader who takes it as the critical verdict is taking one sample of seven for a field of fourteen. That is a reading of the two pages rather than a claim either site makes, and it is offered as one; what is not a reading is the overlap, which anybody can count.
- 4 / 14outlets appear on both aggregators, out of fourteen that have published
- 1negative review exists, and it counts towards only one of the two scores
- 2Top Critic reviews OpenCritic has, which is why it publishes no average
Seven reviews is a number that moves
On seven scores, one more review at 40 pulls the average to about 67, and one more at 90 pushes it to about 73. The 71 is therefore not a measurement of critical opinion; it is where a very small sample happens to sit this week. This page states the count beside the score every time it uses it, for that reason.
What cannot be said yet, and will not be guessed
For eight years the first game’s players and its critics have disagreed by a wide margin. The obvious guess is that the sequel will do the same. There is no evidence for it, because the player half of that comparison does not exist yet and cannot until 22 September. The demo’s 88% is not a substitute: a free slice the storefront puts at three to four hours is chosen by the curious and rated by the interested, which is not the same population as the people who pay 24.99 USD and reach the late game.
What Others Add
What the first game was, and what the reviewers actually objected to The depth: the numbers side by side, the verdicts in their authors’ own words, and three things the storefront records that nobody advertises.
| Graveyard Keeper | Graveyard Keeper 2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Released | 15 Aug 2018 | 22 Sep 2026 |
| List price | USD 19.99 | USD 24.99 |
| Price on 20 September 2026 | USD 3.99 — 80% off | USD 19.99 — 20% pre-purchase discount |
| Steam reviews | 55,663 — 85% positive | none; the demo has 526 at 88% |
| Metacritic | 69, from 14 critic reviews | 71, from 7 critic reviews |
| OpenCritic | 65, with 30% of 40 critics recommending | no score; 11 reviews, 73% recommending |
| Interface languages | 11, including Simplified Chinese | 11, including Simplified Chinese; English is the only full voice track |
| Players at 10:03 UTC, 20 September 2026 | 5,088 | 17,396 — in the free demo |
Read the first game’s bad reviews next to its good ones and they are not arguing about the same thing. The complaint is remarkably consistent, and it is a complaint about labour. PlayGround.ru: the game is “a heaven for those who love to grind, and a real hell for everyone else”. Windows Central’s Brendan Lowry: “If you don’t mind doing extensive web research in order to understand the ins and outs of Graveyard Keeper’s gameplay progression, you’ll be able to enjoy the best of what the game has to offer” — and if you do mind, he says, play Stardew Valley instead. Nintendo Life’s Lewis White reaches the same comparison and the same conclusion.
What almost nobody attacks is the craft. The same reviews praise the writing, the art and the music: GamingTrend, which found the pace tedious, still credits “a wealth of well-developed diversions, fantastic art and music, and pitch-black comedic aesthetic”. COGconnected calls it “an engaging and rewarding farming sim weighed down by pacing and performance issues”. The dispute is not over whether the game is good. It is over how much unpaid work it asks for first.
That reframes the 85% on Steam. The people who bought it and stayed are, definitionally, the people who did not mind — and on a storefront where you choose what to buy, that self-selection is the whole difference between the two figures. A critic is assigned a game; a buyer picks one.
And it explains the strangest thing the first game ever did. Ten weeks after launch, the studio shipped Breaking Dead free, and what it added was automation: zombie workers to quarry, farm, craft and sell. The single most-criticised feature was answered by giving the labour away to the undead, at no charge, in time for Halloween.
The expansions
The free one is the best liked
- Breaking Dead was free and was folded into the base game, so it has no separate rating — but it is the one the other reviews keep crediting.
- The three paid ones fall steadily: Stranger Sins 81%, Game Of Crone 69%, Better Save Soul 48%.
- Better Save Soul, at 212 positive of 442, is the only product in the series where most reviewers did not recommend it.
The languages
Eleven languages, and Traditional Chinese is not one of them
- Both games list Simplified Chinese. Neither lists Traditional Chinese, on the storefront’s own language table.
- The sequel adds Turkish and drops Italian relative to the first, so the count stays at eleven either way.
- English is the only track with full voice acting — itself one of the sequel’s advertised improvements.
The price
The whole first game costs under ten dollars today
- The base game is USD 3.99, down 80% from 19.99, and each paid expansion is USD 1.99, down from 9.99.
- Everything together is USD 9.96 today against USD 49.96 at list — and Breaking Dead, the expansion that fixed the most-criticised thing, is in the base game at no cost either way.
- The sequel is USD 19.99 until release, when its 20% pre-purchase discount ends.
The publisher says pixel art; the developer says 3D
The April press release advertises “enhanced pixel-art visuals”. The developer’s own art dev log in July is headed “Farewell, 2D compromises” and says they “built everything in 3D”, keeping a fixed camera. Both are the same two companies describing the same game, four months apart, and both are on the record. A reader who was promised pixel art by the first and met the second is not being unreasonable.
Conclusion
What to hold, and what to wait for Five things this record supports, in the order a reader is likely to need them.
- Read any score for the sequel with its sample size attached. Metacritic’s 71 rests on seven reviews and moves by about three points with each new one. OpenCritic has eleven reviews and publishes no number at all, which is a statement about its threshold and not about the game.
- Do not read the two aggregate figures as two opinions of one thing. They overlap on four outlets of fourteen. The one negative review written so far counts towards one of them and not the other, which is enough on its own to separate the answers.
- If the first game’s complaint was yours, check whether it survived. It did, in part: the developer’s own combat dev log confirms that some activities remain locked to one day of the week and that the week is still six days long. Faster movement, fast travel and voice acting are the advertised answers to the rest.
- The first game is a known quantity and is currently USD 3.99. Eight years of reviews say clearly who it suits: people who enjoy long production chains and do not mind consulting a wiki. Everyone the critics warned off was warned off for one reason, and that reason has not changed. Breaking Dead, which automates the worst of it, is included at no cost.
- For the sequel, the thing worth waiting for is the half of the record that does not exist yet. On this series, the player figure and the critic figure have never agreed, and only one of them is in. It arrives on 22 September, and the demo’s 88% of 526 is not it.
A number with one audience in it
For two more days, every published figure about Graveyard Keeper 2 comes from people who were given it to write about. That is not a criticism of them; it is what a review embargo is for, and it is how a buyer gets any information at all before deciding. It is worth saying plainly only because the series it belongs to is the clearest case in this record of critics and buyers reaching different conclusions from the same game.
Three things this page refuses to settle
Whether the sequel’s key art was made with generative AI — there is an accusation and a denial and nothing more. Whether the first game has sold four million copies — that is the publisher’s own figure and no independent one was found. And whether the sequel is any good — seven scores from outlets working to an embargo are seven scores, and the page reports their spread rather than their average alone.