On April 9, Lazy Bear Games announced its "crafting RPG" Graveyard Keeper 2 with a trailer—the first footage also popped up during the Triple-i livestream. The video doesn’t give an exact release date, but it does pin the launch window to 2026.

Graveyard Keeper is a small phenomenon. Its 2D visuals barely look better than something off a 40-year-old Commodore Amiga, and yet the game still turned into a serious indie hit. According to SteamSpy, somewhere between 1 and 2 million Steam users own the graveyard management sim by now.

I played it back in 2018, the year it came out, and the thing that really sold me was its morbid, offbeat sense of humor. The weird little "voice acting" alone was hilarious, and it’s no surprise a few other indie games later borrowed the idea.

When a game is this successful, a sequel is the obvious next move. Still, Graveyard Keeper 2 took almost eight years to become official, which is exactly why fans are reacting with even more excitement now.

Graveyard Keeper 2 blows up the original concept

I caught the news during the Triple-i livestream mentioned above, which aired on YouTube on April 9. That’s where the announcement trailer for Graveyard Keeper 2 premiered (see below). At just under 1:20, it wasn’t exactly a full breakdown, but it still got across the biggest changes coming to this undertaker-flavored world.

The biggest thing that stood out was how much wider the sequel’s scope seems to be. The first game focused mostly on graveyard management, crafting, and dungeon trips. This follow-up adds a larger town, a zombie threat at the center of the story, and proper battles against an undead army—as you can see in the image above.

More town-building, defense, and combat

Honestly, the whole thing has a much more militarized vibe this time around. You build towers and fortifications, craft weapons and armor, and send your own undead troops into battle. That also makes the town a much bigger part of the core loop. The original leaned more toward the graveyard, the church, village life, crafting chains, and standalone questlines. The sequel, by contrast, is all about rebuilding the town and turning the worries of its residents into a profitable system, at least according to Lazy Bear Games.

Automation also seems set to play a much bigger role in Graveyard Keeper 2. That side of the game was already there in the first entry and its DLCs Breaking Dead and Better Save Soul, where zombie workers and zombie workstations mattered quite a bit. This sequel, though, is pushing that idea far more openly as one of its central pillars.

You’ll be doing all this as the Grand Inquisitor. Your job, as mentioned, is to rebuild a town and protect the entire kingdom from a zombie apocalypse using an undead army of your own. The tone still looks as macabre and grotesquely funny as ever—and yes, the famous "talking skull" from the first game appears to be back too.

PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, and Switch 2 are already confirmed as release platforms. What’s still unclear is whether every version will launch at the same time. A Steam release, though, is basically locked in now that the Graveyard Keeper 2 store page is live. What remains to be seen is whether the game will also get a DRM-free release on GOG. The first Graveyard Keeper is already available there, after all.

Graveyard Keeper is now free on Steam

Speaking of which: if you still don’t own the first game on Steam and want to change that, you can currently grab it with a 100% discount: Graveyard Keeper on Steam. Best snag it right away, because the offer won’t last long.