Graveyard Keeper

Basically a crafting game, if you're into that sort of thing. "You need this to make one of these then you need some of those to make one of these" kind of thing. First focus on upping the "quality" (points) of your graveyard, then your church, while meeting the townspeople and maintaining friendship by competing quests. This will get you the reputation and momentum you need. It took me some time but I really really enjoy it. You need to really get into it, gather your resources, expand the map and discover the plot to judge it fairly. If you like Stardew, this is similar but on a smaller level. Not as flexible or expansive though, at the moment at least.

It's great if you love repetition and slowly automating everything. I do feel like a lot of it isn't needed. I never really saw a point to fish for example. I love it when the game is a Re-Animator style mad scientist simulator and not Stardew Valley.

Definitely recommend. There are not many games like Graveyard Keeper, Stardew Valley or Traveller's Rest and this is the best of this kind.
Also teleportation stone is reusable, please use it. I played half the game without using it and it was really painful.

4 days into playing this game I put in 55 hours.
There's a lot of little QOL that could be added and the little inconsistencies reek of Indie game that sold open Beta, got their money and decided "♥♥♥♥ it" and called it a day. Then added 3 DLCs. THAT SAID. It's a fun game. It needs polish.

One of the first quest items you get is useless after its quest and you can't destroy it and there's no such thing as "dropping" items in this game so it forever holds an inventory slot. There's so many different items that you don't know if you need, let alone the fact that the ones you need you require a bajillion of, so that precious 1 inventory slot is an eternal annoyance.
There is no consequence to dying. Which is fine, because their dungeon crawler portion sucks. And the dungeon enemies never respawn. Ever. Nor do the mining nodes in the dungeon. Didn't get that Gem perk early on? Whelp, guess you'll forever miss out on 1 of 4 diamonds in game. Good thing you only need 2 I guess.
While that early quest item cannot be destroyed, there is a quest item you require off specific enemies in the dungeon that can be destroyed. Accidentally washed all your nails or destroyed them? Ope, game is unwinnable.

There's literally no explanation on how to increase the tier of items you can buy off vendors. They expect you to just figure it out.
Need Hops seeds from the Miller? Well that's a tier 2 item and you're only tier 1. You have no reason to think you'd need to buy and sell his flour back to him to increase that tier level because you already have a load of flour you made yourself for a fraction of the cost.

There is no quest log. There's an NPC list that might tell you what that NPC currently wants. If the quest line goes through several NPCs and you ♥♥♥♥ off for a while to do some farming have fun figuring out what the ♥♥♥♥ you're holding of to X quest item for, or why X NPC won't talk to you about Blank.

There's so many items. So many. Almost all of them unsellable.

Energy is trivial after a certain point, that point being when you start a daily run to collect honey for your never ending thirst for beeswax to make candles. Honey is plentiful and restores a lot of energy. Sure, you get a debuff that drains your energy if you don't sleep for a while, but you can power through it with an infinite supply of honey. Also, that debuff goes away even if you immediately cancel sleep.

Fishing sucks. I didn't like it in Stardew and I like it less here. Same mechanic.

Zombie porter AI is balls. Say you have a zombie transporting Rock and Ore. He's currently loaded on Ore and transporting it to your base, which is full of ore, but out of rock. He will not bring you rock until he drops that Ore either at your base because you made room or because you picked him up because you're tired of his ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

The tavern keeper will buy wine. Which is good, because it sells well! So long as the wine isn't too good. He'll buy Copper and Silver quality. Ope, you made GOLD quality? Get that fancy ♥♥♥♥ out of my ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tavern! At least you can use it for energy and health, but dying has literally no consequences and energy is trivial. Fisher buys your fish. Don't you dare ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cut it or cook it becuase he likes it raw and wiggling. Tavern keeper's wife sells recipes. 4 of them. She'll sell them to you over and over and over for some reason.

You can set multiple things to craft at once so long as that something doesn't have a variable quality to it. Carrots are carrots and you can cook a load of them. Onions are either copper silver or gold and if they're required for a recipe you have to cook each one individually. But it gets worse because you get only one oven. Babysit your oven simulator.

Anyway I like the gravekeeping portion. No notes except the lack of notes on what removing or inserting body parts does to a body's quality. Embalming? It'll tell you what those injections do. Draining the blood? Figure it the ♥♥♥♥ out. Also the gravekeeping becomes irrelevant after a point. Which is really disappointing in a game called "Graveyard Keeper."

The storyline is so vaguely a background detail and every NPC is a caricature. The only one kind of interesting is the talking Skull that tells you how to be a gravekeeper and sort of implies he used to be the previous gravekeeper. But you only have like 2 meaningful interactions with him.

Minor annoyance: Early resource is like every other game of its calibur, STICKS. You get so many sticks you get annoyed with them. Start throwing them in fires for fuel but they're horribly inefficient so you eventually switch off of them to firewood, then later to coal. After a point you don't realize you need sticks for a neverending need for chisels (which unlike literally every other tool you have you can't repair it, you have to make new ones. Oh, and the Steel ones don't work on the things the iron ones do, and vice versa.) and also you need sticks for certain farm plots. OK, we'll just go make some sticks out of this massive pile of logs I've gathered! Oh wait you can't do that for some reason. Well we'll just go find some! Oh, big trees don't drop sticks. Small trees sometimes don't drop sticks. Most bushes are not interactable. You start to wonder where the ♥♥♥♥ all your sticks went.

Apparently there's no native controller support? Which is SURPRISING for a game of this style. It's a Harvest Moon clone. You'd think controller support is part of the base expectation.

Game feels like it would have made a great multiplayer experience, too, because there's SO ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ MUCH TO DO. Write your books, preach your sermons, Keep your Graveyard, Keep your Farm, bring fish to this guy and bugs to this guy and harvest honey on this side of the map and you need more stone and my god we've run out of ore nodes and can someone take the time to figure out what mats we need to break down this barricade? Grapes don't go with the rest of the farm, you have to grow them up here out of the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ way
"How much of this is main storyline?" Yes. All of it is. You have to do all of it.

All that said, this game captured my attention for a solid 55 hours. After that I played another 12 hours with rapidly dying interest and never opened it again. But it's neat to see what this game *could* have been. I recommend it just for the time-wasting value alone.

fun RPG
the humor is great.
The earlygame feels a bit too much like walking simulator, but things being hard makes it that much more rewarding when they get easy.
Be warned: save before doing the ending cut scene... it will just yeet you to main menu.

After finally getting all achievements in this game, I finally feel qualified to give it a full review.
It's pretty good.

Extremely good and fun game if you like these kind of games. A real diamond in the rough, I am so happy I stumbled across it because you don't see it in the mainstream. I have put countless hours into it, and it has a good replay value because you are always getting better at managing things and seeing how well you can do in your next playthrough.