Graveyard Keeper 2
The sequel to the 2018 cult-hit cemetery sim, from Lazy Bear Games. You run a medieval graveyard, but the dead don't stay dead — they become your workforce, your army and eventually your business plan. It's out now — September 22, 2026 on PC, PS5, Switch, Switch 2 and Xbox. Steam lists it at $24.99 with no discount: the 20% pre-purchase promotion ran out when the game unlocked, and so did the sauna building and outfit that came with pre-orders. Two days in it sits at 89% positive across 1,055 Steam reviews. The free demo is gone — the app (5075680) was delisted, checked September 26, 2026.
What is Graveyard Keeper 2?
The original Graveyard Keeper was the surprise of 2018: a management sim about a graveyard keeper who runs sermons, researches tech and turns corpses into fertilizer, all wrapped in deadpan medieval black humor. It sold millions and kept an audience for years. Graveyard Keeper 2 is more of the same loop, only bigger — the official description says you'll "restore The Town, manage the graveyard, automate production, lead your undead army into battle" and turn the zombie problem into a thriving business.
The biggest announced change is scale. The first game's automation was already the fun part — zombies running your grind stations while you plan — and the sequel makes production lines a headline feature. There's also combat with your undead army, which was never the first game's focus. Lazy Bear Games is developing, tinyBuild publishes, and to celebrate the announcement back in April the first game was briefly given away free on Steam.
Release date and price
Gematsu had the September 22 date first, back on August 26. The storefronts have caught up since: Steam now prints Sep 22, 2026 on the page, Sony's listing stamps the unlock at 5:00 PM UTC on Sep 22 (1:00 AM on the 23rd in Beijing), and Nintendo runs separate Switch and Switch 2 pages. Xbox covers Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S. Same day everywhere — no platform sitting out launch week.
That promotion is over: Steam lists the game at $24.99 and Valve's promo note for the 20% pre-purchase offer is closed. The $19.99 deadline was real, not a "probably still discounted for a few days after launch" situation. In this genre the next discount after launch is usually a season away.
Steam price, US store, checked Sep 23, 2026. The 20% pre-purchase promotion closed on Sep 22 when the game unlocked, so $24.99 is the number until the first sale. Nothing on the store page suggests a launch-week discount is holding over.
What the pre-order bonus was — and why it's gone
Pre-orders came with two extras. Steam's promo text called them an exclusive building and a platform-specific outfit; the console listings spelled it out — a personal sauna outside your house and an exclusive outfit for the player character. Xbox sold the pair as part of its Pre-Order Bundle, Sony listed the same two items on its pre-order page, and Nintendo's store ran "Pre-Order Bonus" editions for both Switch and Switch 2.
Neither item is essential. The sauna is a functional building, and that matters more here than in most games: your Keeper runs on stamina, and the first game was stingy about ways to restore it. The outfit is pure cosmetic — Xbox's own copy sells it as a way to "show the locals who the true village dandy is," and that is the entire pitch. That window closed with the launch on Sep 22, so buying now gets you the base game only. Nobody has said whether either item gets sold separately later; pre-order extras like these usually resurface somewhere eventually, but Lazy Bear and tinyBuild haven't confirmed anything either way.
The demo that was free — and what happened to it
tinyBuild released a Graveyard Keeper 2 Demo on September 14 during its Connect showcase, a week before launch. It was a separate free Steam app (5075680), not a pre-order perk. As of September 26, 2026 that app is delisted: it redirects to the Steam store front and no demo button appears on the game page. For this series the demo answers the one question that matters — whether the corpse-grading, tech-tree, automate-the-boring-part loop grabs you — before you spend $25 finding out. Graveyard Keeper is all-or-nothing like that: people bounce off the systems inside an hour, or lose a hundred hours to them.
The Graveyard Keeper 2 demo app (5075680) is no longer listed on Steam — checked September 26, 2026. Play on Steam →
How it plays
If you know the first game, the loop is familiar: bodies arrive, you bury them, grade the body parts, research new tech with the points you earn, and slowly turn a muddy patch of land into a functioning (and very questionable) business. The sequel stacks three things on top:
- Restore The Town — the first game kept you mostly inside the graveyard walls; here the town itself is a project, with buildings to bring back to life.
- Automation as a headline system — production chains are bigger and more central. The announcement materials push zombies-as-workforce hard, which is exactly what players asked for after the first game.
- Undead army combat — taking your zombies out of the graveyard and into battles, a new layer the first game never had.
Early momentum
The announcement trailer on tinyBuild's channel has passed 190K views since April, and the r/PS5 announcement post pulled 647 upvotes. More telling: when GK2 was announced, the first game was given away free and still earned over $250,000 on Steam that week — people went in, loved it, and immediately pointed their wallets at the sequel. The cozy-games crowd has it on their September list too. This is not a speculative word; the audience is already there.
Two days in: 89% positive, and one loud argument
Steam shows 1,055 reviews and 941 positive — 89%, "Very Positive" — checked Sep 23. For a sequel to a cult sim that's a strong opening, and the praise is what GK1 fans wanted: the loop still hooks, the humor still lands, and automating production finally pays off properly.
The negative pile is where it gets interesting. The single most-upvoted one (127 people marked it helpful) accuses the game of shipping undisclosed AI-generated assets, and four more reviews say the same about the cutscenes and character portraits, with 26 to 126 votes each. The most repeated line is that the unskippable cutscenes look like "AI slop" while the rest of the art is fine. Nothing on the Steam page mentions it, and no launch-day roundup I read brings it up. Worth knowing before you pay.
Beyond that the complaints are pure GK1 territory: grind that escalates faster than expected (a 113-vote review calls it "the most tedious I've ever played"), a crematorium progression bug that can force a restart, and days that feel too short. Nobody is reporting crashes or a broken build.
Worth a look if
- You put 50+ hours into Graveyard Keeper and want the same loop with more automation
- You like management sims with a dark sense of humor and don't need polish
- The "zombies as an optimized workforce" fantasy is your jam
Hold off if the first game's grind bounced you — the sequel is doubling down on those systems, not simplifying them. And if you're new to the series, the demo is no longer an option, so the original Graveyard Keeper (it goes on sale often) is the cheap test of whether these systems click for you.
PC specs, straight from Steam
Windows 10 x64 or newer, 64-bit only — there's no Mac or Linux build. Intel Core i3 (13th gen) or similar, 6 GB RAM, GeForce GTX 1650 or similar, DirectX 12, 4 GB of free storage. That's a modern floor for a 2.5D pixel-art game, which tells you the sequel's 3D-ish world and bigger town simulation are doing real work under the hood.
Quick facts & FAQ
- When does it come out? September 22, 2026 — already out. Sony's listing stamped the unlock at 5:00 PM UTC and every storefront carries the same day.
- How much is it? $24.99 on Steam, no discount — the -20% pre-purchase promotion ended on September 22 when the game unlocked.
- What platforms? PC (Windows) on Steam, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S, plus Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 — all the same day.
- Is there a pre-order bonus? Not anymore — pre-orders came with a sauna building and an exclusive outfit, and that window closed at launch. Xbox listed both inside its Pre-Order Bundle, PlayStation's pre-order page lists both, and Nintendo sells "Pre-Order Bonus" editions for Switch and Switch 2.
- Is there a demo? Not any more. The Graveyard Keeper 2 Demo was free on Steam from September 14, 2026, but the app (5075680) was delisted — checked September 26, 2026.
- Is there multiplayer or co-op? No. Steam and every console listing say single-player; the first game only ever got co-op through community mods.
- Do I need to have played Graveyard Keeper? No, but the sequel assumes you know the systems — so the free demo is the cheapest way to find out whether they click for you.
- Who makes it? Lazy Bear Games, published by tinyBuild.
- What's on the Steam page? Full controller support, Steam Input, DualShock/DualSense support, Family Sharing, and 11 languages. Only English carries full audio support; the list also covers French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese-Brazil, Russian, Simplified Chinese and Turkish.