The Walking Dead Meets Stardew Valley In New 9/10 Game That's Blowing Up On Steam

Published Sep 27, 2026, 4:30 PM EDT Sharmila is an engineer-turned-gaming hardware journalist and freelance contributor at ScreenRant who has been covering the gaming and tech industry since 2021. While she first built her expertise writing about video games, she has since pivoted towards gaming hardware, with a focus on PC components, peripherals, handhelds, and performance-driven tech. When she’s not testing gear or writing about the latest hardware trends, she can usually be found diving into competitive shooters or keeping up with the evolving esports scene. Picture Rick Grimes from The Walking Dead trading in his crossbow for a hoe, settling down in a crumbling little town, and choosing to survive the apocalypse by starting a farm/funeral business, like the kind you see in Stardew Valley. That’s roughly the energy of a game a lot of Steam are suddenly invested in. It’s got the cozy, build-it-yourself charm that made Stardew Valley a household name, mixed with the grim, undead-infested dread that made The Walking Dead impossible to look away from. The game in question is Graveyard Keeper 2, and if you played the original back in the day, you already know the idea was never about being a “normal life sim.” Stardew Valley Meets The Walking Dead In A Surprisingly Grim Steam Adventure Released on September 22 by developer Lazy Bear Games and publisher tinyBuild, Graveyard Keeper 2 is already sitting at a “Very Positive” rating on Steam, with 82% of over 1,600 reviews giving it a thumbs up. Of course, this is a sequel people were clearly waiting for. For context, Graveyard Keeper 2 sets you as the “Grand Inquisitor” now, and your job is to rebuild a town that’s falling apart while a zombie apocalypse chews away at the edges of the map. On one hand, you're doing all the stuff you’d expect from a graveyard management sim, including running a graveyard, farming, crafting, and automating production lines so your undead workers do the grunt work for you. On the other hand, you’re literally arming a zombie army, building watchtowers, and fortifying the town against waves of the infected. It’s part Stardew, part siege defense, and the whole thing is stitched together with the series’ signature pitch-black humor. The automation angle is a bigger deal than it sounds. Instead of just farming and crafting like most games in this genre, Graveyard Keeper 2 leans hard into letting your zombie workforce handle the repetitive stuff, which frees you up to focus on expanding the graveyard, chasing quests around town, and turning what should be a horrifying situation into, weirdly, a profitable one. The game doesn’t shy away from that satire, either, as you're ultimately milking a town full of desperate residents for cash while playing savior. Graveyard Keeper 2 Is A Surprisingly Easy Steam Game To Jump Into Visually, Graveyard Keeper 2 keeps the same pixel art style the original was known for, but everything feels more detailed this time around, whether it’s the machinery, the creatures, or the town itself. It runs comfortably on most machines too, with the recommended setup only asking for a GTX 1650-class card and 8GB of RAM. You can get Graveyard Keeper 2 for $24.99 on Steam, or you can get it bundled with the original Graveyard Keeper for a discount if you want to play through the full story from the start. For anyone tired of the usual farming sim formula or who wants a cozy game with a side of dark comedy and zombie warfare, Graveyard Keeper 2 is earning its buzz for good reason. Given how quickly the Steam reviews are stacking up, it looks like Lazy Bear Games found the exact right mix of chaos and charm to bring players back. Brand Valve Original Release Date September 12, 2003