Almost Every Object In This Stardew Valley-Style Cemetery Sim Is Actually 3D
Learn more about how Graveyard Keeper 2's visuals were created.
At the end of September, Lazy Bear Games released a sequel to its dark twist on the Stardew Valley formula, and spooky season makes it a particularly great time to catch up. If you're looking for something to disappear into for the next 50 hours, this could be it: Graveyard Keeper 2 is a resource-management sim with a delightfully grim premise and nice pixel art.
Apparently, the game's visuals aren't that simple: Lazy Bear Games co-founder Slava Cherk shared that the team used real 3D models for almost every object in Graveyard Keeper 2, and building all those models was "kind of a nightmare." The developers chose this approach because they wanted realistic lighting and 3D shadows. First, they created pixel art, then projected it onto a 3D Blender model from a specific angle to create its pixel-perfect look.
Here's what Cherk had to say about the decision to move away from the first game's visual style:
"Basically we wanted to improve the overall image without changing the style. And the main issue that came into our minds was to improve lighting/shadows. GK1 used a lot of shadow trickery and had a lot of limitations (for example, shadows of thin objects like fences were quite approximate and buggy).
The main con was that the modeling was quite difficult. We had to manually model an object projecting a pixel art image, be sure we're pixel-perfect in the modeling (or we would get holes in shadows otherwise)."
So, Graveyard Keeper 2 is actually a 3D game viewed through an orthographic camera.
This is what happens when you put the camera behind the player. Although it does look like a true 3D game, there are plenty of glitches:
If you want to learn more about the technical tricks behind Graveyard Keeper 2's move to 3D, check out this devlog.
Much like farming and life simulation titles, Graveyard Keeper places you in charge of managing a medieval cemetery. From digging graves and processing corpses to gathering resources and expanding the cemetery, there's plenty of work to keep you busy. The sequel builds on that foundation with even more to manage, including a town to restore, automated production, and zombie-based labor.
With the growing popularity of vibe-coded games and mods, and some past controversy around Cherk's personal AI experiments, he clarified that those were his own projects and Lazy Bear Games is not using generative AI in Graveyard Keeper 2.
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