About This Game

Raise a dumb skeleton army. Teach it to think.

Your first followers are hollow shells, driven by instinct. Your goal is to turn them into an army that can defend your settlements, follow commanders, and conquer rival kingdoms. You cannot attack directly. Their progress is your power.

Gravebound Rising combines real-time strategy, settlement building, and persistent progression in a single-player world of necromancy and competing fantasy factions.

From a handful of bones to a veteran army

• Build your foothold. Scavenge supplies, mine ore, gather souls, and found your first settlement. Expand with wards and support buildings to sustain your troops.
  
• Make your army smarter. Develop Soul Bindings, Tactical Brain, Raid Doctrine, and Settlement AI. Unlock orders, improve your troops' responses, and earn the ability to launch autonomous raids.
  
• Watch survivors become stronger. Troops gain experience. Commanders level up and lead their own squads. Develop named retainers and turn the followers you started with into a force worth protecting.
  
• Build toward autonomous conquest. Complete Raid Doctrine and unlock The Last March to send your strongest eligible commanders on continuing campaigns while your home towns support the war.

The other kingdoms are growing, too

Fight the Iron Dominion Dwarves, Ashfang Orcs, Verdant Brood Goblins, Sunward Seraphs, and Silverwood Elves. Their settlements develop, recruit stronger forces, and send warbands across the realm. Goblin chiefs can conquer rival camps and use their surviving buildings; developed elven kingdoms can unite. You are not the only power expanding across the map.

Finish the war before they return

Win by putting every enemy settlement on its respawn timer at the same time. Defend what you have built while pushing your army toward the remaining strongholds. A kingdom left standing can give the others time to return.

Your next army starts with a legacy

Earn Legacy progression across runs. Conquer Hard to unlock Gravebound 1, then push into an escalating difficulty ladder with stronger enemies. Return to earlier unlocked difficulties whenever you want a different pace.

Includes an optional guided introduction on Easy and Normal, camera zoom, interface scaling, adjustable music and hit feedback, Steam achievements, and Steam Cloud saves.

Explore the realm, discover hidden mechanics, and find your own advantage. Start with hollow shells. Build something worth fearing.

Mature Content Description

The developers describe the content like this:

Gravebound Rising contains fantasy violence and dark themes centered around death and necromancy. Players fight and kill human, undead, and monstrous enemies using weapons, magic, and summoned undead. Combat may include blood, corpses, death animations, and other stylized depictions of violence.

Corpses and death are a core part of gameplay, as players can use necromancy to raise fallen enemies and build an undead army. The game also features dark environments, skeletal and undead creatures, graveyards, occult imagery, and themes involving death and the supernatural.

The game does not contain sexual acts, sexual assault, or non-consensual sexual content. It does not prominently depict drug or alcohol abuse or self-harm.