Hi everyone!
The last time I wrote that this entry would be dedicated to the plot and game mechanics. I’m sorry I have to upset you here. They forbade me to talk about the plot. Yet I'll try to make it up to you describing carefully our game mechanics.

Let’s start then. As I mentioned before there are a lot of characters that a player should interact with. Every character has certain relationships with a graveyard keeper. Some characters are friendly to a new graveyard keeper in the first place. Some should be won over by doing what they want you to do or being eloquent or - like the old days - bribing. The better relationship with a character you have - the more useful he or she is for you.

6 key characters can be especially useful for you. They appear in the village or the graveyard surroundings only one time a week, each on an assigned day. So you should plan everything ahead, at least a week in advance.

Dialog with local blacksmith.

There is a lot of work for a graveyard keeper. The most important is to maintain the graveyard and bury new corpses. You get money for every buried body. So at the beginning it is the main source of profit, kind of your regular income.

In thanks for graveyard's reconstruction local Archbishop must ordain you and explain to you the basics of the local religion. Very old and intricate religion, built on the fear of the Underworld. So now you’re not only responsible for your graveyard, but also for the local church and its dungeons. One time a week you can preach, and if your speech is inspirational, you’ll have a positive effect for the whole week.

How to bury your first corpse.

The maintenance of such a big household is resource intensive. Either you run out of headstones or of candles. All basic resources you can certainly buy in the village, some - get from corpses. Yet at first the graveyard household makes little money, and locals are having good health. So you have to deal with woodworking, stone carving, winemaking and farming. All in all, there’s nothing impossible for a graveyard keeper!

Trading with locals.

At the beginning of the game this is definitely not like that. Step by step you discover new technologies that provide access to recipes and help you to get new resources. Every technology is equal to a certain number of technology points of a particular color. There are three colors of technology points.

• Red - shows player’s ability to do something manually, his/her practical skills
  
• Green - knowledge of the world around and the purposes of things
  
• Blue - knowledge of the spiritual dimension of the world

Every game activity gives you some points. Cut down a tree - here are green and red points. Write a new sermon on how useful church donations are - blue blobs are already headed to the indicator.
Following player every day routine, you get enough knowledge to open elementary technologies of every color. But in order to learn advanced technologies one should do special research, study alchemy or deep down for knowledge in dungeons.

Techs.

At the end of the day, you will be able to construct all the production chains necessary to create a ghost free graveyard.

We tried to balance the game in such a way that to finish storyline of the game it’s not necessary to master all the technologies. High level of several related fields are sufficient. The majority of what you can do by yourself, you can get for money or for faith (light spiritual energy). And if at the beginning of the game money are of greater importance, towards the end faith will become a priority issue.

We made faith in the form of items in inventory, so if you get killed in a dungeon, you are likely to lose a part of your faith.

Evening mass.

How to get money, I think, is obvious, there are a lot of ways to do that. As for faith, everything here is more complicated. The main source of your faith is your preaching. The better decorated the church interior is, the more beautiful stained glasses are, the more decent incense you have, the more faith is generated by a congregation. Faith is extremely important for more sophisticated crafts, where ingredients and skills are not as important as a fair amount of inspiration.

Now I should tell you about the game craft system. But then, I’m afraid, the entry is going to be too big. So crafts are for the next week and I’m going to dedicate them the whole entry of the diaries.

Thank you for your time! See you next week!


http://store.steampowered.com/app/599140/Graveyard_Keeper/
–––
Nikita Kulaga - Co-founder of Lazy Bear Games


Studio Twitter

Hi everyone!
The last time I wrote that this entry would be dedicated to the plot and game mechanics. I’m sorry I have to upset you here. They forbade me to talk about the plot. Yet I'll try to make it up to you describing carefully our game mechanics.

Let’s start then. As I mentioned before there are a lot of characters that a player should interact with. Every character has certain relationships with a graveyard keeper. Some characters are friendly to a new graveyard keeper in the first place. Some should be won over by doing what they want you to do or being eloquent or - like the old days - bribing. The better relationship with a character you have - the more useful he or she is for you.

6 key characters can be especially useful for you. They appear in the village or the graveyard surroundings only one time a week, each on an assigned day. So you should plan everything ahead, at least a week in advance.

Dialog with local blacksmith.

There is a lot of work for a graveyard keeper. The most important is to maintain the graveyard and bury new corpses. You get money for every buried body. So at the beginning it is the main source of profit, kind of your regular income.

In thanks for graveyard's reconstruction local Archbishop must ordain you and explain to you the basics of the local religion. Very old and intricate religion, built on the fear of the Underworld. So now you’re not only responsible for your graveyard, but also for the local church and its dungeons. One time a week you can preach, and if your speech is inspirational, you’ll have a positive effect for the whole week.

How to bury your first corpse.

The maintenance of such a big household is resource intensive. Either you run out of headstones or of candles. All basic resources you can certainly buy in the village, some - get from corpses. Yet at first the graveyard household makes little money, and locals are having good health. So you have to deal with woodworking, stone carving, winemaking and farming. All in all, there’s nothing impossible for a graveyard keeper!

Trading with locals.

At the beginning of the game this is definitely not like that. Step by step you discover new technologies that provide access to recipes and help you to get new resources. Every technology is equal to a certain number of technology points of a particular color. There are three colors of technology points.

• Red - shows player’s ability to do something manually, his/her practical skills
  
• Green - knowledge of the world around and the purposes of things
  
• Blue - knowledge of the spiritual dimension of the world

Every game activity gives you some points. Cut down a tree - here are green and red points. Write a new sermon on how useful church donations are - blue blobs are already headed to the indicator.
Following player every day routine, you get enough knowledge to open elementary technologies of every color. But in order to learn advanced technologies one should do special research, study alchemy or deep down for knowledge in dungeons.

Techs.

At the end of the day, you will be able to construct all the production chains necessary to create a ghost free graveyard.

We tried to balance the game in such a way that to finish storyline of the game it’s not necessary to master all the technologies. High level of several related fields are sufficient. The majority of what you can do by yourself, you can get for money or for faith (light spiritual energy). And if at the beginning of the game money are of greater importance, towards the end faith will become a priority issue.

We made faith in the form of items in inventory, so if you get killed in a dungeon, you are likely to lose a part of your faith.

Evening mass.

How to get money, I think, is obvious, there are a lot of ways to do that. As for faith, everything here is more complicated. The main source of your faith is your preaching. The better decorated the church interior is, the more beautiful stained glasses are, the more decent incense you have, the more faith is generated by a congregation. Faith is extremely important for more sophisticated crafts, where ingredients and skills are not as important as a fair amount of inspiration.

Now I should tell you about the game craft system. But then, I’m afraid, the entry is going to be too big. So crafts are for the next week and I’m going to dedicate them the whole entry of the diaries.

Thank you for your time! See you next week!


http://store.steampowered.com/app/599140/Graveyard_Keeper/
–––
Nikita Kulaga - Co-founder of Lazy Bear Games


Studio Twitter

Hi, everyone!
Thanks to all those who have read the first entry in our Developer diaries, thank you for your kind words in the comments and for likes.

The first entry of the diary was an overview. Its main aim was to let you know that we were alive, and the project was heading towards its release. Now, when you made sure of that, it’s now time to move from general words to detailed description of separate parts of the game.

In this entry I’m going to tell you about Graveyard Keeper’s world in general. I can’t avoid little spoilers, but, trust me, I’ll leave you the sweetest part for the first time you play the game.


Graveyard Keeper’s world is a fictional world, where any reference to existing religions or historic periods and characters is purely coincidental. You can even say that the world looks like a fairy-tale. This impression is a combination of several components. First of them is an exaggerated cartoon style with a great deal of realism at the same time. Second - music and the sound design. And last but definitely not least, is a plot and characters. All the characters are a bit naive and all the main story twists and turns may remind you fairy-tales you’ve known since you were a child. Blam, now I remind you that you’re a graveyard keeper and you can break down corpses, and you have a talking drunkard-skull as a pet!

Looking for characters art style.

Let’s move on from the emotional aspect of the game’s world to its geography. I myself divide Graveyard keeper’s world into 4 big sections. First of them is where the you lives. The majority of construction sites and buildings are concentrated in here.

• Player’s house with a backyard. In the backyard the player is to start producing items and things of metal, wood and stone.
  
• Church and graveyard. Things are simple here. Bury corpses, give sermons, study artefacts in the church basement and write treatises.
  
• Morgue. Mysterious and horrible place I’d rather not talk about a lot. Let’s just say that the bodies, carefully covered with blankets, can also serve as sources of important and valuable resources.
  
• Garden and vineyard. Despite the fact that our game is about graves and stuff, vegetable farming, planting and gardening can become one of your favourite and profitable pastimes. And wine, aging in the church basements will certainly help you to deal with stress!

Sketch of the first zone.

Describing the previous section I mentioned several times subterranean parts of buildings, cellars and basements. Along with procedurally generated dungeons they are the second section. Those are the most dangerous places of the game. But where there is danger, there is treasure! Though combat mechanic has never been regarded as the core mechanic of our game, you can, if you want to, wield a sword quite enough.

Fighting with slimes.

The third game section is The Village. Almost all the important characters inhabit the village and its surroundings. Some of them sell important things, some can share useful information. Some can teach you a new craft or to give you a fishing rod. The majority of the game items you can craft yourself as well as buy them in the village. There is also a tavern in the village - the center of the public life. The tavern owner is also a village chief. So if you have some problems, you’re likely to get help in “Dead Horse” or at least they will pour you a beer.

Village crosroads.

The fourth section is scattered around different parts of the map. It consists of a big forest, a sinister swamp, witch hill and a sea shore. Their main purpose is to collect natural resources like ore or wood and some special, unique for this territory items. In the forest one can find mushrooms, rare herbs and hives with wild bees. On the witch hill there are silver ashes remaining after burning a witch. Not all of these places are available for you from the beginning. For example, to get to the swamp one should rebuild an ancient stone bridge or find another route through the forest filled with dangerous creatures.

A part of the Big forest.

The size of Graveyard Keeper’s world can’t be compared with the size of big procedurally generated worlds. We tried to make it cozy and diverse. Besides unique graphical elements this diversity is achieved by a dynamic weather system and the day and night cycle.

In general terms, this is all I can say about the world to keep an air of mystery. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask them here in comments - I will try to answer as much as I can.

Thank you for your time! See you next week! The next time I’m going to tell you about the plot and some game mechanics that contribute to the story.


http://store.steampowered.com/app/599140/Graveyard_Keeper/
–––
Nikita Kulaga - Co-founder of Lazy Bear Games


Studio Twitter

Hi, everyone!
Thanks to all those who have read the first entry in our Developer diaries, thank you for your kind words in the comments and for likes.

The first entry of the diary was an overview. Its main aim was to let you know that we were alive, and the project was heading towards its release. Now, when you made sure of that, it’s now time to move from general words to detailed description of separate parts of the game.

In this entry I’m going to tell you about Graveyard Keeper’s world in general. I can’t avoid little spoilers, but, trust me, I’ll leave you the sweetest part for the first time you play the game.


Graveyard Keeper’s world is a fictional world, where any reference to existing religions or historic periods and characters is purely coincidental. You can even say that the world looks like a fairy-tale. This impression is a combination of several components. First of them is an exaggerated cartoon style with a great deal of realism at the same time. Second - music and the sound design. And last but definitely not least, is a plot and characters. All the characters are a bit naive and all the main story twists and turns may remind you fairy-tales you’ve known since you were a child. Blam, now I remind you that you’re a graveyard keeper and you can break down corpses, and you have a talking drunkard-skull as a pet!

Looking for characters art style.

Let’s move on from the emotional aspect of the game’s world to its geography. I myself divide Graveyard keeper’s world into 4 big sections. First of them is where the you lives. The majority of construction sites and buildings are concentrated in here.

• Player’s house with a backyard. In the backyard the player is to start producing items and things of metal, wood and stone.
  
• Church and graveyard. Things are simple here. Bury corpses, give sermons, study artefacts in the church basement and write treatises.
  
• Morgue. Mysterious and horrible place I’d rather not talk about a lot. Let’s just say that the bodies, carefully covered with blankets, can also serve as sources of important and valuable resources.
  
• Garden and vineyard. Despite the fact that our game is about graves and stuff, vegetable farming, planting and gardening can become one of your favourite and profitable pastimes. And wine, aging in the church basements will certainly help you to deal with stress!

Sketch of the first zone.

Describing the previous section I mentioned several times subterranean parts of buildings, cellars and basements. Along with procedurally generated dungeons they are the second section. Those are the most dangerous places of the game. But where there is danger, there is treasure! Though combat mechanic has never been regarded as the core mechanic of our game, you can, if you want to, wield a sword quite enough.

Fighting with slimes.

The third game section is The Village. Almost all the important characters inhabit the village and its surroundings. Some of them sell important things, some can share useful information. Some can teach you a new craft or to give you a fishing rod. The majority of the game items you can craft yourself as well as buy them in the village. There is also a tavern in the village - the center of the public life. The tavern owner is also a village chief. So if you have some problems, you’re likely to get help in “Dead Horse” or at least they will pour you a beer.

Village crosroads.

The fourth section is scattered around different parts of the map. It consists of a big forest, a sinister swamp, witch hill and a sea shore. Their main purpose is to collect natural resources like ore or wood and some special, unique for this territory items. In the forest one can find mushrooms, rare herbs and hives with wild bees. On the witch hill there are silver ashes remaining after burning a witch. Not all of these places are available for you from the beginning. For example, to get to the swamp one should rebuild an ancient stone bridge or find another route through the forest filled with dangerous creatures.

A part of the Big forest.

The size of Graveyard Keeper’s world can’t be compared with the size of big procedurally generated worlds. We tried to make it cozy and diverse. Besides unique graphical elements this diversity is achieved by a dynamic weather system and the day and night cycle.

In general terms, this is all I can say about the world to keep an air of mystery. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask them here in comments - I will try to answer as much as I can.

Thank you for your time! See you next week! The next time I’m going to tell you about the plot and some game mechanics that contribute to the story.


http://store.steampowered.com/app/599140/Graveyard_Keeper/
–––
Nikita Kulaga - Co-founder of Lazy Bear Games


Studio Twitter

Hi, everyone! Thanks for the interest in our game :)

It’s the first entry in our Developer Diary on the Graveyard Keeper project. Though the work on the project started in August 2016, only now we have time and stuff to show in our diary. Working on our previous project Punch Club we were trying to report on its development from the beginning. In the Keeper’s case (as we call it in our team) everything turned out to be more complicated.

Our team doubled. The team of 7 people are working on Keeper and all the vim and vigor that used to spend on the communication with the game community are now absorbed by the growing pains of managing a studio. In general, the project turned out to be more difficult and time consuming than our previous game. This caused a few unrealistic estimates and dates in the beginning. I apologize to everyone expecting the game to launch last year. Yet now we think we’re in the homestretch, so I’ll try to report at least on these last steps in our Diary.

In the first part I’m going to outline the game concept and tell you what has been done so far and what it is still to be done.


The main character (only one so far) is an ordinary guy from our reality. He wakes up in the game world and discovers that he is a graveyard keeper. His duties are to look after the graveyard and to bury corpses. Well, he still has a mobile phone, so he hasn’t gone mad. Sometimes a mysterious man with a red eye call him by that phone and say that the character’s totally under his control. He also gives the instructions. Well, next you just bury corpses, plant a garden, trying to understand what is happening. Or not trying, the world is beautiful, everything’s fine, low effort and so on.

Screen from game intro.

The world is limited by the graveyard, its surroundings, a mountain where witches are burned, and a village filled with the sweetest people. Also there is a big medieval metropolis somewhere nearby, which is kinda hard to get to. Yet a lot of important characters are coming from there. They are so important that they can influence on the main character’s capability and his development. There are six of them. All the characters have an relationship from 0 to 100. The relationship with these 6 are exactly the key to the (deepest) secret of the Graveyard Keeper’s world.

Six main characters.

Another important part of the game that helps to see progress is the development of available technologies. From rough wooden crosses to carved statues made of marble, from using the corpse bone powder to living dead helping you around the house. All of it is to discover, to build and to open during your difficult journey as a graveyard keeper.

I’m going to tell you about all of it in the next entries, and now I think it’s interesting to know what’s done and what is in the plans for next week.


Today the project is in its homestretch. It means that the goals are set, the list of features and assets is 90% done. All that's left is to put everything together, put the finishing touches on the plot, and polish-polish-polish. Looking at the bigger picture, it seems not so much but considering all the details, it turns out to be a lot of work.

The game world - the game environment. We put every little bush and every little tree manually. I can’t say that the game’s world is too big. Yet the work on it is in progress. All the main items are set and the map is almost done. All that's left is to give life to it with tiny little details and trees taken in their perfect places.

Part of a swamp locaton.

Graphics and animation - 90% of big items are drawn. All the interactive items are drawn and animated. All the characters in the game have basic walking animations. The majority has custom animations. There are about 30 characters in the game. More than 200 item icons are drawn. About 100 of them are to be done. Now our artists are focused on how to make the world more alive, to add more little details and animations.

Programming part - the game engine is almost done. The tools which it provides allows designers to make changes with minimal programming. Now we’re working on performance optimization, the enemy’s behavior patterns and procedurally generated dungeons. Among the big functions to be improved it remains the battle system and the perks system.

Sound design and music - it’s one of the fields where it remains more work than already done. We already have 10 musical themes for the game. A few more, and everything will be perfect. As for the sound, things are more complicated. We’ve just started to add sounds to the game. For now there are just 10% of all sounds. Basically, we’ve just checked how our engine works with it.

The plot - In our (at the first sight) sandbox, the plot is still very important. The plot is already finished, but the dialogs are only 20% complete. We’re working on finishing the dialogs and their integration into the game and game scripting at the same time.

Game design- the balance is done in its draft form. Now while finishing the plot we’re polishing game mechanics. We follow our fillings and the rhythm of the game and trying to make mechanics feel natural.The game balance is based on 7 technology trees. Two of them are complete at the moment. The rest of them are done in their draft form. Their adjustment and editing along with the plot integration will take the lion’s share of our time.

Technology tabs.

Interface - almost done. We don’t like some parts of it, so we’ll redo them.

So. The biggest part of what we should do next is the work on game balancing and adding storylines. This is the sweetest part. What was in our heads now materialises, and it starts to look well and to be played well. The game is definitely to be finished. It’s definitely coming out. But whether it comes out to be so interesting as we planned depends even on you. Now after 1,5 years of development we need you more than ever. Your support and interest in our project are extremely important. And we in response we’ll do our best, so you can not only read about the project but also try the early build of our game in the nearest future ;)


http://store.steampowered.com/app/599140/Graveyard_Keeper/
–––
Nikita Kulaga - Co-founder of Lazy Bear Games


Studio Twitter

Hi, everyone! Thanks for the interest in our game :)

It’s the first entry in our Developer Diary on the Graveyard Keeper project. Though the work on the project started in August 2016, only now we have time and stuff to show in our diary. Working on our previous project Punch Club we were trying to report on its development from the beginning. In the Keeper’s case (as we call it in our team) everything turned out to be more complicated.

Our team doubled. The team of 7 people are working on Keeper and all the vim and vigor that used to spend on the communication with the game community are now absorbed by the growing pains of managing a studio. In general, the project turned out to be more difficult and time consuming than our previous game. This caused a few unrealistic estimates and dates in the beginning. I apologize to everyone expecting the game to launch last year. Yet now we think we’re in the homestretch, so I’ll try to report at least on these last steps in our Diary.

In the first part I’m going to outline the game concept and tell you what has been done so far and what it is still to be done.


The main character (only one so far) is an ordinary guy from our reality. He wakes up in the game world and discovers that he is a graveyard keeper. His duties are to look after the graveyard and to bury corpses. Well, he still has a mobile phone, so he hasn’t gone mad. Sometimes a mysterious man with a red eye call him by that phone and say that the character’s totally under his control. He also gives the instructions. Well, next you just bury corpses, plant a garden, trying to understand what is happening. Or not trying, the world is beautiful, everything’s fine, low effort and so on.

Screen from game intro.

The world is limited by the graveyard, its surroundings, a mountain where witches are burned, and a village filled with the sweetest people. Also there is a big medieval metropolis somewhere nearby, which is kinda hard to get to. Yet a lot of important characters are coming from there. They are so important that they can influence on the main character’s capability and his development. There are six of them. All the characters have an relationship from 0 to 100. The relationship with these 6 are exactly the key to the (deepest) secret of the Graveyard Keeper’s world.

Six main characters.

Another important part of the game that helps to see progress is the development of available technologies. From rough wooden crosses to carved statues made of marble, from using the corpse bone powder to living dead helping you around the house. All of it is to discover, to build and to open during your difficult journey as a graveyard keeper.

I’m going to tell you about all of it in the next entries, and now I think it’s interesting to know what’s done and what is in the plans for next week.


Today the project is in its homestretch. It means that the goals are set, the list of features and assets is 90% done. All that's left is to put everything together, put the finishing touches on the plot, and polish-polish-polish. Looking at the bigger picture, it seems not so much but considering all the details, it turns out to be a lot of work.

The game world - the game environment. We put every little bush and every little tree manually. I can’t say that the game’s world is too big. Yet the work on it is in progress. All the main items are set and the map is almost done. All that's left is to give life to it with tiny little details and trees taken in their perfect places.

Part of a swamp locaton.

Graphics and animation - 90% of big items are drawn. All the interactive items are drawn and animated. All the characters in the game have basic walking animations. The majority has custom animations. There are about 30 characters in the game. More than 200 item icons are drawn. About 100 of them are to be done. Now our artists are focused on how to make the world more alive, to add more little details and animations.

Programming part - the game engine is almost done. The tools which it provides allows designers to make changes with minimal programming. Now we’re working on performance optimization, the enemy’s behavior patterns and procedurally generated dungeons. Among the big functions to be improved it remains the battle system and the perks system.

Sound design and music - it’s one of the fields where it remains more work than already done. We already have 10 musical themes for the game. A few more, and everything will be perfect. As for the sound, things are more complicated. We’ve just started to add sounds to the game. For now there are just 10% of all sounds. Basically, we’ve just checked how our engine works with it.

The plot - In our (at the first sight) sandbox, the plot is still very important. The plot is already finished, but the dialogs are only 20% complete. We’re working on finishing the dialogs and their integration into the game and game scripting at the same time.

Game design- the balance is done in its draft form. Now while finishing the plot we’re polishing game mechanics. We follow our fillings and the rhythm of the game and trying to make mechanics feel natural.The game balance is based on 7 technology trees. Two of them are complete at the moment. The rest of them are done in their draft form. Their adjustment and editing along with the plot integration will take the lion’s share of our time.

Technology tabs.

Interface - almost done. We don’t like some parts of it, so we’ll redo them.

So. The biggest part of what we should do next is the work on game balancing and adding storylines. This is the sweetest part. What was in our heads now materialises, and it starts to look well and to be played well. The game is definitely to be finished. It’s definitely coming out. But whether it comes out to be so interesting as we planned depends even on you. Now after 1,5 years of development we need you more than ever. Your support and interest in our project are extremely important. And we in response we’ll do our best, so you can not only read about the project but also try the early build of our game in the nearest future ;)


http://store.steampowered.com/app/599140/Graveyard_Keeper/
–––
Nikita Kulaga - Co-founder of Lazy Bear Games


Studio Twitter

Graveyard Keeper will have a public demo with 4 stations available at PAXWest in Seattle this weekend. We're on the 4th floor right next to the Indie Megabooth.

You can't miss the super bright orange tinyBuild booth.

See you there!

Graveyard Keeper will have a public demo with 4 stations available at PAXWest in Seattle this weekend. We're on the 4th floor right next to the Indie Megabooth.

You can't miss the super bright orange tinyBuild booth.

See you there!

We're super excited to take the secrecy sheets off Graveyard Keeper, our latest project with the fine folks from Lazy Bear Games! In it, you get to build and manage your own medieval graveyard in the most historically inaccurate way possible.

Checkout the announcement trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmZS6XFBJfQ

We have opened up Alpha sign-ups on the official website at http://GraveyardKeeper.com

The first playable will be available at GDC at a private press event, and the first public demo is coming to PAX East in Boston this March.