Farming Sims have a particular problem that is hard to solve. The usual farming sim has a predefined town filled with colorful characters, a premise of starting small and growing a home front into a thriving agricultural engine, which  requires a ton of appreciation for routine. The term ‘Moon Tube’ is what I call a niche ecosystem of YouTube farm sim channels. Moon Tube discusses tips and tricks, especially hidden and unexplained strategies to minmax animals. However,  they also impart a relaxed and mellow vibe that is alien to my hyper focused experiences. In other words, a passion found in the mundane. The farming sim page of Steam entices me to make half my wish list of games in this genre, though my relationship with them is so adversarial. Farming sims at their core are about farm work, and buddy, they all soon become just that, long drawn-out work. 

Graveyard Keeper is poison. Tasty, tasty poison drinkable for hours. Building river-crossing bridges and clearing dark dungeon tunnels are the big early tasks for this game’s time traveled protagonist, and for a lot longer than most games, Graveyard Keeper is all about this life. The exploration part of the brain starts flaring when it comes to bridges and tunnels. Farm sim worlds are often small, so investigating each corner via horse riding back and forth, up and down, left and right, is its own limited joy. Oh neat, because of my effort, I now have a secret tunnel to the village center. Good job me, I found the mines where  marble is located. So that’s how embalming works? Graveyard Keeper gives the impression of productivity, like when fifty glass bottles are set to be crafted in the kiln and my character wakes up to dozens of them crowding the ground. Any game about making esoteric items will soon turn into a game about giving away esoteric items, an act of mentally juggling unpleasant people’s scheduling for delivering their every want and need. This is unfortunately the only way to advance Graveyard Keeper’s thin premise of trying to return to your future girlfriend. By the end, I was rewarded with a brief cutscene and a slap on the ass.