INTRO:
The first DLC expansion for Graveyard Keeper, not counting Breaking Dead, introduced a bit of gameplay. However, none of it is convincingly fresh. Storytelling was the focus in that DLC expansion, though this argument would not win over every player.
PREMISE:
Things are going poorly over at the Town: there are undead uprisings, Inquisition pogroms and the whims of an uncaring king. Thus, there are understandably people that are fleeing those troubles. The Keeper so happens to have been asked to help these refugees; their leader practically walked into his home while he was sleeping.
Unfortunately, getting involved means attracting the attention of certain sinister individuals. Furthermore, these are not the only troubles brewing; the refugees have brought other kinds of problems, or at least problems that begin just after they arrived.
INTEGRATION INTO THE MAIN GAME:
There was a thick forest to the north of the Graveyard’s bee aviary and to the east of the quarry. When the refugees arrived, they cleared part of the forest for their encampment. After the Keeper agrees to help them, a new location is introduced to the options for the use of the Teleport-stone; this is convenient.
The cleared area so happens to be large enough to include any expansions to the camp; there are pegs that indicate the boundaries of the amenities that can be built there.
REFUGEES LACKING SKILLS:
The refugees so happen to be formerly upper-class and/or nobility. As such, they lack the skills that are needed to develop their camp. They do have some retainers (at least those that remained loyal), but these have skills that are meant to serve their supposed betters instead of operating a refugee camp.
Thus, the Keeper has to provide for them, or at least provide the means for them to develop the skills that they need. Building amenities is one task that he would be doing more than a few times.
SKILLED REFUGEES COMING IN:
Some skills are only ever learnt through a lifetime of practice (unless they are the Graveyard Keeper, of course). Thus, certain amenities are only available after certain persons have arrived. For example, the camp’s kitchen only becomes available for building after a gourmet chef has arrived. Incidentally, such characters only come after the Keeper has fulfilled the camp leader’s request for more people at the camp.
These characters also happen to be people that the Keeper can befriend, usually through doing things for them. For example, there is an expert undertaker that would sell schematics for higher-grade gravestones after the Keeper has secured some quality materials and tools for her.
CAMP DEVELOPMENT – OVERVIEW:
Apparently, the development of the camp is significant enough such that there is an in-game tutorial for this. Most of the designs are there to prevent the player from having to handhold the refugee camp more than the player would like.
CAMP SUSTENANCE:
The refugees need food and water. Initially, the Keeper has to provide these until he has built the amenities that allow the refugees to have their own food and water. The water well is the first of these amenities; fortunately, hauling water out of a well is an easy enough thing to do (and perhaps surprisingly, none of the nobles would complain too much about having to do these themselves).
The refugees do forage, but berries and such are not enough to sustain them. After having made farm plots for them, the refugees start growing their own crops, though they still have to be supplied with seeds.
CAMP PRODUCTION
After the Keeper has built amenities for the camp, the refugees begin producing basic and mid-tier resources and consumables; this happens over time according to automatic scripts. The player can also influence their direction of production by providing some ingredients or materials. For example, the player can have the cooks in the camp making pastries by putting milk in their stores, at least until the camp gets an animal pen of their own.
WITHDRAWALS WITH INTEREST:
The Keeper is effectively the benefactor of the refugee camp. As such, they do not have any issues with the Keeper having unrestricted access to their larder; this is their repayment, because most of them did not manage to take their wealth with them when they fled. (This also explains why the refugees did not approach the Village for help.)
Thus, the Keeper can take products from the camp’s stores without being charged for them, just like the Keeper could place foodstuffs and other consumables in their stores without being paid in return.
After they have more than enough foodstuff to sustain themselves, the player can have the Keeper take consumables out of the camp’s stores and thus do not need to have the Keeper cooking food and brewing things just to resupply on consumables.
CAMP HAPPINESS:
When the refugees’ need for food, water and amenities are satisfied, they generate a resource that is simply called “happiness”; the resource goes into a counter with a cap. Likewise, this resource is diminished if their needs are not met.
Somehow, the Keeper needs this resource in order to build more amenities. The narrative explanation for this is practically a dismissive hand-wave.
That said, the player cannot perceive the counter at any time; the player has to be in the vicinity of the camp in order to be able to see this. The player also has to bring up the pause menu for this, and this info takes up the UI space that would have been used to display the stuff that is in storage containers.
This tediousness is a notable sign that adding any further gameplay complexity would strain the infrastructure for the user interface. Unfortunately, this DLC package would not be the only one to express this limitation.
OTHER NEW CONTENT:
There are other pieces of additional content that Game of Crones implements. Additional items are among these, such as the aforementioned additional types of gravestones. The caps for the “sin” and “virtue” quality of corpses have also been raised, allowing for the use of particularly decorative graves. There are also many additional food recipes, including some that are very easy to make, such as grated beets.
Of course, the player has to be involved in the development of the refugee camp in order to eventually gain access to these.
EXPANSION OF CHARACTER STORIES:
For better or worse, as with Stranger Sins, the main reason to play Game of Crones is the additional exposition on the backstories of the characters. In particular, the backstories of the immortal characters that have been established in Stranger Sins have been further revealed and acknowledged. Some of the villagers have their personalities and backstories expanded too, such as the shepherd and beekeeper (who now has a name).
On the other hand, the player would need to have played some of Stranger Sins in order to know what is going on. This is because many of the story expositions depend on visions of the past that chronologically occur just after the visions of the past that were shown in Stranger Sins.
Most of the quests that are associated with these stories still resort to the usual; the Keeper has to find things for the people whose help he needs.
VISUAL DESIGNS:
Game of Crones introduces more characters as well as the circumstances in which they appear, so there would be more things that the player would see. The tents and makeshift structures at the refugee camp are notably different from the more established (and sturdier) things that the Keeper makes in the Graveyard’s grounds.
There are also the sprites for the new items, though some are a bit underwhelming. For example, the higher-grade gravestones do not look that much different from the previous ones.
SOUND DESIGNS:
Most of the additional sounds are associated with the visions of the past that the Keeper can get from interacting with misty things that represent residual memories. These are silly sounds though; indeed, they seem to be edited versions of stock sounds for magical occurrences.
There are the voice-overs for the additional or expanded characters, though by this time, having gibberish for voice-overs would be quite stale. Furthermore, there can only be so much gibberish to be recorded before they start to sound all too similar. For example, the shepherd-cum-vampire-hunter sounds similar to the inquisitor.
SUMMARY:
Game of Crones introduces additional gameplay that is more significant than the gameplay in Stranger Sins, together with more exposition on the lore of the game. Thus, this priced DLC expansion is more worth its asking price than the previous one.
Unfortunately, that is its only plus-point. Compared to the innovations that the base game did to the formulae of Story of Seasons, what it introduces would have been more of the same if not for the mildly interesting designs of the refugee camp.