Grave Keeper – Review
Follow Genre: Hack and Slash
Developer: Baldur Games
Publisher: Ultimate Games S.A., Gaming Factory S.A.
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC

Grave Keeper – Review

Site Score
7.0
Good: Pretty graphics, fun gameplay
Bad: Basic music, Repetitive, Faulty English
User Score
7.0
(4 votes)
Click to vote
VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 7.0/10 (4 votes cast)

If the game Grave Keeper rings a bell, that’s probably because you’ve seen it pop up in your app store. This one’s originally a mobile game and has made its debut on PC at the end of last month. Developer Baldur Games and publishers Ultimate Games S.A. and Gaming Factory S.A. are trying to give Grave Keeper a new life away from phones and tablets, and away from being a free game. Seeing as it remains free on mobile, we’re curious to find out if this game is worth paying 10 bucks on Steam. 

Story

In Grave Keeper, you play as a bounty hunter who walked into The Forbidden Stronghold. As the name itself suggests, you’re not supposed to be there and this place is forbidden. It has been taken over by The Skeleton King and is filled with treasures untouched. Of course, this is very appealing to a bounty hunter. You set out on a path to collect all the treasure you can find, but in order to do that, you have to get past various monsters and eventually kill The Skeleton King himself.

The story featured here isn’t anything special or mind-blowing. In a lot of ways, it resembles many unoriginal stories; a fantasy world, a treasure and a big boss you have to defeat but is helped by his minions. Honestly, this isn’t a deal breaker since it’s a hack and slash game and the lack of an interesting story doesn’t really get in the way of the gameplay.

Graphics

The graphics are rather cute if you think about the fact that this is a hack and slash game. You get to discover various places in The Forbidden Stronghold and the 3D style is actually quite pretty. Again, not the most original graphics, but nice to look at nevertheless.

There is, however, no option to customize your bounty hunter. Agreed, this is a hack and slash game so it’s mainly about killing and looting but to add a little something extra to the game, customization of your character would’ve been nice.

Sound

There’s some music to accompany you while you’re fighting off your enemies, but this isn’t really anything special. It’s pretty much some basic battle music to help create some tension. Besides this, the game features some in-game sounds like when you’re using your bow, hitting an enemy, etc.

There’s also a lady called Arryn who sort of helps you along the way. Not with the fighting or anything, but she’s some sort of guide that sometimes shows up and she makes some sounds that are more often than not some mumbling instead of actual words. But still, sounds.

Gameplay

Grave Keeper is a hack and slash game that takes place in a fantasy world. You fight your way through different stages, all the way to The Skeleton King.

In every stage, you fight off various enemies. There’s a target to reach in every stage; killing 15 enemies. There’s a total of 14 different opponents you face including skeletons, zombies, and mages. After completing five stages, you get to the boss level. Before facing the boss, you also have to kill a few enemies. The thing here is that you can choose yourself when you’re done ‘practicing’ with the enemies and when the boss appears. Sometimes, these stages feel a little repetitive because you’re basically doing the same thing over and over again.

When killing opponents, loot will drop (of course, why else would a bounty hunter be here). This loot includes coins and health potions. Coins are needed to upgrade your armor and weapons. Upgrading these are very, very important. The game may start out easy but if you don’t upgrade your armor and weapons in time, you’ll get swamped by the enemies and die.

Talking about armor and weapons, there are various types available. You start off with rather weak and basic armor, but you’ll encounter new ones along the way. You can then upgrade these. The same goes for the weapons. There’s melee and ranged weapons, including swords and axes. Here, it’s also needed to upgrade them.

Next to armor and weapons, you also have abilities. There are also various types of abilities to be found here. Abilities are basically just very strong attacks that come in very handy especially during boss fights.

During your battles, you’ll need your health potions. Even though your enemies take a lot of damage, so do you. So, after a few hits of a horde of zombies, you’ll need to recharge. The health potions also come in handy during the boss fights, so make sure you don’t waste them all before the boss appears. The nice thing here is that you can take a health potion whilst being in battle.

Daily quests are also a part of the game. You get a few quests per day. These can be to kill a certain amount of enemies, complete all stages, use abilities a certain amount of times,… Rewards include various things like coins, gems, health potions and chests.

Grave Keeper has three game modes. Of course, there’s the standard fight mode. Next to this, there’s the versus mode where you fight against other bounty hunters who are also after treasure. The last mode is the royal fight mode. This mode is for when you want a little more challenge since you fight against hordes of enemies.

A big demerit of this game is the faulty English that’s used. There’s only written English but almost every sentence seems to harbor a mistake. This is very distracting and honestly rather annoying. It would have been nice if the developers paid a little more attention to this.

Conclusion

Grave Keeper is an addictive hack and slash game that manages to capture your attention with its pretty graphics and fun gameplay. Even though this is a nice game, it still involves quite some errors like the basic music, repetitive feeling of the gameplay, and the many English errors. Nevertheless, this is an enjoyable, yet a casual game you can most likely spend a few hours on. For those with a console; the game is releasing on the Nintendo Switch in the second quarter of 2019.

 

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Rating: 7.0/10 (4 votes cast)
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Grave Keeper - Review, 7.0 out of 10 based on 4 ratings
Maui Vindevogel


23 year old based in Belgium with a passion for writing

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