Lazy Bear Games

Lazy Bear Games is the independent studio developing Graveyard Keeper 2. The team is best known for the 2018 original Graveyard Keeper, the title the sequel directly continues, and has worked together on management and simulation projects for more than a decade. Lazy Bear is the developer credit on every public Graveyard Keeper 2 announcement; tinyBuild is the publisher and a long-time partner. For a wider tour of how the studio's work fits into the broader game, see the overview.

Studio Profile

Notable Games

The titles below are the studio's full publicly released roster, with Graveyard Keeper 2 listed as the upcoming entry. The catalog leans toward management and life-sim hybrids with strong art direction and a streak of dark humor.

Studio History

The team first formed in 2010 in St. Petersburg, Russia, under the name GameJam Studio, founded by Nikita Kulaga and Sviatoslav Cherkasov. The early years were spent on small experimental projects and game jam-style work, reflected in the original studio name. In April 2015 the studio rebranded to Lazy Bear Games, the name it has used ever since. Punch Club followed in 2016 as the studio's first major commercial release, with Graveyard Keeper arriving two years later as a much larger and longer-tailed title. The studio later relocated, and its headquarters is now based in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Graveyard Keeper Lineage

Graveyard Keeper, released in 2018, is by some distance the studio's biggest commercial hit. Aggregate estimates of lifetime Steam sales place the original between roughly 800,000 and 2 million copies, well above anything else in the studio's back catalog. The original was supported with four expansions between 2019 and 2021: Breaking Dead, Stranger Sins, Game of Crone, and Better Save Soul. Each one layered new questlines and systems onto the base sim, keeping the game in active development for several years after launch.

Graveyard Keeper 2 is the direct sequel. It carries forward the cemetery-management foundation and the studio's signature dark comedy, then expands the scope with production automation and a kingdom-scale undead threat. DLC content from the first game is not assumed to carry over.

Partnerships

The studio's most consistent external relationship is with tinyBuild, the publisher behind Punch Club, Graveyard Keeper, and Graveyard Keeper 2. The two have collaborated repeatedly across nearly a decade. Lazy Bear has also worked with Uroboros Games on smaller projects, and partnered with Riot Forge to develop Bandle Tale: A League of Legends Story in 2024, the only roster entry tied to an outside intellectual property.

Unconfirmed Details

Several aspects of Lazy Bear's work on Graveyard Keeper 2 remain unconfirmed and should not be treated as known. This article will be updated as more information is released.

• The exact size of the team currently working on Graveyard Keeper 2

• When development on the sequel formally began

• Which engine and toolchain the sequel uses

• Total development time from prototype to release

• Whether any additional projects are in development alongside the sequel