I’ve been in the mood for a crafting/farming game lately, but have had a hard time scratching that itch. I can’t say that Graveyard Keeper does that, per se, but it has been a delightful adventure.

In Graveyard Keeper, you play… a graveyard keeper. But it’s not all landscaping and corpse-planting. You’ve been transported to a strange world through some method you don’t truly understand, and are stuck on graveyard duty while you do a wide variety of dubious favors for some pretty strange people as you try to figure out how to get home to your beloved.

If you’ve ever played Stardew Valley or Harvest Moon, this game will seem immediately familiar to you. I don’t know if they all use the same graphics engine or what, but they’ve got a very similar look and feel to them. You explore the world, chop down trees, mine rocks, plant crops, talk to villagers… very similar.

But there are a number of things that set Graveyard Keeper apart. The first of which is, well, you’re a graveyard keeper. A communist donkey delivers a corpse to you each day and you have to deal with it somehow. You can bury it. You can burn it. You can autopsy it and harvest cartoony organs for alchemical experiments (or, um, food). If you can’t be bothered to do any of that, you can chuck it in the river and be done with it.

You’re also a clergyman for a strange flock. The local bishop tasks you with fixing up not only the graveyard but also the church. Once a week, you can deliver a sermon to earn a few coins and faith points, which can be used to create new sermons, research the various resources of this strange world or… make zombies.

Yes, that’s right. If you decide not to burn, bury, or float your daily corpse, you can turn it into a zombie and put it to work harvesting resources, farming, even making wine. Yes, that’s right, you can have a zombie vintner.

On the whole, Graveyard Keeper is a fun little adventure for people with a semi-dark sense of humor. The storylines are quite funny, and there’s always something that needs doing (and usually something you have to do in order to do something you have to do to take care of that something).

How will it end? I dunno. I’m 33 hours in with no end in sight.

I don’t play a lot of single-player games anymore. Sure, I cut my teeth on Super Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt as a kid. But the rise of Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) games like Everquest and World of Warcraft got me more into the social aspect of gaming as an adult. I’ll take a fun co-op game like The Division, Borderlands, or Minecraft over most single-player games.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was strongly recommended to me by a friend, and it was on sale on Steam for something like $15 a couple of weeks ago, so I decided to give it a try. I’ve tried Assassin’s Creed before and it didn’t quite grab me. The biggest lure for me this time around was the option to play a female character for the whole story, which was a first for the franchise (and it must’ve been popular, because they’re doing it again for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla this fall).

I’ve put 42 hours in so far, and I’m just over halfway through the main storyline. It’s rather easy to get distracted by side missions, because it’s an open world game. Needless to say, I wouldn’t have put 42 hours in if I wasn’t enjoying it, but… I’m really enjoying it!

The graphics are terrific, and the world is just so, so beautiful. Kassandra is an amazing character, and I love how they made her tall and strong, as opposed to a skinny little waif that looks like she shouldn’t be able to lift a sword.

The story is also captivating. I minored in Classics in college, so that probably contributes to my fascination with the story. You brush elbows with historical figures and see ancient locations as they once were—full of color and life rather than ruins scrubbed to bare stone by time and the elements.

My only complaint? Snakes, snakes, SNAKES. I have a serious snake-phobia, and the first time one attacked me out of nowhere I came out of my chair like a bagel from a toaster. (Suddenly, violently, and utterly without warning.) Then I started noticing them everywhere, from frescos to stonework to jewelry… I never realized how into snakes the Greeks were.

Anyhow, that’s what I’ve been up to for the last couple of weeks when not busy writing and editing. My adventures in ancient Greece (and Sparta!) have been giving me some story/plot ideas, too.

And I’m 99.99% sure those stories/plots won’t involve snakes.