Cemeteries

I’m waiting for a full clean build to complete, so I thought I’d take a second to talk about cemeteries. Since the last gameplay video I’ve gotten quite a few questions and seen a bit of speculation regarding their use. Here’s how they work.



The player can place a cemetery of variable size anywhere it fits. When townsfolk die, if there is space in a cemetery a grave will appear. If a spot is available the family of the person that died won’t be as sad. If there are no cemeteries, they’ll be much sadder for a while, but they’ll head back toward normal happiness after a few years.



The townsfolk like to visit places of interest in their idle time, and the cemetery is one of these. People that live near a cemetery also get a happiness boost.



Tombstones eventually decay and disappear after a generation or so. This allows reuse of graves. Otherwise a town would be covered by cemeteries by the time 10 generations go by.



Unlike other structures, if you destroy a cemetery, the walls around it will be taken down – but the tombstones won’t disappear. The citizens don’t want to just tear apart graves so they can build homes and other buildings on top of them. The player has to wait for the natural decay of the tombstones before that space can be utilized for something else.