A cozy pathbuilder with skeletons and lo-fi beats, Grooveyard is the perfect way to wrap up spooky season

Megan Bidmead, 29 October 2025

In Grooveyard, helpless skeletons are forced to repeat their demise again and again and again. Falling into pits or jumping into spikes in an endless loop, for all eternity. Until you come along: a headphone-wearing skeletal sorcerer, with the ability to summon platforms, ready to guide your hapless minions to their freedom and peace. Spookily-themed, yes, but there's something undeniably cozy and kind about it. This is a game of releasing the dead from suffering, wrapped in a cute, chilled-out shell.

Path-building is a simple premise, but it offers an entire world of possibilities in terms of puzzle mechanics. Click on the skull at the bottom of the screen, and the skeleton will start to recreate its last steps. You can predict their movements by following the arrows on a scrolling track, but I found it more helpful to watch them move across the level a few times. You can restart as many times as you want, stopping movement to place platforms when a new idea comes to you. The solution will appear step by step. You'll only have a limited number of tiles to place, though, so you have to be smart with your choices.

Strategic placement of platforms will stop your skeletons from accidentally dropping into pits or jumping skull-first into a ceiling of spikes, but it gets more complicated; some of them are stuck in long, convoluted loops of movement, and it takes a bit of back-and-forth to get them across safely. Sometimes the solution might look obvious, but the skeleton will insist on doing ridiculous jumps at the wrong moment, or suddenly turning left when you want them to go right, ruining your plans. Your little guy might have to go the long way around to get to freedom, but the payoff is very satisfying when you eventually crack it.

Grooveyard rewards you for using the least amount of tiles possible, which gives you an incentive to push for the most effective solution. It also means that you can just about scrape through using all your tiles if you're struggling. The hint system is, in itself, a puzzle; you only get one hint per level, and it'll be vague clues like 'Sometimes it's easier to take the L'. I mean, that one feels a bit obvious now that I think of it, but Grooveyard won't hold your hand by telling you exactly where to place any of the tiles. So you won't be told where to put that 'L'. I quite like the idea of having to solve a little riddle to get a clue, rather than being given the answer more directly.

While the first world gives you a good grounding in the basics (each level takes a few minutes to complete), I'm looking forward to future worlds with more difficult puzzles. Wall-jumping, crumbling platforms, and locked doors apparently lie ahead. So it'll be interesting to see how difficult it gets, especially as the skeleton's movement loops become longer and more complex.

Exploring the map allows you to try out bonus levels (which are more difficult even in the demo; I'm hoping the full game will stretch the mechanics of these levels and, therefore, my brain). There's always a balance to be had when it comes to difficulty, and I imagine it's a hard one to get right; I'm hoping the bonus levels are a nice outlet for hardcore puzzle lovers to really stretch themselves, while remaining optional for players who'd rather take it easy.

What I love about puzzle games like this (and I feel similarly about games like Nurikabe World and Spooky Express) is that they demand experimentation. Puzzle games like this force you to tinker around, with a bit of trial-and-error. I found that Grooveyard took my focus completely, which was nice. It's the kind of game that you can zone out with after a stressful day, calmly building a safe route for skeletons to follow without thinking about much else. The lo-fi beats definitely contribute to that, too. And the music goes satisfyingly well with the movement of the skeletons, which is a nice bonus.

The overworld also offers a chance to chat to your newly freed skeletons, which is fun, but also points to the wider story and the underlying secrets within. It's nice to find out more, because the skeletons themselves are very cute to interact with. I'm always a sucker for pixel art, and the monochromatic style is visually lovely. 'Cozy goth' is how I'd describe it. Grooveyard feels like the ideal game to curl up and play right at the end of spooky season on a dark night. Sweeties raided from the trick-or-treat stash optional, but highly recommended.