Surviving the Abyss
Skip · Strategy · 2024
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
SKIP IT.
It scores 12, under the fair line, at $19.99.
- Length
- 8.7h 10.5h to 100%
- Value
- $2.30/hr
- Reviews
- 65% of 1,085 positive
Watch this gameOne alert at a price you pick.
Buy now or wait
Discounted in each of its last 8 seasonal sales. Last cut ended 11 days ago.
- Next sale
- Winter Sale, Dec 17 to Jan 4
Sources: IsThereAnyDeal, Valve.
What drives the score
How to read this
Grades run S to D, read from the buyer's side. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. How the grades work
About the game
Earth, 1976. You have been tasked with managing a deep-sea science facility working to perfect cloning. Explore the darkness and keep your crew alive in this hardcore survival colony builder. And beware. The darkness hides untold horrors.
Minimum specs
Minimum on the Steam store: 8 GB of memory, GeForce GTX 950 or Radeon HD 7970, 8 GB of storage. Windows only.
The value story
26 discounts in the 4 years on record, a median of 35 percent off across all of them, roughly 7 weeks apart. Today it is at full price, and its last discount ended 11 days ago.
It is pricier than 90 percent of its genre, and less well reviewed than 86 percent. Among the games that feel like it, IXION ($34.99, scores 51) beats it on value, while it beats The Last Haven ($19.99, scores 5).
More about Surviving the Abyss
Of the 671 Steam-purchase reviews this site sampled, 11 come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written January 2023 to October 2026. That is more refunded reviewers than 7 in 10 paid games this site has sampled to the same depth, and among the 2,597 games in its genre sampled this deeply, 652 have a larger share. In its first 30 days on sale, 3 of 110 sampled reviews came from refunders. Inside the two-hour refund window, 50 percent of the 171 reviews written there were positive, against 65 percent overall, and those are 16 percent of everything written about it.
The drop-off
19% start to 3% rarestNo achievement in this game marks the ending, so there is no finish rate. The curve runs from the most-unlocked achievement to the rarest, and its shape is where players stop. Steam global achievements
What players say
This game is effing great, it's a shame people trash it for stuff that's water under the bridge at this point-- I personally don't care about what happened in development, I'm just here to play games. And this is a fantastic and very unique city builder. City builders are my favorite genre and I've played them all, and Surviving the Abyss is a much needed breath of fresh air. The reasons: --It's as much a...
2 more reviews, 1 not recommended
besides the constant crash to desktop and extreme game slow down late game, i like it and got to near the end, but with the slow down and stutter and constant crashes cannot finish. otherwise 4 stars. it is quite difficult to balance everything and with limited population gets extremely difficult. got to manage everything in micro-doses
Unfinished, buggy & abandoned. Really liked the setting that reminded me of Soma, was waiting for updates that never came.
Steam reviews, mixed to its ratio and rotated daily. Opinions are theirs.
No data upstream: critic score (Metacritic).
Cite this score
Surviving the Abyss scores 12/100 on the BANG Score (a skip) as of Oct 19, 2026. The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/1254320/surviving-the-abyssReviews set the ceiling, and price against real length moves the BANG Score inside it. How it works, and where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 27, price as of Oct 18. A number here look wrong? Tell me and I will check the inputs.