The Pale Beyond
Fair · RPG · 2023
Steam Deck VerifiedThe verdict
NO RUSH.
Fair at $19.99. Buy it if you want it.
- Length
- 9.3h
- Value
- $2.15/hr
- Reviews
- 89% positive
Watch this gameOne alert when it is worth buying.
Minimum on the Steam store: 4 GB of memory, DX10, DX11, DX12 capable., 3 GB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS.
You didn’t ask to lead this expedition, but here you are. Stuck in the ice, Captain missing, miles from civilisation. Someone has to take charge. Manage your meagre resources, balance safety and morale, make the hard calls, and head in the only direction you can - through The Pale Beyond.
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
The value story
The lowest price on record is $3.99, set in September 2025. Its cuts run 60 percent off as a rule. There have been 32 in the 4 years tracked, about 6 weeks apart.
On value it sits in the top 9 percent of its genre. It is pricier than 87 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 92 percent. Among the games that feel like it, This War of Mine ($19.99, scores 89) beats it on value, while it beats Shortest Trip to Earth ($25.99, scores 43).
The press gave it 77; the people who bought it give it 89 percent. A 12-point gap in the buyer's favour.
Steam's global achievement data puts about 1 percent of players at this game's ending achievement. On a 9.3-hour game, the hours short of it still count in its price per hour. This site sampled 481 of its Steam-purchase reviews; 1 was written by a buyer who refunded it, sampled from reviews written February 2023 to September 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 73 percent of the 132 reviews written there were positive, against 89 percent overall, and those are 7 percent of everything written about it.
9.3 hours to finish it, 20 to exhaust it. The completionist tail is 2.1 times the campaign.
It carries Valve's Deck Verified rating and runs 9.3 hours, about as long as a handheld game wants to be.
The drop-off
61% start to 1% finishSteam counts fewer than one in ten of its players at the ending achievement. On a 9.3-hour game, that's a lot you pay for and may never use. Steam global achievements
Players
8 players online when we last checked, on Sep 29, 21:49 UTC.
Player counts from the Steam Web API.
What players say
A fun graphic novel / choose your own adventure / light management sim. I saw most of what I needed to, and got a result for all the major characters I was happy with on the first playthrough, but it was a very enjoyable 7 hours.
another one of those choose ur own *linear* story. Why waste ur time trying to min max resources when at the end of the day what u want wouldnt happen. Why call it what it isnt. It`s a graphic novel game infused with trashy resource management system. Plot is mid at best.
Steam reviews, mixed to match its Steam ratio and rotated daily. Opinions are theirs.
Cite this score
The Pale Beyond scores 61/100 on the BANG Score (fair value) as of Oct 2, 2026. The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/1266030/the-pale-beyondReviews 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 1.
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