The Wake: Mourning Father, Mourning Mother
Skip · Narrative · 2020
The verdict
SKIP IT.
It scores 49, under the fair line, at $4.99.
- Length
- 1.4h 1.4h to 100%
- Value
- $3.56/hr
- Reviews
- 81% of 277 positive
Watch this gameOne alert at a price you pick.
Buy now or wait
Next discount: likely in the Winter Sale, Dec 17 to Jan 4, at about $2.49 (50% off). Calls like this were right 89% of the time in a backtest over 70 weeks.
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
The Wake is a record of past wounds opened at a three-day funeral. The journal is encoded with a simple substitution cipher that the player must break in order to reveal the writer’s psyche and discover the contradictions that define him.
Minimum specs
Minimum on the Steam store: 2 GB of memory, 246 MB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS.
The value story
32 discounts in the 6 years on record, a median of 50 percent off across all of them, roughly 10 weeks apart. Today it is at full price, and its last discount ended 11 days ago.
Against its own genre it lands in the top 22 percent on value. It is cheaper than 64 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 68 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Buddy Simulator 1984 ($9.99, scores 79) beats it on value, while it beats Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP ($7.99, scores 44).
More about The Wake: Mourning Father, Mourning Mother
This site sampled 251 of its Steam-purchase reviews; none were written by buyers who refunded it, sampled from reviews written July 2020 to July 2026.
The drop-off
88% start to 51% 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
I've thought really hard about whether I can recommend the game, and unfortunately the answer is no, which is heart-breaking in a way. The story is very moving and personal, and I wanted to keep reading. The music lends well to the atmosphere of the game and is a lovely addition to the emotions from the story. I like the simple design of the game, and I don't mind the way that the words wrap because it lends to the...
2 more reviews, 2 not recommended
It's not a game for everyone, and certainly not one for me. The story and music were beautiful, but the interface doesn't lend itself well to English. When reading the journal, words are cut off at random to the next time, and things are just mashed together, making it a chore to read. For the actual game play itself, the ciphers, at first they were simple, but then I found it got very difficult and unintuitive. I...
It's actually a little bit hard to choose not to recommend this game. I want to start by talking about what I like about this game: 1. The background music was beautiful 2. Puzzle-solving gameplay 3. Part of the story Then about something not so good: 1. The puzzle-solving process was way too simple and a bit rough, which made it feel more like a bland short story than a puzzle game. 2. Unable to save. Although I...
Steam reviews, mixed to its ratio and rotated daily. Opinions are theirs.
No data upstream: critic score (Metacritic).
Cite this score
The Wake: Mourning Father, Mourning Mother scores 49/100 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/1311540/the-wake-mourning-father-mourning-motherReviews 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 29, price as of Oct 18. A number here look wrong? Tell me and I will check the inputs.