9 Years of Shadows
Skip · Action · 2023
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
SKIP IT.
It scores 36, under the fair line, at $19.99.
- Length
- 7.2h
- Value
- $2.78/hr
- Reviews
- 77% positive
Watch this gameOne alert when it is worth buying.
Minimum on the Steam store: 8 GB of memory, GT 730. Windows only.
Fight to bring beautiful colors back to a hand-crafted world of darkness and discover the story of Europa, a young warrior, and her ghostly childhood companion, Apino.
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
April 2026 is where it bottomed out, at $6.99. 33 discounts in the 4 years on record. They run about 50 percent off, roughly 6 weeks apart.
On value it sits in the top 35 percent of its genre. It is pricier than 91 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 69 percent. Among the games that feel like it, AWAKEN - Astral Blade ($19.99, scores 50) beats it on value, while it beats Chasm ($19.99, scores 35).
Of the 769 Steam-purchase reviews this site sampled, 2 come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written March 2023 to August 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 65 percent of the 297 reviews written there were positive, against 77 percent overall, and those are 13 percent of everything written about it.
The drop-off
92% start to 17% 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
Players
11 players online when we last checked, on Sep 29, 18:48 UTC.
Player counts from the Steam Web API.
What players say
Clearly an allegory about grief, short game but very pleasant in many ways, took me longer than some other titles of the same category but overall i consider this to be a nice addition to my metroidvania catalog, hard to tell where my next adventure will lead to
Fun game to play-- my first Metroidvania that I actually finished! I love the art and the music of the game. A small detail that doesn't really matter to most people is that the heroine isn't depicted in stereotypical "female armor" that you see in most games. If you are looking for a story-driven game, you WILL be disappointed! I wish we had more backstory behind Europa and her relationship with her mentor, whom we...
Honestly...it's not a good game. It has stunning pixelart and that's it. Combat is so simplistic and boring, exploration non existent, untill you get all upgrades is useless. You just go from one plot point to another. Bosses...painfully simple and boring. Most of them you just wait until they finish their combo and then you have a chance to land a few hits. Upgrades to your character, almost doesn't exist. You have...
Steam reviews, mixed to match its Steam ratio and rotated daily. Opinions are theirs.
No data upstream: critic score (Metacritic).
Cite this score
9 Years of Shadows scores 36/100 on the BANG Score (a skip) as of Oct 2, 2026. The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/1402120/9-years-of-shadowsReviews 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 26, price as of Oct 1.
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