The Tartarus Key
Fair · Narrative · 2023
The verdict
NO RUSH.
Fair at $19.99. Buy it if you want it.
- Length
- 5.5h 7.3h to 100%
- Value
- $3.63/hr
- Reviews
- 93% of 310 positive
Watch this gameOne alert at $8.78 or less.
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
There’s no way out for Alex Young who wakes up to find herself locked in a strange mansion filled with puzzles, traps, and cameras following her every move. Whether she and her companions live or die, and find the truth behind their abduction, is up to you in this first-person mystery thriller.
Minimum specs
Minimum on the Steam store: 4 GB of memory, GeForce GT 640 (2048 VRAM) or Radeon R7 250 (2048 VRAM), 1 GB of storage. Windows only.
The value story
24 discounts in the 3 years on record, a median of 45 percent off across all of them, roughly 6 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 16 percent on value. It is pricier than 89 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 91 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Satellite Odyssey: Prologue ($1.19, scores 86) beats it on value, while it beats THRESHOLD ($9.99, scores 50).
More about The Tartarus Key
This site sampled 234 of its Steam-purchase reviews; none were written by buyers who refunded it, sampled from reviews written May 2023 to August 2026.
The drop-off
77% 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
What players say
This recommendation comes with a caviat: Buy this game for the escape room puzzles and the graphics and atmosphere. Those were fun, and makes the game worth playing. Do NOT buy this for characters, story or the central mystery. That way lays only uninspired tropes, unoriginal caricatures, completely average writing, and a main character whose entire character voice is "Millenial marvel-quips".
2 more reviews
It's a dang fun little puzzle game. Essentially a story-driven escape room with horror themes and somewhat unsettling vibes but nothing so distressing as to distract from the puzzles which are well done and not too challenging. I enjoyed the story and characters a lot.
A great "mansion full of puzzles" game with some really inventive puzzles. Undermined somewhat by the fact that you get a disappointing and nonsensical "bad ending" for failing a misleading puzzle early in the game which gives you one try, while all of the other puzzles give you unlimited tries. And the only way to change it is to play the whole game over again. (Or save scum, which I would've done if I'd realized...
Steam reviews, mixed to its ratio and rotated daily. Opinions are theirs.
No data upstream: critic score (Metacritic).
Cite this score
The Tartarus Key scores 55/100 on the BANG Score (fair value) as of Oct 19, 2026. The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/1431850/the-tartarus-keyReviews 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.