Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle
Skip · Shooter · 2023
Steam Deck VerifiedThe verdict
SKIP IT.
It scores 30, under the fair line, at $29.99.
- Length
- 7.4h
- Value
- $4.05/hr
- Reviews
- 75% positive
Buy now or wait
Next discount: likely between Oct 8 and Oct 21, at about $11.99 (60% off). Calls like this were right 73% of the time in a backtest over 70 weeks. Its own discounts have started about 56 days apart.
The Autumn Sale is on until Oct 8. It is at full price today.
Discounted in each of its last 8 seasonal sales on record.
- Autumn Sale cooldown
- None on record
- Typical seasonal cut
- 50% ($14.99)
- Deepest seasonal cut
- 60% ($11.99)
- Last discount ended
- 25 days ago
Sources: IsThereAnyDeal, Valve.
Watch this gameOne alert when it is worth buying.
Minimum on the Steam store: 8 GB of memory, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 or AMD Radeon R7 260x with 2 GB Video RAM, 23 GB of storage. Windows only.
Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle is a third-person story-driven survival horror game prequel to the critically acclaimed Daymare: 1998. Step into the shoes of agent Dalila Reyes, a former government spy now in the service of H.A.D.E.S. unit and prepare to face the true horror.
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
It has never been cheaper than $11.99. That was June 2026. Its cuts run 50 percent off as a rule. There have been 34 in the 3 years tracked, about 5 weeks apart. Today it is at full price, and its last discount ended about 4 weeks ago.
It is pricier than 86 percent of its genre. Among the games that feel like it, Resident Evil 2 ($39.99, scores 61) beats it on value, while it beats Them and Us ($39.99, scores 28).
Steam's global achievement data puts 37 percent of players at this game's ending achievement. The median game this site can measure sits at 15. 2 of the 498 Steam-purchase reviews sampled here come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written August 2023 to August 2026.
It carries Valve's Deck Verified rating and runs 7.4 hours, about as long as a handheld game wants to be.
The drop-off
91% start to 37% finishSteam counts a larger share of its players at the ending achievement than it does for most games this site can measure. Steam global achievements
What players say
Poor mans resident evil with incredibly hard time based puzzles randomized puzzles you only a limited number of attempts at.
There was clearly a genuine effort to create something good, but certain issues really stand out. For starters, the character animations look incredibly stiff and comical. There is almost no sense of impact when using weapons; the enemies are essentially just bullet sponges. While the map design and story are passable, the gameplay loop is frustrating: you want to go somewhere, but first you have to move 10 steps...
Love it, great game, for everyone who likes resi4 like games a must have. By the way, if hacking ist too difficult you can disable it in the extras. I really wish for another part, because the developers improved a lot with this one!
Steam reviews, mixed to match its Steam ratio and rotated daily. Opinions are theirs.
No data upstream: critic score (Metacritic).
Cite this score
Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle scores 30/100 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/1530470/daymare-1994-sandcastleReviews 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 Oct 1, price as of Oct 2.
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