The Mermaid Mask
Worth it · Narrative · 2026
Steam Deck VerifiedThe verdict
BUY IT.
Worth it at $19.99, a BANGER if it drops to $16.94.
- Length
- 9.7h
- Value
- $2.06/hr
- Reviews
- 100% positive
Watch this gameOne email when it is worth buying. Your call on what that means.
Get one email when The Mermaid Mask is worth buying.
One email per game. Unsubscribe in a click.
Minimum on the Steam store: 2 GB of memory, Intel HD Graphics, 1 GB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS.
An impossible locked-room murder: Captain Mortuga lies dead beside an ancient cauldron aboard the world’s strangest submarine, crewed by sketchy suspects. A handcrafted point-and-click with sharp humour and tricky puzzles. Dive into the next mystery from the creators of Tangle Tower & Crow Country.
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
The value story
The lowest price on record is $17.99, set in July 2026. It has gone on sale 2 times in the 70 days tracked here, most recently in August 2026. The math puts its BANGER price at $16.94. No recorded sale has reached it yet.
Against its own genre it lands in the top 1 percent on value. It is pricier than 87 percent of its genre, and the best reviewed. Among the games closest to it, Haunt the House: Terrortown ($4.99, scores 67) and Crow Country ($19.99, scores 72) both come in lower.
Steam's global achievement data puts 60 percent of players at this game's ending achievement. The median game this site can measure sits at 8. Of the 313 Steam-purchase reviews this site sampled, none come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written July 2026 to August 2026.
Valve rates it Steam Deck Verified, and at 9.7 hours it is short enough to finish on one.
The drop-off
94% start to 60% finishPeople genuinely stick with this one. Steam global achievements
No data upstream: critic score (Metacritic).
Cite this score
Embed the live badge, copy the line, or download the card.
The Mermaid Mask scores 82/100 on the BANG Score (worth it). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/1696770/the-mermaid-maskThe BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Aug 6, price as of Sep 23.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.