Islands of the Caliph
Worth it · RPG · 2023
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
BUY IT.
Worth it at $9.99.
- Length
- 11.9h
- Value
- $0.84/hr
- Reviews
- 89% of 287 positive
Watch this gameOne alert at a price you pick.
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
Islands of the Caliph is an old-school inspired action RPG based on Middle Eastern folklore and Islamic spiritual tradition. A KEYBOARD ONLY 1980s style Dungeon Crawler with an open world.
Minimum specs
Minimum on the Steam store: 1 GB of memory, 64 MB video card, 502 MB of storage. Windows only.
The value story
It has been discounted 34 times in the 3 years tracked here. The median cut across all of them is 25 percent, about 6 weeks apart. Today it is at full price, and its last discount ended 11 days ago.
Value puts it in the top 5 percent of the games it competes with. It is better reviewed than 89 percent of its genre. Among the games that feel like it, The Bard's Tale Trilogy ($14.99, scores 90) beats it on value, while it beats Vaporum ($3.99, scores 67).
More about Islands of the Caliph
5 of the 270 Steam-purchase reviews sampled here come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written September 2023 to July 2026.
The drop-off
57% start to 2% 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
A very well-designed retro RPG. The interlocking missions involve your character learning and practicing the tenets of Islam, picking up on a political quest to unite the islands, and handling lesser but still meaningful personal requests along the way. It's less about combat optimization than about problem solving, without resorting to artificial puzzles. The pacing, difficulty (not hard), and environment design...
2 more reviews, 1 not recommended
I really enjoyed Schmidt Workshops' other exploration game, Star Explorers, so I gave this one a try, also. I love the artwork and the setting, and the old keyboard-only control scheme is surprisingly intuitive. Combat is not really difficult if you haven't run ahead of your area too far and you take your time. The game is heavy on exploration and finding out how to get from point-to-point, so in a way it is more of...
+ old-school graphics & style - old-school game play.. perhaps to detriment (IE: no modern QoL features) - a LOT of time wasted back-tracking (but that's true to form for old-school games) - quite a bit of "where do I go, what do I do?" - towns and islands are maze-like - some quests are scavenger hunts to find stuff scattered through-out the mazes (ugh) - the religious aspects of the game are optional... until...
Steam reviews, mixed to its ratio and rotated daily. Opinions are theirs.
No data upstream: critic score (Metacritic).
Cite this score
Islands of the Caliph scores 70/100 on the BANG Score (worth it) as of Oct 19, 2026. The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/1845670/islands-of-the-caliphReviews 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.