I'm on Observation Duty 5
Fair · Short indie · 2022
Steam Deck VerifiedThe verdict
NO RUSH.
Fair at $9.99. Buy it if you want it.
- Length
- 5.3h 16h to 100%
- Value
- $1.88/hr
- Reviews
- 96% of 817 positive
Watch this gameOne alert at $7.49 or less.
Buy now or wait
Next discount: likely in the Winter Sale, Dec 17 to Jan 4. Calls like this were right 83% of the time in a backtest over 70 weeks.
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
As an employee of a mysterious organization your job is to monitor live surveillance camera footage and spot anomalies using your sharp eyes and good memory. Can you survive the entire night shift or will you succumb into paranoia?
Minimum specs
Minimum on the Steam store: 4 GB of memory, GTX 970 or better, 11 GB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux.
The value story
It has been discounted 22 times in the 4 years tracked here. The median cut across all of them is 20 percent, about 12 weeks apart. Today it is at full price, and its last discount ended 11 days ago.
Value puts it in the top 6 percent of the games it competes with. It is pricier than 83 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 98 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Paragnosia ($3.99, scores 69) beats it on value, while it beats Escape: Malice ($7.99, scores 0).
More about I'm on Observation Duty 5
Of the 329 Steam-purchase reviews this site sampled, none come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written May 2022 to August 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 86 percent of the 106 reviews written there were positive, against 96 percent overall, and those are 14 percent of everything written about it.
The main story runs 5.3 hours. Doing everything runs 16, 3.0 times as long.
It carries Valve's Deck Verified rating and runs 5.3 hours, about as long as a handheld game wants to be.
The drop-off
92% start to 19% 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
Just as good as the first and the second and the third and the fourth and the sixth and the seventh and the
2 more reviews, 1 not recommended
Its a great game but I will admit the anomalies can be tough! I wish the brightness were just a little bit higher though lol still a smidge difficult to see the details far away. But I love IOOD series 10/10. (also the different formatting between levels for reporting anomalies were a bit strange to me but I got used to it) :D
Upon re-reading the Steam page, I learned that there are assets in this game that were made with Generative AI. It's a damn shame, because this game is really high quality, but I cannot in good faith recommend something with slop in it. Don't take these soulless shortcuts, dev.
Steam reviews, mixed to its ratio and rotated daily. Opinions are theirs.
No data upstream: critic score (Metacritic).
Cite this score
I'm on Observation Duty 5 scores 64/100 on the BANG Score (fair value) as of Oct 19, 2026. The developer disclosed AI-generated content on Steam, so the score is docked. The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/1850550/i-m-on-observation-duty-5Reviews 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 28, price as of Oct 18. A number here look wrong? Tell me and I will check the inputs.