NIDUS
Worth it · Action · 2024
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
BUY IT.
Worth it at $8.99.
- Length
- 5h
- Value
- $1.80/hr
- Reviews
- 94% of 235 positive
Watch this gameOne alert at a price you pick.
Buy now or wait
Next discount: likely in the Winter Sale, Dec 17 to Jan 4, at about $2.69 (70% off). Calls like this were right 86% of the time in a backtest over 70 weeks.
Discounted in 7 of its last 8 seasonal sales. Last cut ended 10 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
A symbiotic Flower and Wasp struggle to complete their lifecycle, in a challengingly twisted arcade experience. Control both characters at once in mind-bending Single Player, or team up with a friend in hectic Local Co-Op. Master the symbiotic duet, devour the swarm, and ascend the leaderboard.
Minimum specs
Minimum on the Steam store: 6 GB of memory, 1 GB of storage. Windows only.
The value story
It has been discounted 11 times in the 3 years tracked here. The median cut across all of them is 50 percent, about 14 weeks apart. Today it is at full price, and its last discount ended 10 days ago.
Value puts it in the top 3 percent of the games it competes with. It is pricier than 62 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 96 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Waves (free, scores 83) beats it on value, while it beats Blackout Z: Slaughterhouse Edition ($4.99, scores 42).
More about NIDUS
Steam's global achievement data puts about 5 percent of players at this game's ending achievement. On a 5-hour game, the hours short of it still count in its price per hour. 1 of the 223 Steam-purchase reviews sampled here comes from a buyer who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written February 2024 to July 2026. In its first 30 days on sale, none of 118 sampled reviews came from refunders. Inside the two-hour refund window, 90 percent of the 130 reviews written there were positive, against 94 percent overall, and those are 58 percent of everything written about it.
The drop-off
52% start to 5% finishSteam counts fewer than one in ten of its players at the ending achievement. Steam global achievements
What players say
SUCH a good game. A couple of things to know: - It takes a little while to figure out what it's asking from you and what types of moves you can do, but once you do, it has such a fun flow. - The 'tips' menu is really handy for getting the basics, but applying them and really seeing all that you can do takes a good bit of time and experimentation (and possibly watching other people play). - I think the most sensible...
2 more reviews
NIDUS is an unconventional arcade shooter that confidently breaks away from genre conventions by placing players in control of two interconnected organisms rather than a single character. Developed and published by Caleb Wood, the game revolves around a symbiotic relationship between a Flower and a Wasp, each serving a distinct purpose during combat. This dual-control system immediately distinguishes the experience...
Brutally hard arcade shooter with a psychedelic art style. I never felt like I truly got a good grip on the controls, having to play two characters at once stretched my brain in an odd way I wasn't very comfortable with. It is viscerally fun to weaken and smash enemies with both symbiotes. Once you get really into the groove you start implementing the projectile explosion to clear enemies quickly. Boss mechanics are...
Steam reviews, mixed to its ratio and rotated daily. Opinions are theirs.
No data upstream: critic score (Metacritic).
Cite this score
NIDUS scores 69/100 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/2372170/nidusReviews 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 30, price as of Oct 18. A number here look wrong? Tell me and I will check the inputs.