Journal
Skip · Narrative · 2014
The verdict
WAIT.
It has sold at a fair price before.
Today
$9.99Skip
On its price record
$4.15Fair
- Length
- 1.9h 2.3h to 100%
- Value
- $5.26/hr
- Reviews
- 78% of 349 positive
Watch this gameOne alert at $4.15 or less.
Buy now or wait
Next discount: likely in the Winter Sale, Dec 17 to Jan 4, at about $1.99 (80% off). Calls like this were right 89% 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
Enter the pages of the hand painted world of Journal. A journey through the life of a young and troubled girl as she tries to face up to the choices and responsibilities that come with childhood. An experience that questions the reliability of how we choose to remember events and explores the truths hidden within our dreams.
Minimum specs
Minimum on the Steam store: 2 GB of memory, Shader Model 3.0, 246 MB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux.
The value story
70 discounts in the 13 years on record, a median of 80 percent off across all of them, roughly 8 weeks apart. Today it is at full price, and its last discount ended 11 days ago.
On value it sits in the top 35 percent of its genre. It is pricier than 69 percent of its genre. Adventure Escape Mysteries (free, scores 63) outscores it, and so does Old Man's Journey ($9.99, scores 55). Both sit among its closest neighbours.
More about Journal
The press gave it 59; the people who bought it give it 78 percent. A 19-point gap in the buyer's favour.
Steam's global achievement data puts about 18 percent of players at this game's ending achievement. On a 1.9-hour game, the hours short of it still count in its price per hour. Inside the two-hour refund window, 70 percent of the 112 reviews written there were positive, against 78 percent overall, and those are 35 percent of everything written about it.
The drop-off
61% start to 18% finishA normal fall-off for a game this long. Steam global achievements
What players say
To debate whether this game has artistic merit or if it is worth buying seems almost pointless. The game is currently 80 minutes, and even then it is where the game has you make all the choices you can achieve before proceeding. It is not a game like Gone Home, where the details to every little thing are incredible. The game has rough edges where the main character would often clip at edges or I would go through a...
2 more reviews, 1 not recommended
Journal comes with few interesting features like visualization and music, and rely heavily on storytelling aspect. However story isn't that gripping or intriguing from start till the end, even though final "twist" helps a bit. I personally didn't enjoy this game as much as i would like to, but quality is present. Grade: C
I can appreciate games with more focus on storytelling rather than gameplay (I even like Gone Home which a lot of people hate), but I did not like this game. It's not a bad game, the voice acting is good and sketchy artstyle is really appealing but I could not sympathize with the unnamed protagonist, nor did I have any interest in her. She's a troublemaker who lies, cheats, and steals... and breaks windows. Even if...
Steam reviews, mixed to its ratio and rotated daily. Opinions are theirs.
Cite this score
Journal scores 41/100 on the BANG Score (a skip) as of Oct 19, 2026. The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/261680/journalReviews 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.