CALENDULA
Skip · Short indie · 2016
The verdict
SKIP IT.
It scores 33, under the fair line, at $6.99.
- Length
- 1h 1.7h to 100%
- Value
- $6.99/hr
- Reviews
- 77% of 363 positive
Watch this gameOne alert at a price you pick.
Buy now or wait
Discounted in 1 of its last 8 seasonal sales. Last cut ended 287 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
How to play a game that doesn't want to be played? Calendula is an experimental meta game about trying to play a game. Use your logic to thrive against conventions and get surrounded by a dark atmosphere.
Minimum specs
Minimum on the Steam store: 2 GB of memory, Card with at least 512 MB VRAM and Shader Model 3.0 or higher, 2 GB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS.
The value story
It has been discounted 18 times in the 11 years tracked here. The median cut across all of them is 70 percent, about 15 weeks apart. Today it is at full price, and its last discount ended about 41 weeks ago.
On value it sits in the top 42 percent of its genre. It is pricier than 75 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 63 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Psalm 5:9-13 ($3.99, scores 45) beats it on value, while it beats Layers of Fear 2 (2019) ($1.99, scores 32).
More about CALENDULA
Critics scored it 67. Players sit 10 points higher at 77 percent, which usually means a game that plays better than it reviews.
Inside the two-hour refund window, 71 percent of the 243 reviews written there were positive, against 77 percent overall, and those are 74 percent of everything written about it.
The drop-off
95% start to 12% 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
It was an innovative game and was fun at points, but the story is loosely cobbled together and has nothing to do with you. The only part of the story that really makes sense is the ending, the rest doesn't seem to have much of a connection other than the sections of the game where you hold w (you cannot do anything else but hold w) and walk through rooms that you realize at the end are a metaphor for something else...
2 more reviews, 1 not recommended
I kinda liked the idea, but got locked by (well known, and yet never fixed) "eyes room" bug.
So close to being great. It's quite good, it could almost be formidable. It might have released a few years too early, or too late? An extension on Calendula is long overdue.
Steam reviews, mixed to its ratio and rotated daily. Opinions are theirs.
Cite this score
CALENDULA scores 33/100 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/427810/calendulaReviews 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.