Dear Esther: Landmark Edition
Skip · Narrative · 2017
Steam Deck VerifiedThe verdict
SKIP IT.
It scores 35, under the fair line, at $1.99.
- Reviews
- 75% of 7,572 positive
Watch this gameOne alert when a sale makes it a BANGER.
Buy now or wait
It is 80% off today.
Discounted in each of its last 8 seasonal sales.
- 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
- How long it takes to beat isn't in our data. We scored it as a typical Narrative game (about 5 hours) and docked the score for the missing length.
About the game
Dear Esther immerses you in a stunningly realised world, a remote and desolate island somewhere in the outer Hebrides. As you step forwards, a voice begins to read fragments of a letter: 'Dear Esther...' - and so begins a journey through one of the most original first-person games of recent years.
Minimum specs
Minimum on the Steam store: 2 GB of memory, NVIDIA GeForce 7600GT (256 MB), AMD Radeon X1600 XT (256 MB), 2 GB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS.
The value story
61 discounts in the 10 years on record, a median of 80 percent off across all of them, roughly 6 weeks apart. Today's $1.99 at 80 percent off still sits 67 percent above the floor, so a deeper cut exists in its history.
Against its own genre it lands in the top 45 percent on value. It is pricier than 67 percent of its genre. Among the games that feel like it, Layers of Fear ($29.99, scores 40) beats it on value, while it beats Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs ($19.99, scores 20).
More about Dear Esther: Landmark Edition
Of the 653 Steam-purchase reviews this site sampled, 7 come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written March 2020 to August 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 71 percent of the 1,259 reviews written there were positive, against 75 percent overall, and those are 52 percent of everything written about it.
Valve rates it Steam Deck Verified, so it runs on the handheld without fiddling.
The drop-off
55% start to 10% 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
No data upstream: length (HowLongToBeat), critic score (Metacritic).
Cite this score
Dear Esther: Landmark Edition scores 35/100 on the BANG Score (a skip) as of Oct 19, 2026. Length is estimated at 5 hours, not measured, so the score is docked. The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/520720/dear-esther-landmark-editionReviews set the ceiling, and price against its genre's typical length moves the BANG Score inside it, docked until a real length is known. How it works, and where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 26, price as of Oct 18. A number here look wrong? Tell me and I will check the inputs.