The Painscreek Killings
Fair · Narrative · 2017
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
NO RUSH.
Fair at $19.99. Buy it if you want it.
- Length
- 8.9h
- Value
- $2.25/hr
- Reviews
- 91% positive
Watch this gameOne alert when it is worth buying.
Minimum on the Steam store: 8 GB of memory, NVIDIA GTX 745 (or AMD equivalent), 11 GB of storage. Windows only.
Investigate an infamous cold case in the eerie, abandoned town of Painscreek. Search for evidence, connect the dots and uncover who killed Vivian Roberts. Can you expose the truth behind this town’s dark secrets?
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
The value story
The lowest price on record is $4.99, set in June 2018. 81 discounts in the 9 years on record. They run about 60 percent off, roughly 5 weeks apart.
On value it sits in the top 7 percent of its genre. It is pricier than 92 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 92 percent. Among the games closest to it, Scene Investigators ($24.99, scores 27) and Draugen ($19.99, scores 29) both come in lower.
This site sampled 726 of its Steam-purchase reviews; 8 were written by buyers who refunded it, sampled from reviews written March 2020 to September 2026. That is fewer refunded reviewers than 7 in 10 paid games this site has sampled to the same depth, and among the 1,656 games in its genre sampled this deeply, 924 have a larger share. Inside the two-hour refund window, 47 percent of the 286 reviews written there were positive, against 91 percent overall, and those are 5 percent of everything written about it.
The drop-off
84% 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
Players
16 players online when we last checked, on Sep 30, 03:46 UTC.
Player counts from the Steam Web API.
What players say
I have good things, bad things, and advice to share. The good first: The game leaves you to explore, uncover clues, and find items and codes, revealing the story as you go. I would absolutely recommend this to fans of The Outer Wilds. I was very eager to continue exploring and progressing, so if that's what you're looking for in a game, give this a try! Now the bad (NOTE THAT I PLAYED USING AN XBOX SERIES S...
I bought this game when it was on sale. (Best time to buy is when it's 75% off.) I thought this game was great for what it is. You play as a detective that must figure out an unsolved murder from years before. This is a limited open world type of game and the majority of what you learn is through reading. You are also the only one in this village... Though I don't know if this counts as a spoiler so I will cover it...
I'd describe myself as a puzzle/p&c adventure gamer, and I really enjoyed this. The mystery was intriguing, environment was foreboding, maybe 1 or 2 obtuse puzzles & a few red herrings, but overall the game flowed nicely. Obviously leads open up as you follow clues, but I wouldn't say the game is linear. A few times I found myself answering questions without having all the info; not brute forcing, but coming across...
Steam reviews, mixed to match its Steam ratio and rotated daily. Opinions are theirs.
No data upstream: critic score (Metacritic).
Cite this score
The Painscreek Killings scores 66/100 on the BANG Score (fair value) as of Oct 2, 2026. The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/624270/the-painscreek-killingsReviews 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 17, price as of Oct 1.
A number here look wrong? Tell me and I will check the inputs.