Journey
Worth it · Narrative · 2020
Steam Deck VerifiedThe verdict
BUY IT.
Worth it at $14.99, a BANGER if it drops to $5.90.
- Length
- 2h
- Value
- $7.50/hr
- Reviews
- 94% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 4 GB of memory, Nvidia GTS 450 | AMD Radeon HD 5750, 4 GB of storage. Windows only.
Explore the ancient, mysterious world of Journey as you soar above ruins and glide across sands to discover its secrets.
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
The value story
April 2024 is where it bottomed out, at $2.24. It has been discounted 55 times in the 6 years tracked here, typically at 50 percent off, with about 5 weeks between sales. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 5 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 5 weeks. Past sales have already crossed the $5.90 BANGER line 22 times.
Value puts it in the top 4 percent of the games it competes with. It is pricier than 81 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 97 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Meadow - A Shelter Game ($6.99, scores 74) beats it on value, while it beats Proteus ($9.99, scores 32).
Steam's global achievement data puts 46 percent of players at this game's ending achievement. The median game this site can measure sits at 8. This site sampled 399 of its Steam-purchase reviews; 4 were written by buyers who refunded it, sampled from reviews written March 2026 to August 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 90 percent of the 13,279 reviews written there were positive, against 94 percent overall, and those are 38 percent of everything written about it.
Finishing takes 2 hours; clearing it takes 6, which is 2.9 times the campaign.
It carries Valve's Deck Verified rating and runs 2 hours, about as long as a handheld game wants to be.
The drop-off
46% start to 46% finishPeople genuinely stick with this one. Steam global achievements
Players
60 players at peak in the last day.
The chart appears once this game has been counted more than once.Player counts via SteamSpy.
What players say
This game was kind of crazy. Being matched up with 1 other person part way through the story sometimes. Sometimes you're solo. I had 1 or 2 amazing runs where another person and I basically understood each other completely. Watching each other's backs, learning our patterns, all without a username or spoken language. This game is a fine thing
Playing Journey is like getting therapy, except it actually works. 10/10 will play again.
We just spent half the game playing together. I don't know you, where you live, what language you speak. Yet, we found collectibles for each other, warned each other of danger, were worried about each other when harm came their way, and acted as one. And we did all of that with the single press of a button to communicate. Honestly, this game is the prime example of video games as art but getting to experience it...
Player reviews from Steam: the most helpful all-time, plus the newest that clear the same quality bar, with the hours each player had put in when they wrote it. The mix of Recommended and Not recommended follows the game's Steam ratio. Rotates daily. Opinions are theirs.
No data upstream: critic score (Metacritic).
Cite this score
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Journey scores 68/100 on the BANG Score (worth it). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/638230/journeyThe BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Aug 2, price as of Sep 24.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.