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?
Modeled estimate, not a reported figure. How we estimate →
Each in the currency that store quoted — not converted: the gap between two rows is the publisher's pricing, not an exchange rate.
14 of 15 markets; the rest we haven't asked for this title, not markets where it is unavailable.
Availability
We put this game to every storefront we collect. A market that answered not sold has told us something about the game; a market we never asked has not, and the two are never drawn the same.
Discounts
Every price cut of more than 20% we have observed, in each market that quoted one, with this game's chart position on either side of it. These are episodes, not a model: a sale is one event, and one event cannot tell you what the next one will do.
Reviews, worldwide (the counter carries no country): 2/day in the week to Sep 3 → 10.57/day in the week after.
For scale, across Steam · Top Sellers · Brazil over the last 30 days: the 25 chart moves that followed a price cut of more than 20% went a median of 10 places towards #1, and the 2,413 moves with no price cut behind them went 2 away. One store, one chart, one country — it is the only place we have enough observations to say even that.
Prices outside the United States have been collected since 6 August 2026 and chart positions since 19 July 2026, so a cut older than that has no market to compare and a market that joined later has no history yet. Nothing here is converted between currencies.
About
Genres
Sums Steam only; GOG publishes no volume signal, so the true total is higher by an unknown amount.
| Store | Price | Audience | Score | Chart | Est. revenue |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
SteamYou are here | $4.99−75% | 6.4Kreviews | 91% | — | $423.7K |
| $19.99 | 44ratings | 86% | — | not modelled |
Matched by title — a reused name can pair the wrong games. * is a critic aggregate. Prices and positions are each store's United States storefront; Epic charts worldwide. Audience and Score too, except Steam's, which is worldwide.
Updates
Build ids and update times come straight from Steam's PICS — the same source SteamDB reads. Patch history grows as we record new builds.
Engagement
Reviews
Themes across 234 recent reviews and how positive each mention is. A keyword signal, not full sentiment analysis.
Reviews
Eu conheci o jogo pelo Alan, de início logo me prendeu, porque eu adoro jogos de investigação, principalmente quando não te ensinam absolutamente nada. Eu só não tenho paciência para detalhes (e neste jogo, é importante sempre olhar por onde anda). Entretanto, eu fiquei tão viciada pela história (e pela trilha sonora) que eu me permiti olhar TUDO quanto é canto, eu vi o tempo voar jogando.
Extremely fun game that requires detailed note taking, which in itself, adds to the sense of reward when you uncover the next clue in the journey of discovery. The game certainly challenges your persistence and ability to connect small details with important clues. Well constructed and detailed interwoven story that holds intruige right up until its conclusion.
Media
Related
Related
Price dynamics, follower growth, revenue and sales trajectories with interactive tooltips
This and every other Pro feature is free until October 20, 2026. A free account is all it takes.
14 on sale1 answered “not sold”0 we did not ask
The 1 “not sold” market is read from the Steam price pass of Aug 16: that day the store answered for this game elsewhere and gave no price there. The 14 priced markets are the same rows as the table above — each the latest price we hold, dated here when it is older than that pass. The 0 marked “not asked” were not put to this store at all — either it has no storefront there or we do not collect it yet, and neither is a statement about the game. A refusal is a refusal on one day; a store can list a title again tomorrow.
Stats
All-time low is the lowest price we've recorded for this game since we started tracking it.
Languages: English*, Japanese, Russian, French, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Portuguese - Brazil, German, Hungarian, Korean, Italian, Spanish - Spain +2 more
Hours played at review time, across 234 reviews with recorded playtime.
positive critical· bar length = how often the theme comes up
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 CONTROLLER): The menu that records written records you've found is a little janky. Prompts to pick up items and open and close drawers are also awkward, sometimes disappearing. Turning away and back to the object seems to help. Although the studio is based and the game is set in the US, I found the architecture to be quite European (however, I have not visited the States so I could be wrong in finding it inauthentic). There are A LOT of English mistakes which further undermine its setting in a native English-speaking country (they're minor, though. Things like, "My friends David and John is being nasty lately." The game successfully communicates what it needs to). Some (if not all) of the voice actors are not native either. A few of the puzzles are not very clear or natural in how to format or infer their solutions. The music is simple and repeats a lot, but it's quite ambient and moody. Next, my advice: You can use the camera after you've accessed (zoomed in to) documents so just take photos of everything. I would suggest taking notes on where locked things are (doors, drawers, chests, etc). It could also be an idea to make notes about information you learn, but I would consider that optional; you can always access written documents in the aforementioned janky menu. The game does not record EVERY document so be prepared to take photos of some, as I advised above. Some characters have multiple diaries so you'll need to highlight their name on the left side of the documents menu, and then navigate right to the sub menu on the other side of the screen to access them separately. Finally, despite the drawbacks, I LOVED playing this game. It's very common at my age to abandon a new game after just a few minutes so the fact that I spent most of my entire weekend clearing this one is hopefully testament to its appeal.
I love the setup, but this game has issues. I can overlook some jank, like poorly implemented audio loops and samples resulting in obvious popping, or the very rudimentary quality of pretty much all of the audio/visuals/controls, or weird little control foibles like having an "unlock" action prompt that doesn't actually work and tells you to separately open your inventory and "use" a key instead of just having the prompt check if the key is in your inventory. What I can't overlook is the universally poor quality of the writing. This type of game is built on reading a lot of notes/articles/clues. When every sentence I read in-game has errors or is just written very awkwardly, it's immersion breaking at best. I read a journal in the sheriff's office that seemed like it was written by a child, but it turned out the actual sheriff wrote it. Every article or flier I've read has had obvious mistakes. There are already some confusing narrative inconsistencies (everyone started leaving the town as a result of the murder a few months ago, but also it had already been happening for years?). And when it isn't immersion breaking, it is actually detrimental to the puzzles. For instance, the first proper puzzle that I found was a dartboard, and not only did it immediately strike me as an "escape room" style of puzzle that didn't make sense in a more diegetic mystery game about exploring an abandoned town, but the explanation that came with it was misleading and confusing about what the developers wanted you to do. A quick check on the Steam forums showed wide agreement that this puzzle was badly designed overall and messed up by the way they wrote the "darts rules" poster next to it. If the first proper puzzle I run into is this bad it does not bode well for the game overall, especially when I'm already wading through low quality jank. I'd love for a game like this to work, but this just isn't it.
This is one of those times I wish there was a "neutral" review option, because this game isn't bad. Some might even really enjoy it. Unfortunately, I'm not one of those people. I really enjoyed The Roottrees are Dead and that led me to Painscreek. I got far enough into the story to figure out a good deal of the plot, but some of the clues are just too obscure, complex or well-hidden that there's just no way to do it without the help of a walkthrough. What makes the Roottrees enjoyable is that all the information is right there at your fingertips, whereas Painscreek involves a hell of a lot of walking around the town trying to find clues. Again, some might enjoy this. I didn't. Ultimately, I liked the idea, I liked the story and the mystery and the characters, but it was just too hard, too slow and ultimately caused me to give up after 10 hours invested. I wanted to like it, but I just didn't.
Melhor jogo de investigação que eu já joguei em minha vida. A história é super envolvente, e desde o início você desconfia de todos os personagens envolvidos, não há como adivinhar o desfecho logo de cara. É um misto de felicidade, tristeza, medo e angustia. Queria encontrar mais jogos assim, envolvente, mas está difícil. Nota 10/10
This is NOT a detective / deduction game. It is a linear adventure, where you freely walk in a big location while looking for keys and notes. Not worth it.
TLDR ; Really good game worth the price if you're the kind of person to take time to read and understand the mystery. it has a little problem of having "missing one piece to further the story" but I've made it far without any help at all. Definitely a one of a kind experience, definitely for someone who barely runs horror/mystery games its amazing how the 0 help from anywhere instantly immerses you into the game like the first few minutes of you testing things out and seeing the map quickly turns into a detective flick the moment you start picking up clues and getting progress in which was honestly amazing. It does have a couple difficulties with progress but that's a problem the way the "0 help" has on its side hence resulting in missing a small piece to open up the story basically, but as to how everything is made it feels honestly very satisfying getting to each discovery.
gotta be my favorite investigative game ever ngl. played it with my friends watching and taking notes, we had a lot of fun talking about what was going on and our theories etc, it was rly awesome!
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 up.. [spoiler]There is a supernatural element that jump scared me a couple of times as I wasn't expecting it and also there is a small chase sequence in the game.[/spoiler] Neither of these things were mentioned in the reviews I read but it is something I would have liked to know before buying. I did find the the mechanic for unlocking doors by opening your inventory each time slightly annoying but I got used to it pretty quickly. I wouldn't say there are 'puzzles' either. Almost everything needed are for combination locks. The main game play is walking around the same places to find things to unlock and reading letters/diaries to continue the story. Overall, I did like the game. I got in under 8 hours of game play. I thought it was fun piecing together the story to see if to see if I could figure out who the killer was way before the ending
Active players
Estimated daily and monthly active players (DAU/MAU) modeled from peak concurrency.
Players by region
Where this game's players are, estimated from review languages.
Players also reviewed
The games this title's players most often review too — audience affinity.
Related
| Game | Estimated lifetime revenue | Reviews | Review score | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | 0 | — | — | |
| $6.9K | 92 | 68% | $3.99 | |
| $6K | 47 | 91% | $3.99 | |
| — | 0 | — | — | |
| $71.3K | 242 | 93% | $7.64 | |
| $23.9K | 218 | 80% | $7.49 |
Related
| Game | Estimated lifetime revenue | Reviews | Review score | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $423.7K | 1.6K | 87% | $5.59 | |
| $423.6K | 2.2K | 82% | $7.99 | |
| $423.6K | 451 | 77% | $59.99 | |
| $423.6K | 539 | 71% | $9.99 | |
| $423.5K | 844 | 71% | $24.99 | |
| $423.4K | 344 | 85% | $42.24 |