The Painscreek Killings

The Painscreek Killings favors patient investigation over waypoints: search an abandoned town, gather clues, and piece them together yourself. At ≈ $4.05 from GOG, the confirmed tracked low makes this an opportune price for a solo player drawn to puzzles and independent exploration. English has full audio, other supported languages have subtitles, and the Steam PC version offers full controller support. With Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, English, Japanese, Russian, French, Portuguese-Brazil, German, Hungarian, Korean, Italian, Spanish, Polish, and Spanish-Latin America interface languages and DRM-Free activation, you can judge how well the offer fits your setup.

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90%Steam Reviews5.9K reviews

Released: Sep 27, 2017

Investigation · Mystery · Detective · Exploration · Puzzle

GOGThe Painscreek Killings·Platform:·Checked 2026-10-28~~~ $10.20~~-60%from~ $4.05(~ CN¥27.00)ALL-TIME LOWSave $15.94 vs SteamBuy now

EnebaThe Painscreek Killings Steam Key GLOBAL·Platform:·Checked 2026-10-28-62%~ $7.55Buy now

GAMIVOThe Painscreek Killings EN/JA Global·Platform:·Checked 2026-10-28-62%from~ $7.57(~ €6.79)Buy now

K4GThe Painscreek Killings Steam CD Key·Platform:·Checked 2026-10-28~~~ $22.28~~-65%from~ $7.75(~ €6.95)Buy now

KinguinThe Painscreek Killings Steam CD Key·Platform:·Checked 2026-10-28~~~ $22.29~~-65%from~ $7.79(~ €6.99)Buy now

Steam·Platform:·United States Steam official price~ $19.99Buy now

Humble BundleThe Painscreek Killings·Platform:·Checked 2026-10-28~ $19.99Buy now

GGselThe Painscreek Killings РФ+СНГ+ВЕСЬ МИР Steam КЛЮЧ·Platform:·Checked 2026-10-27~ RUB 1,166.78Credit/Debit CardBuy now

All-time low ~ $4.99across Steam & third-party storesat the recorded all-time low

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Price History

Past 36 months · Updated daily

Historical Low~ $4.992023-08Current Low Across Stores~ $8.35GOGvs. Historical Low+67%

Prices cover Steam and 39 authorized stores; only legitimate offers are counted. The chart shows weekly market-wide lows and Steam's official price across the past 36 months.

01About The Painscreek Killings

In The Painscreek Killings, you play journalist Janet, investigating an abandoned town and an unsolved murder. Explore freely, collect clues and evidence, take notes and photographs, and solve logical puzzles by working out the connections yourself. On Steam PC, player reviews rate the game 90% positive across 5,874 reviews. English has full audio; other supported languages provide subtitles.

Credits

Developer

EQ Studios

Publisher

EQ Studios

Steam player reviews

90%positiveVery Positive5,874 Steam reviews

Lowest recorded in 36 months

$4.992023-08-28 · GOGBase game · same records as the chart above; USD history, not a regional Steam low.

Language support

Language	Interface	Subtitles	Audio
Simplified Chinese	Yes	Yes	—
Traditional Chinese	Yes	Yes	—
English	Yes	Yes	Yes

Show 11 more languages

Language	Interface	Subtitles	Audio
Japanese	Yes	Yes	—
Russian	Yes	Yes	—
French	Yes	Yes	—
Portuguese-Brazil	Yes	Yes	—
German	Yes	Yes	—
Hungarian	Yes	Yes	—
Korean	Yes	Yes	—
Italian	Yes	Yes	—
Spanish	Yes	Yes	—
Polish	Yes	Yes	—
Spanish-Latin America	Yes	Yes	—

Steam PC edition data · 2026-10-27

02Before you buy

Language and controls

The Steam PC version has full controller support. English has full audio; other supported languages provide subtitles.

Play mode

This is a single-player investigation. Explore freely, record clues, and solve logical puzzles without quest markers or a hint system.

03Frequently asked questions

Who do you play as?

You play Janet, a journalist sent to investigate the secrets of an abandoned town.

How does the investigation work?

Search for clues and evidence, take notes and photographs, and connect your findings to solve a murder case.

Are there hints or quest markers?

No. There are no quest markers or hint system; observation and deduction guide progress.

Popular Steam reviews

Native-language selection · 10 reviews

Selected helpful reviews in this language show both recommendations and criticisms. This selection does not represent the overall positive rating; opinions reflect the version reviewed.

RecommendedSteam player

08/29/2022

I really enjoyed the mystery solving aspect of the game. Love how the game doesn't hold your hand but instead let you deduct everything on your own. BUT, please add a psychological horror tag as content warning. There is minor horror element (and a chase sequence). Some people such as me is unable to handle even the slightest horror element. For this reason I cannot continue the game instead have to watch playthrough because I just can't handle the horror aspect.Show moreShow less

4.1 hours at review107 people found this helpful

Not recommendedSteam player

08/15/2025

The Painscreek Killings is a game that will require you to make notes and diagrams if you want to get the whole story. It really puts you in the shoes of an journalist finding a story and throws out the training wheels. I couldn't get into it. The game has a charm that lovers of the genre will love. You can see that reflected on the "Very Positive" reviews it has (as of Aug 2025) but its not for me. It requires a commitment and a focus that I couldn't give. If you are into investigation, note taking and puzzles this is for you. If you want something that you can play after a long day at work in which you want to relax this might not be your game.Show moreShow less

1.9 hours at review217 people found this helpful

RecommendedSteam player

10/08/2017

I am in love with this game and cannot wait to get to the ending. It has a nice long game play to it, making you constantly guess your previous notions and thoughts. Investigate, Analyse, Derive and seek out more and more clues. This game will have you scratching you head and it is such a rush when you figure something out and make the puzzle pieces click together. This is the type of game I miss playing from my child hood and has been all but completely ignored in recent years, and I am truly enjoying myself right now. Alright, so Played for about 8 hours and ran into a bug. It actually prevented me from continuing the game. I send an email to EQ Studios and they resolved it and uploaded a patch to steam to prevent anyone else from having the issue ever again. Now I know what your thinking. This meant weeks without being able to play the game. But I was supersized. They responded to my initial email within 15-30 minutes Had a patch ready in less than 2 hours and deployed. They then took my save game file and fixed it so that i wouldn't lose any progress, With an awesome game play that has you scratching your head for hours, mixed with a company that cares so much for their consumers to be able to on the spot fix a bug in the game practically right in front of my eyes. I have to recommend this game, and this company to anyone who isn't afraid of a few little brain frying puzzles.Show moreShow less

10.9 hours at review44 people found this helpful

Not recommendedSteam player

07/27/2018

I really wanted to like this drawer-opening simulator. It has a great story, and the general concept of the game is a good one. But it's not a game that I can recommend. Puzzles are almost exclusively "find a key, unlock a drawer to get another key, repeat ad nauseum." At least they're mostly logical, except for a few irritating ones. But be prepared for more locked doors than the entire Silent Hill franchise. One of the interesting ideas about the game, the fact that you can explore the whole town for clues, works against it badly. Getting stuck and having to backtrack to explore entire buildings for something scrawled on a wall in an inconspicuous spot gets incredibly tedious. Holding down a button to "sprint" (i.e. walk slightly faster than a sloth) is tiresome and there are too many times where it seems you need to go to a particular place only to find there's really nothing there, or that it's actually a completely inaccessible location. A few red herrings are nice in a game like this, but too many are frustrating, especially when they make you walk all the way across town. Lining up your cursor with objects gets fidgety at times, and the background music consists of a lot of droning loops that you'll quickly get tired of. There is a really good mystery here, but it's not good enough to overcome the subpar game mechanics and the mind-numbing key fetching.Show moreShow less

8.4 hours at review109 people found this helpful

Not recommendedSteam player

11/11/2018

The Painstaking Fingerkillings Let me give you some gaming background and history before I begin: - I've played through and enjoyed "L. A. Noire" twice. - I've thoroughly enjoyed "Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments," shared by my husband and I, and we both succeeded in reaching the correct answers for the cases we completed. - I love puzzle games such as "The Black Watchmen," "The Room," "Portal and Portal 2," "Hacknet" and "Uplink" - I love to solve problems, and detective games are one such way I do this. First, I want to address the narrative. It's competent (up until the end), and the story is quite interesting and had it been actually written in a book, I would have enjoyed it more. But maybe that's my problem with this product. I feel like it barely functions as a "game," and it didn't need to exist in the form of playable media. "The Painscreek Killings" is a glorified key and diary hunt dressed up as a "murder mystery." One of the most frustrating things about this is how incredibly long and slow it feels due to how much absent-minded wandering you'll be doing. It's typical "walking simulator" fare. Every plot point is solved in almost the exact same way, and there is no sense of accomplishment for reaching the conclusion, because you don't even need every detail to get to that point. Here is a basic rundown of how the game is played: 1. Find an unlocked building. 2. Find a diary/log/journal/note and a key or two inside. 3. Wander around town until you find the building the key unlocks. 4. Unlock new building and go inside. 5. Find a diary/log/journal/note and a key or two inside. 6. Go to the new location that the new key unlocks. Rinse and repeat for ten hours. I realize that the developers had a small or non-existent budget and couldn't afford twenty different character models with dialogue voice-overs and such, but this entire tale is told by diaries, which are inexplicably scattered all throughout the town. For some reason, one individual character will have ten different diaries, and will have them hidden in multiple locations, which just isn't logical, and it doesn't make any sense. There were even diaries in the hospital. Speaking of the ending, as others have mentioned, it's a very abrupt genre switch. Just as you may have solved the mystery, a haphazard chase scene ensues, surprising the player who throughout this entire mess was wandering from house to house nosing through the former residents' journals. This was honestly a poor decision, and if the plan was to have the player chased down, perhaps additional chase scenes should have been included elsewhere in the game so it wouldn't have felt like such a sudden inexplicable change. The story in general makes no sense. So this murderer has been hanging out in this abandoned ghost town for about four years on his own until the progragonist comes to investigate. As we discover, electricity only powers certain buildings and not others. What did he eat? Who supplied his groceries? Who was paying for the electricity, the gas and water? Some clues were just sitting in plain sight, and he didn't deal with those before you arrived? He didn't try at all to clean up every scrap of evidence? You might say "you're overthinking it," but that's what you're supposed to do in a detective game. You can't tell me "just ignore that dumb stuff" when I'm playing a game that encourages an analytical mind to dictate the occurrences. Speaking of dictating, I noticed that multiple sources encourage you to take notes. You really don't have to. All diaries are saved in your journal, and you can look back on them any time. The only notes you'll be taking are combinations for locks. While I did take notes, I never once looked at them. I wish it truly was investigative work, but the cold truth is, it isn't.Show moreShow less

9 hours at review106 people found this helpful

Source: original Steam user reviews. Helpful votes are an archived snapshot, not live data. Last collected: 08/15/2026.