DLCThe Talos Principle: Road To GehennaLoading store offers
The Talos Principle
Over 120 puzzles, laser and time mechanics, and philosophical science fiction make The Talos Principle a focused solo experience. At $3.39 from 
CDKeys, the decision comes down to whether its nonlinear exploration and self-directed problem-solving appeal to you; controller support is available on Steam PC. Compare $3.39 at CDKeys with Steam's current $29.99 before choosing where to buy.
All-time low ~ $2.99across Steam & third-party stores
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Price History
Past 36 months · Updated dailyHistorical Low~ $2.992023-09Current Low Across Stores~ $3.39CDKeysvs. Historical Low+13%
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 Talos Principle
You awaken among ancient ruins and advanced technology in The Talos Principle. Solve increasingly complex first-person puzzles, then decide whether to trust your creator or ask difficult questions about identity and purpose. Steam players rate it 95% from 29,323 reviews. The Steam PC version supports single-player and full controller support.
Credits
T
DIRECTOR
Tom Jubert
British video game writer and narrative designer
Composer
Damjan Mravunac
Developer
Croteam
Publisher
Devolver Digital · Croteam
Lowest recorded in 36 months
$2.992023-09-26 · SteamBase game · same records as the chart above; USD history, not a regional Steam low.Language support
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified Chinese | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Traditional Chinese | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| English | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Show 10 more languages
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| French | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Italian | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| German | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Spanish | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Russian | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Japanese | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Korean | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Polish | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Portuguese-Brazil | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Czech | Yes | Yes | — |
Steam PC edition data · 2026-10-16
02Before you buy
Gameplay
This single-player, first-person puzzle game offers more than 120 challenges in a nonlinear world, using drones, lasers and time manipulation.
Language and controls
The Steam PC version has full controller support. English and several other languages are listed for interface, audio and subtitles.
03Frequently asked questions
What kind of game is The Talos Principle?
It is a first-person puzzle game with a single-player mode.
Is the world linear?
Its nonlinear world lets you choose your route and solve puzzles your way.
What is the story about?
The story explores humanity, technology and civilization through clues and questions about identity and purpose.
Popular Steam reviews
Native-language selection · 10 reviewsSelected 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
If you like Portal, you will like this game! If you study philosophy, you will like this game! If you study math, you will like this game! If you study religion, you will like this game! If you study physics, you will like this game! .... If you play CoD, you will die. Slowly.Show moreShow less
33.1 hours at review2,086 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
Ah, christ... this game, this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game... I don't think I've ever had such an emotionally exhausting love-hate relationship like this with any other game I've ever played. It was like being in an abusive relationship. The first 10-15 hours of the game were exhilarating, narratively interesting, and created a strong motivation to see what was in each new puzzle room/world, but over the next 10-15 hours it gradually descended into a painfully dull, repetitive, utterly frustrating exercise in endurance. Towards the end I kept going back *just* to complete it, because sometimes it was *still* fun (and I was desperate for narrative closure), but most of the latter half of the game was just mind-numbingly frustrating, like nothing else I've ever played. I almost wanted to cry in frustration during the final levels. So... at the start, the game sets up the world and teaches you the mechanics of the puzzles extremely well. The graphics are beautiful, the voice acting is superb, and the story is slowly unveiled to you through terminals and audio logs found throughout the world, which (initially) gives a strong motivation to explore everywhere in the hope of discovering little secrets about the overarching story. Each few sets of puzzles introduce new tools you can use to solve the puzzles, which keeps the puzzling entertaining and fresh during the first half of the game. I felt a real sense of progression and reward, and was itching to see what was in the next room and on the next terminal. Problems start to begin somewhere in the second world, about 10 hours in. It becomes clear that there are just WAY too many puzzles with too little variation. There is a very long time where no new puzzle solving mechanic is introduced, where it begins to feel like you're doing the same thing for almost every single puzzle, albeit in a slightly more complicated fashion each time. It's also during this time that the story starts to become stale and predictable. I won't spoil it, but believe me: very little of note is revealed to the player after the first half of the game. The exact same themes are covered over and over again, but the themes aren't exactly *that* complicated to begin with. It starts to feel like a prolonged philosophy 101 seminar debate. What is life? Are robots alive? What is consciousness? Can robots be ethical? Is God real? Should you obey God? Interesting questions the first time they are discussed, but pretty dull after being re-stated over and over (and believe me, they are re-stated so many times with so little variation). Also, the overarching point of the game world and the (main) ending are extremely obvious quite close to the start of the game. By the time I eventually completed it, I wasn't even slightly surprised. It felt like an obvious narrative going through the motions to reach it's obvious conclusion. All of this is a monumental shame, because the first 10 hours were an absolute joy. I would have given this game a glowing review had I written this 15 hours ago. But now... I just can't. I never want to see another ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ connector, another fan, or another jammer again in my life. The developers took a beautiful thing and ran it into the ground.Show moreShow less
30.5 hours at review514 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
If Animus would have ever spent a night of passion with GlaDOS, then this would be their child :) Influenced by Portal series and early Assassin's Creed games, among others, this game is a mind-blowing combination of puzzle-solving tasks with a story which builds a philosophical bridge between religion and science in a way that can only be called a stroke of genius. I can't say that Talos Principle is better than Portal. It's beyond Portal. It takes Portal's approach to first person environmental puzzle solving and, standing on its shoulders, reaches higher, offering you much more sophisticated puzzles of various kinds that sometimes have several layers and sometimes even inter-operate. The reality you are operating in is filled with messages and secrets, not unlike the world of Animus from Assassin's Creed, telling you a story and fuelling your brain. And just like in AC, you get some secondary things to do when you get tired of the "main" puzzles. The graphics are fantastic. Landscapes are gorgeous. Controls are perfect. Music is superb. Voice acting is impeccable. Length is ideal. Puzzles are mind-bending. Progression is non-linear. This game might be officially "indie", but its quality is triple A. Or quad A. To call it non-trivial is like to say that a rocket is non-slow. And what's most valuable, is that you don't feel that profits were the top priority for the makers. The game was. The things I love about it the most: • Assisted jumping. Just brilliant. If only Quantum Conundrum had it. • No fake puzzles based on arcade elements. • Weather effects. • I can get as close as I can to a wall and still see no blurred textures. • Wherever I go, I never get stuck in terrain. • Skippable intro movie and sensible menus. • Runs on my Macbook Pro. • Has a free demo. • It's so clever, it feels alive. The things I dislike: • Loud "Death" sequence can give one a pretty good scare when comes unexpected. • It ends. If you like puzzles - buy it. If you like first person games - buy it. If you like philosophy - buy it. If you like lasers - buy it. If you like finding secrets - buy it. If you like clever writing - buy it. If you like computer games - buy it! And if you don't like computer games... You just never played this one :)Show moreShow less
45.7 hours at review1,469 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
If you have a photo-sensitive/motion sickness reaction to certain games, be careful of Talos. I've only had a couple reactions to certain games over the games (and played dozens of games, since the Atari days), so my instances are hardly pervasive. I jacked-down the mouse sensitivity, even went to 3rd person...effective for the motion sickness stuff, doesn't do a whole lot for the photo-sensitivity (for lack of a better term). Anyway, not trolling or hating on the game. Looks like fun (was a big fan of Portal myself). But some people DO have these reactions to games and wanted to ad my two cents.Show moreShow less
0.7 hours at review506 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
A computer terminal in the game asked me why I wanted so much to prove I'm human. I spent like 10 minutes thinking, unable to answer. Thought this was just puzzles, ended up on one of the most philosophical rides a game has ever taken me. 10/10Show moreShow less
17.2 hours at review894 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
The story's the best part of this game, but not worth the AAA asking price unless you really like video game narratives. The puzzles are tedious, uninspired and seemingly endless. The problem isn't that you only have half a dozen tools to work with (prisms, cubes, fans, etc.). And it's not that most of those elements are copied from other puzzle games (Portal, etc.). The problem is that you're rarely asked to use your scant few tools in new or interesting ways. There are almost no Aha! moments in this game—just a long slog of applying principles you learned hours earlier in increasingly complex patterns. Half an hour into the game, you learn that a prism can redirect a laser beam around a corner to a open door. 20 hours into the game, you're redirecting half a dozen laser beams with half a dozen prisms to open half a dozen doors. It's more confusing, but no more challenging or interesting that it was in the beginning of the game. There are something like 100 puzzles in the game, and I'd guess about 25 are worthwhile. Many others are unbelievably lazy. Even in the final stages of the game, the solution to some secret bonus puzzles are as simple as using a cube to jump over a wall. The only real difficulty comes from guessing which walls the game designer has arbitrarily flagged as jumpable (95% are impassable.)Show moreShow less
33.4 hours at review144 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
The puzzles are good, if perhaps very slightly too easy, and it's definitely the most competent treatment of philosophy I've ever seen in a video game* (speaking as someone who 1. has played a lot of video games and 2. has a PhD in philosophy**). Definitely worth buying, if not necessarily at full price. *If you ARE a philosopher, though, or are philosophically inclined, you might suffer some mild frustration at being limited by multiple choice answers to complicated questions - though again, the options you are presented with are generally better than you might expect from a game. **Please forgive me if mentioning this makes me seem like a d**k.Show moreShow less
40.8 hours at review683 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
It's a good game. But not great, and definitely not worth the price of a AAA title. It's just a puzzle game. There are hints (actually an overwhelmingly present but highly repetitive theme) that you might "break out" and discover what the heck is going on. But honestly if you're looking for the next Portal 2, this is NOT the game you're looking for. Other reviewers have compared The Talos Principle to Portal/Portal 2, and that's actually what motivated me to play. But the comparisons are limited to .. what's the nice way of saying "rip-offs"? Oh yes, inspirations. Subtle inspirations. But here's the biggest area that Portal deviates: the next room could be in any direction, and any direction could be your way out, but in Talos Principle you're shown up front, "these are the game levels: 1,2,3,4,5, .." Like I said, IT'S JUST A PUZZLE GAME. And that theme I talked about that makes you think you might break out? Just the same boring "poke at the 80s computer" thing between each level, absolutely nothing happens, certainly no interplay between the story arc and your puzzle (none whatsoever), until perhaps you reach the end which honestly I thought was hokey. (Uninspired, I decided to cheat and look up the ending on YouTube, as well as hear other reviewers to discover what I missed.) Turns out, the ending "story" was beyond predictable, it was bitterly disappointing (though at least it was there), and the artwork and detail at the end was nice and impressive (B+) as it is throughout the game, but the music at the end sounded like something out of a General MIDI device, cheap and unfulfilling. These things said, is it a work of art? Sure, the artwork is pretty, the gameplay music is pretty (if repetitive), and some thought went into this. Is the game FUN? Yes. It's fun. Not a mind-blowing Portal 2 or Bioshock Infinite kind of once in a lifetime (or year) experience kind of fun, the kind I'd pay $39+ for, no. But if this was priced at $9.95 and discounts went down from there, heck yes, I'd recommend this. As it is, it's surprisingly worshiped as a AAA game, it's priced as a AAA game, but I don't understand why; it's definitely an indie game that was kinda smart but really lacks coherence between its arc and gameplay and despite inspiring curiosity and hope is overly coherent and predictable (boring) and disappointing otherwise, at least beyond the puzzles themselves. Regarding the puzzles, since that *is* the gameplay, I thought they were fun, but also repetitive in nature, yet since they were made with such obvious reusable construction blocks (very square walls with some textures thrown in to make them look like they're not very square), etc, I found the extremities of puzzle solutions to be sometimes out of place and inappropriate especially at the lower levels. (Point the beam at a distant background scenery tree? Really, guys? On level 2? Sorry for the spoiler but if I hadn't YouTube searched that there's no way I would've known how to get that star.) It's not the kind of "predictably unpredictable" you expect, it's more like, predictable, sometimes hard, and sometimes irritating. But then, that's how puzzle games go.Show moreShow less
4.9 hours at review140 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
In today’s world of microtransactions, games releasing before they’re finished, glitch-ridden open world engines, and games that overall fail to live up to their artistic vision, sometimes there will come a game that’s so perfect that it’s hard to believe it even got made. The Talos Principle is a single-player puzzle game made with full triple-A production values, arguably leaving Portal 2 in the dust at what it does. I liken it to Dear Esther, but twenty times longer and filled with actual gameplay, while keeping the beauty of the world and the philosophical overtones intact. The game consists of walking through majestic-looking outdoor areas to find closed-off puzzle areas, then solving puzzles using only a small handful of simple and easy-to-understand machines. The puzzles themselves are eloquent and very well-tested. There are over a hundred of them in all, but each puzzle introduces a new idea or uses old ideas in new ways, so they never feel repetitive or stale. The game’s environments are simply breathtaking with their huge draw distances and ridiculous detail, while the puzzle areas feel aptly like claustrophobic rat mazes while never losing the area’s sense of atmosphere. The puzzles get very challenging near the end, but expert level design makes them all very rewarding to solve. And if you’re particularly clever, the game’s third ending requires you to figure out how to break the level design and take items out of their designated areas to find secrets hidden in closed-away or out-of-bounds places. It’s rather mind-blowing and something that I’ve never seen incorporated into a game intentionally before. The icing on the cake is the storytelling. The story is that you’re a robot who wakes up in a garden and follows the commands of a god-like figure constantly talking in your head. It quickly becomes apparent that the whole world may or may not be a virtual reality simulation, which may or may not have been programmed by humans for a specific yet unknown purpose, and you are given the choice of blindly following the god’s orders or trying to unravel the mystery of who exactly you are and what lies outside of the simulation. The game has three different endings, and you will find whatever answer you seek if you search hard enough. The game poses a few difficult philosophical questions and studies them from countless different angles. I know that some people will find the philosophy pretentious and trite, and I know it’s completely up to personal preference, but for me it really, really worked. I was hooked on the story the whole way. I think that even if some of the game’s lines fail to impress you, there’s enough material here that you’ll find at least something that will strike a chord and challenge the way you think. Besides, if you don’t like the story, it’s easy enough to skip everything by ignoring the computers, but you might miss out on the brilliance of some of the game’s endings. I give The Talos Principle a perfect score. It’s got sublime puzzle design, mind-blowing secret collectables, gorgeous environments that put Dear Esther to shame, above-average voice acting, a professionally-written and well-presented story, nearly zero glitches, and depths and depths of content. It’s truly one of the best games I’ve ever played. Go play it if you haven't already; you might come out feeling like a different person.Show moreShow less
20.7 hours at review658 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
If you're going to buy this game anyway, do yourself a favour and switch to the "legacy - pre se2017" beta before downloading. I adore this game. As you can see, I've put more hours than anyone reasonably should into it. I do still think it's an amazing game, but after what's happened in the "recent" updates I can no longer recommend it. On February 23rd 2019, after over a year without any updates at all, they suddenly came out with the beta that ruined everything. The older version itself was released 8 months after the one before it, it basically seemed like support for the game had ended. But out of nowhere they came and upgraded the entire engine. Normally this would be seen as a sign of great devs, but it introduced so many small issues that have never been fixed. One of the biggest changes was that they removed 32 bit, open gl, and directx 11 support. Have an older pc that barely fits the minimum posted requirements? Won't work on current patch. Most people will only find this out when they've downloaded everything and the game refuses to launch, and if they troubleshoot enough they'll find out they just need to redowload the whole game on an older version. The only place is says this is a pinned thread in the forums, which no one will check untill they start having issues, there's no warning on the store page or when you try run the (non-existent) 32 bit version. Another big issue was licence validation, though this seems to be mostly fixed now. The update added stricter license checks, which caused many false positives on people who legitimately bought the game and hadn't tampered with files, preventing them from even launching the game. But the biggest crime is what they did to the workshop. It is completly unusable now. 4 years of mods all gone. There were some amazing custom campaigns (Rebirth, Schrödinger Cat, Only Puzzles 2) that could easily add hundreds of hours of playtime, but you can't play any of them anymore. The update changed where the maps are stored on disk, but just moving them over isn't enough. They also redid how light maps, and a few other mostly irrelevant features, work, so every single map has to be re-saved to work. These old map makers from years ago aren't all going to come back just for that. But to add insult to injury, once you've fixed everything, you can't even upload your fix. They broke workshop uploads. This was all reported months ago ( https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/464416372756054027/642277787008368641/State_of_the_Workshop.png ) but we've never gotten more than a "we're looking into it". The entire workshop has been unusable for months and nothing. It adds so much extra content and replayability to the game but nothing. This is why I cannot recommend this game. Now if you switch to the beta I mentioned at the top this all goes away, it just starts working again, you can play existing maps and upload your own all fine. This is why, if the rest of my review hasn't persuaded you, I still highly recommend switching into that beta.Show moreShow less
1,968.9 hours at review100 people found this helpful
Source: original Steam user reviews. Helpful votes are an archived snapshot, not live data. Last collected: 08/15/2026.