9 Years of Shadows on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information

Fight to bring beautiful colors back to a hand-crafted world of darkness and discover the story of Europa, a young warrior, and her ghostly childhood companion, Apino.

9 Years of Shadows is a action, adventure and metroidvania game developed by Halberd Studios and published by indie.io.
Released on March 27th 2023 is available only on Windows in 8 languages: English, Spanish - Latin America, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese - Brazil, Russian and Simplified Chinese.

It has received 2,484 reviews of which 1,901 were positive and 583 were negative resulting in a rating of 7.4 out of 10. 😊

The game is currently priced at 7.39€ on Steam with a 60% discount.

The Steam community has classified 9 Years of Shadows into these genres:

Action Adventure Metroidvania Pixel Graphics Action-Adventure Platformer Side Scroller Exploration Female Protagonist 2D Atmospheric Indie Story Rich Fantasy Singleplayer Lore-Rich Magic Anime Difficult Souls-like

Media & Screenshots

Get an in-depth look at 9 Years of Shadows through various videos and screenshots.

System requirements

These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.

Windows

Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
OS: Windows 10
Processor: Intel Core i3-9100F
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: GT 730

User reviews & Ratings

Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.

Jan. 2025

9 Years of Shadows is a metroidvania style game where you play as a young woman named Europa who braves a castle to attempt to restore the color of the world after a 9 year curse that brought endless darkness. Find different magical armors and abillities along the way and befriend a Teddy Bear that you can hug to heal yourself... and throw projectiles to murder the hell out of your enemies! This is best played with a controller. Pros: Beautiful Musical Score Well Written Story A Mix of Retro Aesthetic with Modern Pixel Art No Framerate Lock Plenty of Secrets and Things To Find, Places To Explore Steam Deck/Linux Friendly: About An Hour's Worth Of Play On Battery Cloud Saves! Cons: In the beginning, when playing on my 4K Desktop, the camera would not follow the character properly. It wasn't until launching the game on my Steam Deck that I was able to play it fine across all computers. The game runs hotter than expected. When playing on Steam Deck it can get pretty warm. Long use on desktop also generates the kind of heat you would expect from playing newer FPS games. Some people have reported that the game crashes or freezes when getting to the end credits. I finished the game on Steam Deck without it doing that though. Overall, if you like platformers and metroidvanias, this is one worth looking at! When I saw a friend of mine playing it on their Linux system it was an immediate purchase! I give it 9 Melons out of 10!

Nov. 2024

For me, Ori is an S+, Hollow Knight is A+, so this is a SOLID B+. The art and cut scene animations are great, each characters portrait is really incredible and unique, the difficulty is moderate till the final boss where it jumps up quite a bit though still not super spicy, music stands out mainly in the theater and armor upgrade rooms, and movement is fluid and predictable. Improvements for me would be in diversity of enemies, more instances in bosses that utilize different armors/switching armors, clarity in armor interactions with enemies (colorblind folks be struggling), and more fleshed out/memorable music for entire areas. Overall a fun and enjoyable experience

Nov. 2024

The game is good, it's an indie Metroidvania. The health system is a bit weird but you get used to it. You start with only 2 health, and mostly rely on a shield. The caveat is that shield refills as you hit and kill enemies. In addition when your shield is fully depleted you can charge it to about 90% in a few secs. This can be done in battle but requires timing. The level design and music are good quality. The only thing I didn't like was that the dash is backwards like some vampire style games. A directional dash would have been more fluid. There are a few particular enemies where this gets annoying and ends up making you get hit when you meant to dash away. Overall worth playing and supporting.

Sept. 2024

It's a short but fun metroidvania game. My only complaints are: 1. Combat is simple. I wish there was more depth. 2. There are a lot of color-swap enemy types. 3. Final boss is such a huge difficulty spike compared to the other bosses.

April 2024

So like.... I'm torn. I picked this up after backing this studio's new game to see what their first game was like, and it definitely feels like a first game. Let's start out this way - I would recommend this game. It's a fun game, the music is really good, the art style is cool, the character portraits look good, the combat is overall fun, the different armor is neat, the traversal is enjoyable, and some of the bosses are a blast. If you like Metroidvanias, you'll like this! ...IF If you can deal with the whole 'first game' aspect. Bosses are fun... except some have awkwardly long runs back if you die, and unskippable too-long intros. Bosses are fun... except when you just have back luck and they chain strings of their most annoying attacks, and it stops being about fighting the boss and just repeating the same jumping pattern until they calm down. The music is really good... and you'll hear the same tracks a LOT. Traversal is enjoyable... but there's not really a good fast travel system, so the game feels padded out by the traversal. The different armor is neat... but ultimately kinda same-y. Each one gives you a different traversal skill, but doesn't really change combat in anyway other than matching colors up with enemies. By the end, I was honestly kinda hitting a wall. Instead of scouring the map for the last couple items I missed, I just went to the end boss and banged my head against some of the things I mentioned before (Thankfully that one has a short run time) But lemme be clear - there's AWESOME stuff in this game too. Some of the boss fights are absolutely fantastic, and the controls are tight enough to make you feel like a lot of close wins are super earned. I really liked the overall look and sound and feel of this game, it just got a little long in the tooth trying to cram in a bunch of extra boss fights without making the core of a Metroidvania--going back and forth across the same map--more engaging. Still pick it up if you love Metroidvanis though!

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Data sources

The information presented on this page is sourced from reliable APIs to ensure accuracy and relevance. We utilize the Steam API to gather data on game details, including titles, descriptions, prices, and user reviews. This allows us to provide you with the most up-to-date information directly from the Steam platform.

Additionally, we incorporate data from the SteamSpy API, which offers insights into game sales and player statistics. This helps us present a comprehensive view of each game's popularity and performance within the gaming community.

Last Updates

Steam data	10 April 2025 19:06
SteamSpy data	07 April 2025 10:27
Steam price	13 April 2025 20:37
Steam reviews	13 April 2025 14:02

If you'd like to dive deeper into the details about 9 Years of Shadows, we invite you to check out a few dedicated websites that offer extensive information and insights. These platforms provide valuable data, analysis, and user-generated reports to enhance your understanding of the game and its performance.

SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about 9 Years of Shadows
SteamCharts - Analysis of 9 Years of Shadows concurrent players on Steam
ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck 9 Years of Shadows compatibility

-60% 18.49€ 7.39€

7.4

1,901

583

Online players

Developer

Halberd Studios

Publisher

indie.io

Release 27 Mar 2023

Platforms