9 Years of Shadows on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
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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 metroidvania, platformer and side scroller 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 2,588 reviews of which 1,985 were positive and 603 were negative resulting in a rating of 7.4 out of 10. 😊
The game is currently priced at 18.49€ on Steam, but you can find it for 0.92€ on Gamivo.
The Steam community has classified 9 Years of Shadows into these genres:
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.
Thanks god, I remembered there was an update about 2 months ago (which I completely forgot to try until the other day). I was going to go into a whole rant demonstrating how this whole game is a “missed opportunity” and has a lot of potential, but it hasn't been realised by not pushing the envelope with their mechanics far enough. I would have looked so dumb posting a negative review requesting things that were added in that patch months ago. Back then, I finished this game in January with a 98% because I wasn't happy with the drastic change in gameplay toward the last section, where the core mechanic we were using throughout the game was replaced by one not best suited for this type of game. One being where you are always regenerating health, but very slowly, making the last boss fight harder, especially when they are spamming attacks that are difficult to avoid, ruining the flow of the game. Fighting against them now is night and day. The changes from the patch help, but it was never mentioned if the developer toned down the final boss, unless I missed something. It seems like they did, or maybe that's just me, even if they are still sponging. All of this is thanks to the new patch; 9: 1.1.41. If you have stopped playing this 9 Years of Shadows at any point, you should return to continue where you left off from. Whereby, these qualities of life improvement are minimal, they completely made this game more enjoyable to play around with, especially in the last section for me. For example, Whirlwind Attack Enhancement: All upgraded Hibino armours now feature new ranged unique-elemental attacks when using the Whirlwind skill. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUMjsoSwQuA This made it so each armour feels different from the others, other than mobility-wise. Before, you wouldn't swap between them unless it was to expose an enemy weakpoint or to move to places you couldn't without them, which was an issue I had before. Check the patch out for yourself: https://steamcommunity.com/gid/103582791469343754/announcements/detail/542229141158625821 It would have been devastating for me to post a negative review for this game. Upon first impression and all throughout, this game is breathtaking. I so adore the vibrant colours, the out-of-this-world music that will drown you in a dream of another reality. 9 Years of Shadows is a novelty in how aesthetically pleasing it is to the eyes, thanks to the art direction and the groundbreaking visual philosophy. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3407697167 What made this game unique is the HP. You can sacrifice some of it to use a projectile to hit enemies, some can only be damaged, but this attack, so you have no other choice but to use it. But don't worry about running out of health, as you can regain it from standing still and pressing the button prompted to heal yourself as long as you're not interrupted, which can be useful in fights where you find the right opportunity to do so when the enemies are not focused on you. Another way to gain health is to attack the red leaves, but that's nothing special compared when you are about to lose all you're health in retrospect one of your 2-4 healthlive you can regain of them back when a meter appears above the Europa head with a blue bar inside you need to press onto when a slider is moving across in the space. At first, I wasn't sure about the mechanic, being more concerned about it causing a distraction or my reaction speed to notice and respond. Over time, I became quite used to it, coming in clutch many times when I needed the health. It does feel great every time you heal yourself from it when you need it in fights. Despite some of the issues with the developer not utilising all their introduced mechanics to the full extent, like having more things to upgrade or exploring enemies' different body parts highlighted in different colours, determining their elemental weaknesses, I feel now 9 Years of Shadow has done enough to warrant a recommendation from me. I absolutely love this game design ambition. I enjoy the mobility each armour provides, giving you a challenge to switch between them when you need it to navigate to places. I love the creativity and variety in boss fights, in particular some of my favourites were the cowboy bossfight, where they shot one or multiple bullets that bounce around the area that you need to avoid until they deplete. I have a lot of great memories playing this game, some bad and many good. I wish others would join in to have an enlightening experience from this video game.
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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!
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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
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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.
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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.
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Frequently Asked Questions
9 Years of Shadows is currently priced at 18.49€ on Steam.
9 Years of Shadows is currently not on sale. You can purchase it for 18.49€ on Steam.
9 Years of Shadows received 1,985 positive votes out of a total of 2,588 achieving a rating of 7.42.
😊
9 Years of Shadows was developed by Halberd Studios and published by indie.io.
9 Years of Shadows is playable and fully supported on Windows.
9 Years of Shadows is not playable on MacOS.
9 Years of Shadows is not playable on Linux.
9 Years of Shadows is a single-player game.
9 Years of Shadows does not currently offer any DLC.
9 Years of Shadows does not support mods via Steam Workshop.
9 Years of Shadows does not support Steam Remote Play.
9 Years of Shadows is enabled for Steam Family Sharing. This means you can share the game with authorized users from your Steam Library, allowing them to play it on their own accounts. For more details on how the feature works, you can read the original Steam Family Sharing announcement or visit the Steam Family Sharing user guide and FAQ page.
You can find solutions or submit a support ticket by visiting the Steam Support page for 9 Years of Shadows.
Data sources
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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 | 30 July 2025 08:35 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 27 July 2025 06:38 |
| Steam price | 30 July 2025 12:37 |
| Steam reviews | 28 July 2025 06:02 |
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
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Game modes
Features
Online players
9
Developer
Halberd Studios
Publisher
indie.io
Release
27 Mar 2023
Platforms
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