The Game Census
Descent cover art

Descent

Parallax · Interplay Inc. · 2014-02-11

SteamGOGEpic Games Store

Action

Modes: Single player, Multiplayer, Co-operative · Perspectives: First person

Releases: TBD (Panasonic M2), 1995 (Mac), Jan 26, 1996 (PlayStation), Feb 11, 2014 (PC (Microsoft Windows)), Mar 03, 1995 (DOS)

Welcome to Descent™ - 27 levels of the most mind-bending, stomach-churning action game ever. Featuring true 3-Dimensional worlds and six degrees of freedom.

96%
positive of 478 reviews
Very Positive
steam's rating (official)
0–20,000
owners (SteamSpy est.)
73/100
critic score (3 outlets, IGDB)
74/100
IGDB user rating (69 ratings)
platinum
deck/linux tier (ProtonDB)
$19.99
steam price (US)
Descent is a first-person shooter (FPS) game developed by Parallax Software and released by Interplay Productions in 1995 for MS-DOS, and later for Macintosh, PlayStation, and RISC OS. It popularized a subgenre of FPS games employing six degrees of freedom and was the first FPS to feature entirely true-3D graphics. The player is cast as a mercenary hired to eliminate the threat of a mysterious extraterrestrial computer virus infecting off-world mining robots. In a series of mines throughout the Solar System, the protagonist pilots a spaceship and must locate and destroy the mine's power reactor and escape before being caught in the mine's self-destruction, defeating opposing robots along the way. Players can play online and compete in either deathmatches or cooperate to take on the robots.

Health check

Quiet
  • · 14 reviews in the last 8 weeks (~2/week).
  • · Review velocity down 30% vs the prior 8 weeks.
  • · Top 40% of 12,964 Action games in the census by review count.
Estimated sales: 12k–29k copies

Review-multiple estimate from 478 total reviews — how this is computed.

Current store prices

lowest across shops (ITAD)$7.99-20%

Deal snapshots via CheapShark, refreshed daily.

All-time low: $2.49 at GOG (2018-09-06)via IsThereAnyDeal

12-month high $19.99 · on sale 22 of 36 observed days (census price snapshots)

Review momentum

PositiveNegative
8820152026Week of 2015-04-01: 5 positiveWeek of 2015-05-01: 2 positiveWeek of 2015-06-01: 5 positiveWeek of 2015-07-01: 1 negativeWeek of 2015-08-01: 3 positiveWeek of 2015-09-01: 1 positiveWeek of 2015-10-01: 3 positiveWeek of 2015-11-01: 3 positiveWeek of 2015-12-01: 3 positiveWeek of 2016-01-01: 2 positiveWeek of 2017-12-01: 5 positiveWeek of 2018-01-01: 3 positiveWeek of 2018-02-01: 3 positiveWeek of 2018-02-01: 1 negativeWeek of 2018-03-01: 2 positiveWeek of 2018-04-01: 2 positiveWeek of 2018-05-01: 5 positiveWeek of 2018-06-01: 3 positiveWeek of 2018-07-01: 4 positiveWeek of 2018-08-01: 2 positiveWeek of 2018-09-01: 1 positiveWeek of 2018-10-01: 1 negativeWeek of 2018-11-01: 5 positiveWeek of 2018-12-01: 3 positiveWeek of 2019-01-01: 3 positiveWeek of 2019-02-01: 2 positiveWeek of 2019-05-01: 1 positiveWeek of 2019-06-01: 3 positiveWeek of 2019-07-01: 5 positiveWeek of 2019-08-01: 2 positiveWeek of 2019-10-01: 3 positiveWeek of 2019-11-01: 2 positiveWeek of 2019-11-01: 1 negativeWeek of 2019-12-01: 1 positiveWeek of 2020-01-01: 6 positiveWeek of 2020-02-01: 2 positiveWeek of 2020-03-01: 1 positiveWeek of 2020-04-01: 6 positiveWeek of 2020-05-01: 3 positiveWeek of 2020-06-01: 2 positiveWeek of 2020-07-01: 8 positiveWeek of 2020-08-01: 3 positiveWeek of 2020-10-01: 3 positiveWeek of 2020-10-01: 1 negativeWeek of 2020-11-01: 1 positiveWeek of 2020-12-01: 4 positiveWeek of 2021-01-01: 4 positiveWeek of 2021-02-01: 2 positiveWeek of 2021-03-01: 4 positiveWeek of 2021-04-01: 1 positiveWeek of 2021-06-01: 3 positiveWeek of 2021-07-01: 2 positiveWeek of 2021-08-01: 6 positiveWeek of 2021-09-01: 3 positiveWeek of 2021-10-01: 1 positiveWeek of 2021-11-01: 2 positiveWeek of 2021-12-01: 1 positiveWeek of 2022-01-01: 6 positiveWeek of 2022-02-01: 3 positiveWeek of 2022-03-01: 1 positiveWeek of 2022-04-01: 3 positiveWeek of 2022-05-01: 1 positiveWeek of 2022-06-01: 2 positiveWeek of 2022-07-01: 6 positiveWeek of 2022-08-01: 3 positiveWeek of 2022-09-01: 2 positiveWeek of 2022-09-01: 1 negativeWeek of 2022-10-01: 2 positiveWeek of 2022-11-01: 2 positiveWeek of 2022-12-01: 6 positiveWeek of 2022-12-01: 1 negativeWeek of 2023-01-01: 4 positiveWeek of 2023-02-01: 2 positiveWeek of 2023-03-01: 6 positiveWeek of 2023-05-01: 2 positiveWeek of 2023-05-01: 1 negativeWeek of 2023-07-01: 4 positiveWeek of 2023-07-01: 1 negativeWeek of 2023-08-01: 1 positiveWeek of 2023-09-01: 2 positiveWeek of 2023-10-01: 2 positiveWeek of 2023-11-01: 1 negativeWeek of 2023-12-01: 5 positiveWeek of 2024-01-01: 3 positiveWeek of 2024-02-01: 2 positiveWeek of 2024-02-01: 1 negativeWeek of 2024-03-01: 4 positiveWeek of 2024-04-01: 1 positiveWeek of 2024-05-01: 2 positiveWeek of 2024-06-01: 4 positiveWeek of 2024-07-01: 1 positiveWeek of 2024-08-01: 1 positiveWeek of 2024-10-01: 3 positiveWeek of 2024-11-01: 1 positiveWeek of 2024-12-01: 2 positiveWeek of 2025-01-01: 1 positiveWeek of 2025-02-01: 5 positiveWeek of 2025-03-01: 3 positiveWeek of 2025-04-01: 2 positiveWeek of 2025-06-01: 3 positiveWeek of 2025-08-01: 3 positiveWeek of 2025-09-01: 1 positiveWeek of 2025-09-01: 1 negativeWeek of 2025-10-01: 1 positiveWeek of 2025-11-01: 2 positiveWeek of 2025-12-01: 1 positiveWeek of 2026-01-01: 2 positiveWeek of 2026-02-01: 3 positiveWeek of 2026-03-01: 1 negativeWeek of 2026-05-01: 1 positiveWeek of 2026-06-01: 2 positiveWeek of 2026-07-01: 1 positiveWeek of 2026-07-01: 1 negativeWeek of 2026-08-01: 2 positive
Weekly review counts (Steam review histogram). Positive above the line, negative below.

Price history

$19.99$2.792015-01-012026-09-032015-01-01 — best price $3.492015-06-11 — best price $2.792017-11-24 — best price $5.992018-02-15 — best price $6.992018-04-04 — best price $9.992018-06-19 — best price $9.992018-09-13 — best price $7.792018-11-22 — best price $3.392019-01-18 — best price $3.392019-04-22 — best price $9.992019-07-18 — best price $4.992019-11-01 — best price $9.992020-01-23 — best price $6.992020-04-13 — best price $9.992020-08-03 — best price $9.992020-12-07 — best price $9.992021-05-12 — best price $9.992021-09-13 — best price $6.992021-12-22 — best price $6.992022-08-02 — best price $7.992022-11-29 — best price $9.992023-01-14 — best price $9.992023-07-13 — best price $9.992023-10-03 — best price $9.992024-01-05 — best price $6.992024-03-21 — best price $9.992024-06-13 — best price $9.992024-09-28 — best price $9.992024-12-19 — best price $7.992025-03-13 — best price $7.992025-06-18 — best price $15.992025-09-29 — best price $15.992025-11-12 — best price $13.992026-01-06 — best price $13.992026-05-30 — best price $8.992026-08-28 — best price $19.992026-09-03 — best price $7.99
Lowest recorded price across tracked stores, per day (census snapshots).

Attention

2711262026-06-10 — 162 pageviews2026-06-13 — 138 pageviews2026-06-16 — 155 pageviews2026-06-19 — 173 pageviews2026-06-22 — 179 pageviews2026-06-25 — 170 pageviews2026-06-28 — 162 pageviews2026-07-01 — 152 pageviews2026-07-04 — 148 pageviews2026-07-07 — 157 pageviews2026-07-10 — 173 pageviews2026-07-13 — 161 pageviews2026-07-16 — 193 pageviews2026-07-19 — 203 pageviews2026-07-22 — 177 pageviews2026-07-25 — 208 pageviews2026-07-28 — 168 pageviews2026-07-31 — 171 pageviews2026-08-03 — 202 pageviews2026-08-06 — 146 pageviews2026-08-09 — 146 pageviews2026-08-12 — 155 pageviews2026-08-15 — 149 pageviews2026-08-18 — 150 pageviews2026-08-21 — 171 pageviews2026-08-24 — 142 pageviews2026-08-27 — 161 pageviews2026-08-30 — 142 pageviews2026-09-02 — 155 pageviews2026-09-05 — 138 pageviews2026-09-07 — 162 pageviews
Daily Wikipedia pageviews (attention proxy, census-recorded).

Details

WindowsmacOSLinuxSingle-playerMulti-playerFamily Sharing

Console footprint

PlatformPlayers trackedCompletionTrophies/achievements
Steam (Steam)450%5

Players tracked by Exophase (achievement/trophy trackers) — a sample of the player base, not total sales.

Player tags

FPS6DOFCo-opRetroSpace1990'sActionFlightSci-fiClassic

Census log

Computed from census-recorded observations only — dates are observation dates.

Players also track

Rogue WarriorEnemy FrontStar Control®: OriginsImmortal: UnchainedCyberpunk 2077Titanfall® 2

Similarity via IGDB.

Wikipedia ↗Official site ↗