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Nine Sols
Nine Sols is a lore rich, hand-drawn 2D action-platformer featuring Sekiro-inspired deflection focused combat. Embark on a journey of eastern fantasy, explore the land once home to an ancient alien race, and follow a vengeful hero’s quest to slay the 9 Sols, formidable rulers of this forsaken realm.
What players say
Steam review score and the most-helpful voices, which may include critical ones. Data as of 2026-05-20.
What reviewers agree on
72 of the 103 reviews raise this.
“Completed on Standard Mode. It was a rollercoaster ride. The combat has a great Sekiro / hollow knight feel to it and the story is deeper than it appears at first. I love the fusion of Chinese Mythology / space travel…”
“We have Hollow Knight, SilkSong, and now Nine Sols. I paid more than 80% attention to the story and it's interesting, I love how Yi (the playable character) acts like an ahh hole. The combat is top tier, genuinely the…”
“Heavily suggest this game, looks absolutely astonishing, fun story, fun/cool/unique bosses to fight, and extremely satisfying to parry! Love this game, and i mean listen, playing as martial artist cat :3??? YES PLEASE!…”
61 of the 103 reviews raise this.
“Completed on Standard Mode. It was a rollercoaster ride. The combat has a great Sekiro / hollow knight feel to it and the story is deeper than it appears at first. I love the fusion of Chinese Mythology / space travel…”
“We have Hollow Knight, SilkSong, and now Nine Sols. I paid more than 80% attention to the story and it's interesting, I love how Yi (the playable character) acts like an ahh hole. The combat is top tier, genuinely the…”
“Heavily suggest this game, looks absolutely astonishing, fun story, fun/cool/unique bosses to fight, and extremely satisfying to parry! Love this game, and i mean listen, playing as martial artist cat :3??? YES PLEASE!…”
44 of the 103 reviews raise this.
“Heavily suggest this game, looks absolutely astonishing, fun story, fun/cool/unique bosses to fight, and extremely satisfying to parry! Love this game, and i mean listen, playing as martial artist cat :3??? YES PLEASE!…”
“Great setting with a pretty unique spin on your expectations, but overall not a very fun experience. The forced stealth section followed up by annoying 3 phase ad spam boss makes it not worth my time to continue.”
“the controls at the start can feel a bit clunky initially but the game really starts to pick up after the first 2h or so artwork and soundtrack is amazing excited to continue playing :D”
37 of the 103 reviews raise this.
“Completed on Standard Mode. It was a rollercoaster ride. The combat has a great Sekiro / hollow knight feel to it and the story is deeper than it appears at first. I love the fusion of Chinese Mythology / space travel…”
“We have Hollow Knight, SilkSong, and now Nine Sols. I paid more than 80% attention to the story and it's interesting, I love how Yi (the playable character) acts like an ahh hole. The combat is top tier, genuinely the…”
“Hard and fun, moving story with insane worldbuilding, and easy to collect everything! Art is great, music is great, everything about this is great.”
19 of the 103 reviews raise this.
“The bosses are straight up unfair, every time I try to kill them their music starts to pop off and I start instinctively breakdancing in my room. Awful balancing and a fundamentally broken game. [spoiler]1[/spoiler]0/10.”
“the controls at the start can feel a bit clunky initially but the game really starts to pick up after the first 2h or so artwork and soundtrack is amazing excited to continue playing :D”
“I went in looking for my next favorite metroidvania. Nine Sols... is not that. It is a rough game, and it is very obvious that it was a team's first major project. Questionable design decisions, inconsistent animation…”
15 of the 103 reviews raise this · 12 of them still recommend the game.
“The bosses are straight up unfair, every time I try to kill them their music starts to pop off and I start instinctively breakdancing in my room. Awful balancing and a fundamentally broken game. [spoiler]1[/spoiler]0/10.”
“cant edit parry window leniency in a parry-game. guess i'm stuck to having to predict without sound/visuals when an enemy attacks because im too slow to parry *after* my brain processes said sound/visual and gets a…”
“At points this game just gets unfairly hard for no reason ohh but its just a skill issu- shut up the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ boss should not be able to do a ultimate death combo of doom and despair just randomly still really good tho”
6 of the 103 reviews raise this · 5 of them still recommend the game.
“the controls at the start can feel a bit clunky initially but the game really starts to pick up after the first 2h or so artwork and soundtrack is amazing excited to continue playing :D”
“I went in looking for my next favorite metroidvania. Nine Sols... is not that. It is a rough game, and it is very obvious that it was a team's first major project. Questionable design decisions, inconsistent animation…”
“cant edit parry window leniency in a parry-game. guess i'm stuck to having to predict without sound/visuals when an enemy attacks because im too slow to parry *after* my brain processes said sound/visual and gets a…”
4 of the 103 reviews raise this · 2 of them still recommend the game.
“Great setting with a pretty unique spin on your expectations, but overall not a very fun experience. The forced stealth section followed up by annoying 3 phase ad spam boss makes it not worth my time to continue.”
“I'd recommend this game for those that enjoy unconventional metroidvania combat designs (or maybe just want osu! to be paired with fighting) as well as decent story telling, a unique and beautiful artstyle, and an…”
“Great game until the last boss. Loved it till this point. [spoiler]The boss has a mechanic that has different outcomes with the same start up and need extremely fast reactions to respond. Your attacks would basically…”
3 of the 103 reviews raise this · 1 of them still recommend the game.
3 of the 103 reviews raise this · 3 of them still recommend the game.
“The combat is hard but once it's clicked, it is satisfying. This is really a test for your reflex. Cool music, atmospheric theme. Small world map. Detailed graphics. Some images can be disturbing.”
“Originally i bought this game on sale, played it for 3 hours and dropped it. Half a year later i tried it again and finished it and im glad i did. This is such a uniquely beautiful game. It is hard, but rewarding and…”
“I didn't bother with this one for a while, because it seemed like a cheap imitation of the so-called "souls-like" genre (it's even in the title, for goodness' sake). Eventually got bored enough to try it out and was…”
Counted across 103 English reviews, sampled to match this game's 95.1% positive rating · as of 2026-05-20
“Nine Sols is a beautiful piece of art, The games it self deserve to be more recognize like HollowKnight or even Silksong, The story, The gameplay, The soundtrack for this game, it's all truly the masterpiece from RedCandleGames. from what i see people is struggle with the parry…”
— a player, Steam review · 52 hrs played“this game has ruined the combat in every other game for me. the story is also very impactful, made me cry twice.”
— a player, Steam review · 45 hrs played“Highly enjoyable. Biggest positive: excellent in-game map that gradually fills in even within individual rooms. Other positives: theme, art, combat. I like how the lore bits throw a bunch of words at you that you don't understand, but as you become more familiar with the game's…”
— a player, Steam review · 32 hrs playedPlayer activity
Monthly average concurrent players. Live count fetched 2026-07-11 13:52 UTC · history via SteamCharts.
Achievement stats
Global completion rates across all Steam players — a data view of how far people actually get. Source: Steam official stats · as of 2026-07-25.
Price tracking
US-region pricing (USD), sampled twice daily by our own tracker since 2026-07-11. Steam prices vary by region — always confirm your local price on Steam.
Regional prices at last sample, in local currency — Steam sets each region's price independently.
Cheapest → most expensive, converted to USD at ECB reference rates (2026-07-24). Relative comparison only.
Latest official news
Developer announcements via the Steam news API — links go to the original posts. More across all games on the news hub.
Celebrating 2 Years of Nine Sols ☀️ 60% Off on Steam
Nine Sols is approaching its 2nd anniversary 🎉 Now through May 18th, get it on Steam at an all-time low — 60% off.Haven't played yet? Now is the time 🏹☀️🌟 Check out Nine Sols 2nd Anniversary Animated
Shanhai Chronicles | Nine Sols ARG Documentary
Hello everyone, this is Red Candle Games.With our nearly four-year ARG (Alternate Reality Game) officially coming to a close, the promotional journey for Nine Sols has reached its finale as well.At th
Nine Sols Is 40% Off During the Steam Winter Sale
With the New Year just around the corner, we’re wishing you a safe, peaceful, and cozy holiday season. ❄️🏹☀️The Steam Winter Sale officially kicks off today, and Nine Sols is available at 40% off for
[bbde385f] Patch Notes
Fixed a memory leak caused by Rigidbody2D in the Unity engine, optimizing overall memory usage. Updated the engine version from Unity 2022.3.33f2 to Unity 2022.3.62f3. If you encounter any issues afte
Red Candle Games 10th Anniversary
Hello everyone, we’re Red Candle Games.This year marks our studio’s 10th anniversary — thank you for your support. 🕯️🙏
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Screenshots
Official Steam store screenshots — click any shot to enlarge.
Facts & details
From the Steam store record, snapshot 2026-05-20.
| Genres | Action, Adventure, Indie |
| Player tags | Metroidvania · Souls-like · Difficult · Action · 2D · Platformer · Hand-drawn · Atmospheric · Adventure · Story Rich · Cats · Indie (SteamSpy community voting) |
| Features | Single-player · Steam Achievements · Full controller support · Color Alternatives · Custom Volume Controls · Adjustable Difficulty · Keyboard Only Option · Stereo Sound |
| Languages | English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, French, German, Russian, Ukrainian, Portuguese - Brazil, Spanish - Latin America, Italian, Spanish - Spain, Polish |
| Controller | Full support |
| Achievements | 35 |
| Estimated owners | 1,000,000 – 2,000,000 (SteamSpy) |
| Official site | https://redcandlegames.com/ |
Minimum system requirements (PC)
Minimum: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 10 64bit Processor: AMD Athlon X4 | Intel Core i5 4460 Memory: 8 GB RAM Graphics: Nvidia GTX 950 | AMD R7 370 DirectX: Version 11 Storage: 15 GB available space