Long and Cheap
Forty hours or more for twenty dollars or less.
Mount & Blade: Warband is a 2010 game holding 97 over 74.3 hours, and it is still what I say when someone wants a hundred hours for the price of lunch. The cut: twenty dollars or less, 40 hours or more of main story, a BANG of at least 80, 32 games. Lower the bar to 68, where worth it starts, and 53 qualify. The 80 throws out 21 of them. Long and cheap on its own describes a bad grindy game as well as it describes a good one. The 80 is what separates Terraria from a three dollar idler with two hundred hours of nothing in it.
Terraria is 97 across 51.7 hours and 1,553,688 reviews. Stardew Valley is 97 with 53.4 hours. Persona 4 Golden is 95.6 over 67 hours at a $19.99 list, which is the one on here that will eat a whole winter.
The 40 hour floor is arbitrary and I know it. It comes from HowLongToBeat's main story number, which does not exist for every game on Steam, so a long cheap game with no match is invisible here rather than rejected. Cookie Clicker is in this list at 143.9 hours and a 98.4. Advertised length and hours you would actually want to spend are two different measurements.
