ORION: Prelude
Skip · Shooter · 2013
Steam Deck UnsupportedThe verdict
SKIP IT.
The value isn't there at $0.99.
- Length
- 3.7h
- Value
- $0.27/hr
- Reviews
- 75% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 3 GB of memory, 256 MB Graphics Memory (SM3), 8 GB of storage. Windows only.
Work together to survive the devastating Dinosaur horde in huge, endless environments.
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
The value story
The lowest price on record is $0.49, set in December 2014. Its cuts run 30 percent off as a rule. There have been 81 in the 13 years tracked, about 6 weeks apart. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 12 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 6 weeks.
Against its own genre it lands in the top 42 percent on value. It is cheaper than 95 percent of its genre. Among the games that feel like it, Primal Carnage ($4.99, scores 46) beats it on value, while it beats Guardians of Orion (Phase 2) ($0.99, scores 0).
Steam's global achievement data puts 24 percent of players at this game's ending achievement. The median game this site can measure sits at 8. Of the 525 Steam-purchase reviews this site sampled, 5 come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written March 2020 to September 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 59 percent of the 7,055 reviews written there were positive, against 75 percent overall, and those are 37 percent of everything written about it. It sells extras on top of the sticker price (cosmetic); the score docks it lightly for that.
Finishing takes 3.7 hours; clearing it takes 187, which is 51 times the campaign.
The drop-off
53% start to 24% finishA normal fall-off for a game this long. Steam global achievements
Players
3 players at peak in the last day.
The chart appears once this game has been counted more than once.Player counts via SteamSpy.
What players say
🦖 MESSY HISTORY? YES. A SCAM? ABSOLUTELY NOT. If you filter by negative reviews, you'll see people throwing around the words "scam" or "grift." They point to the game's chaotic past, the name changes (Dino Beatdown, Dino Horde), and old controversies. But after spending time with this game, calling it a scam is just completely inaccurate. Here is why the haters are wrong and why this game deserves your support...
Player reviews from Steam: the most helpful all-time, plus the newest that clear the same quality bar, with the hours each player had put in when they wrote it. The mix of Recommended and Not recommended follows the game's Steam ratio. Rotates daily. Opinions are theirs.
No data upstream: critic score (Metacritic).
Cite this score
Embed the live badge, copy the line, or download the card.
ORION: Prelude scores 45/100 on the BANG Score (a skip). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/104900/orion-preludeThe BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 13, price as of Sep 24.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.