Critical Mass
Skip · Short indie · 2011
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
SKIP IT.
The value isn't there at $1.99.
- Length
- 0.9h
- Value
- $2.21/hr
- Reviews
- 69% positive
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Runs on Windows, macOS.
Critical Mass is an action puzzle game that takes traditional match 3 and brings it into the world of 3D.
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 November 2013. It has been discounted 13 times in the 14 years tracked here, typically at 75 percent off, with about 24 weeks between sales.
It is cheaper than 67 percent of its genre, and less well reviewed than 80 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Intergalactic Bubbles ($1.99, scores 54) beats it on value, while it beats Marble Mayhem: Fragile Ball ($1.99, scores 21).
Critics scored it 81, but players land 12 points lower at 69 percent. The reviews were kinder than the room.
Inside the two-hour refund window, 67 percent of the 180 reviews written there were positive, against 69 percent overall, and those are 62 percent of everything written about it.
The drop-off
24% start to 2% rarestNo achievement in this game marks the ending, so there is no finish rate. The curve runs from the most-unlocked achievement to the rarest, and its shape is where players stop. Steam global achievements
Cite this score
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Critical Mass scores 24/100 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/105300/critical-massThe 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 Aug 2, 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.