Breakwaters: Crystal Tides
Skip · Action · 2021 · Early Access
The verdict
SKIP IT.
The value isn't there at $19.99.
- Reviews
- 62% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 8 GB of memory, 4 GB of storage. Windows only.
Survive in a world ravaged by massive Titans and an ever changing ocean sim. Displace water to find resources for building and crafting unique items. Swim, sail, and fly to explore new islands and fight Titans.
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.
- How long it takes to beat isn't in our data. The score is docked for the missing length.
The value story
The lowest price on record is $19.99, set in July 2026. In 21 days of price history it has never once been discounted.
It is pricier than 92 percent of its genre, and less well reviewed than 92 percent. Among the games that feel like it, TerraTech Worlds ($29.99, scores 7) beats it on value, while it beats Beyond Sandbox ($19.99, scores 0).
20 of the 616 Steam-purchase reviews sampled here come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written December 2021 to June 2026. That is more refunded reviewers than 9 in 10 paid games this site has sampled to the same depth, and among the 3,221 games in its genre sampled this deeply, 300 have a larger share. The typical game sits near 5 in 1,000, so the score docks it. 5 of the 20 refunded reviewers were past Valve's two-hour window when they wrote the review. Inside the two-hour refund window, 48 percent of the 372 reviews written there were positive, against 62 percent overall, and those are 43 percent of everything written about it.
No data upstream: critic score (Metacritic), achievement curve (Steam global achievements).
Cite this score
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Breakwaters: Crystal Tides scores 6/100 on the BANG Score (a skip). Length is not in our data, so the score is docked. The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/1203180/breakwaters-crystal-tidesThe 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 Jul 17.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.