Darkstar One
Fair · Action · 2008
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
NO RUSH.
Fair at $8.99. Buy it if you want it.
- Length
- 19.3h 30.9h to 100%
- Value
- $0.47/hr
- Reviews
- 83% of 628 positive
Watch this gameOne alert at a price you pick.
Buy now or wait
Discounted in each of its last 8 seasonal sales. Last cut ended 11 days ago.
- Next sale
- Winter Sale, Dec 17 to Jan 4
Sources: IsThereAnyDeal, Valve.
What drives the score
How to read this
Grades run S to D, read from the buyer's side. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. How the grades work
About the game
Darkstar One offers a fantastic amount of freedom of choice. The story-based missions gradually lead you deeper into the galaxy to new races, new technologies and ever stronger opponents. Explore a vast array of solar systems in search of hidden artifacts of ancient races, essential objects for upgrading your ship--the Darkstar One.
Minimum specs
Minimum on the Steam store: 512 MB of memory, 6 GB of storage. Windows only.
The value story
It has been discounted 111 times in the 14 years tracked here. The median cut across all of them is 80 percent, about 6 weeks apart. Today it is at full price, and its last discount ended 11 days ago.
Value puts it in the top 5 percent of the games it competes with. It is pricier than 63 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 86 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Rebel Galaxy ($19.99, scores 70) beats it on value, while it beats 3030 Deathwar Redux - A Space Odyssey ($14.99, scores 57).
More about Darkstar One
Critics scored it 71. Players sit 12 points higher at 83 percent, which usually means a game that plays better than it reviews.
This site sampled 254 of its Steam-purchase reviews; 2 were written by buyers who refunded it, sampled from reviews written March 2020 to August 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 69 percent of the 103 reviews written there were positive, against 83 percent overall, and those are 17 percent of everything written about it.
Players
- Players online
- 1 when we last checked, on Oct 8, 02:11 UTC
Player counts from the Steam Web API.
What players say
DarkStar One... isn't a good game, let's be honest. It took me 18 hours to beat on normal difficulty (finishing the plot + all side missions + all artifacts), and it doesn't really have half as much hours worth of unique content. That being said, it isn't offensively bad either, and I did derive some enjoyment out of it, so if you want a numbingly-simple spacesim to play for an hour or two during a slow evening...
2 more reviews
The game tries to pretend to be an open-world space-sim, but in all honesty it's more of a linear space shooter. There's only 1 ship (it can be upgraded), and the new star sectors open up in a pre-determined sequence. You technically can return to previous locations, but there's no point in doing so. Fun enough for a playthrough.
A true classic of the action adventure RPG space game as they were back in their early days. Great story, great gameplay loop.
Steam reviews, mixed to its ratio and rotated daily. Opinions are theirs.
No data upstream: achievement curve (Steam global achievements).
Cite this score
Darkstar One scores 62/100 on the BANG Score (fair value) as of Oct 19, 2026. The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/12330/darkstar-oneReviews set the ceiling, and price against real length moves the BANG Score inside it. How it works, and where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 28, price as of Oct 18. A number here look wrong? Tell me and I will check the inputs.