Terraformers
Worth it · Roguelike · 2023
Steam Deck VerifiedThe verdict
BUY IT.
Worth it at $7.99.
- Length
- 25.5h
- Value
- $0.31/hr
- Reviews
- 88% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 2 GB of memory, DX9 (shader model 2.0) capabilities, 4 GB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux.
Terraform Mars in this turn-based colony builder and resource management game with roguelike elements. Explore the planet, develop spectacular cities, spread life and turn the Red Planet into a green one!
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 $7.99, set in March 2025. Its cuts run 45 percent off as a rule. There have been 44 in the 4 years tracked, about 5 weeks apart. Today's $7.99 at 60 percent off matches the lowest price in the record.
On value it sits in the top 20 percent of its genre. It is pricier than 81 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 77 percent. Among the games that feel like it, FTL: Faster Than Light ($1.99, scores 89) beats it on value, while it beats The Long Journey Home ($9.99, scores 5).
Critics scored it 80. Players sit 8 points higher at 88 percent, which usually means a game that plays better than it reviews.
This site sampled 648 of its Steam-purchase reviews; 8 were written by buyers who refunded it, sampled from reviews written April 2022 to September 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 45 percent of the 152 reviews written there were positive, against 88 percent overall, and those are 5 percent of everything written about it.
HowLongToBeat players log 25.5 hours as a typical playtime, and completionists log 157, 6.2 times as much.
Valve rates it Steam Deck Verified, so it runs on the handheld without fiddling.
The drop-off
48% start to 1% 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
Players
127 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
So, I think my main problem with this game is that after every session I play, I hate myself. ...let's dig into that. It's not a terrible game concept and I can see it having a niche where people enjoy it. It's an optimization puzzle with the feel of a 4x game, so if you want to play something that looks like a civilization game, but are typically too burned out to deal with that many interlocking systems, or just...
It's not a bad game by any means, I'd rather post a natural review if had an option, it's pretty well-polished and it has an original concept but it just feels limited. There's a single metric that you need to care about: public support. No matter what winning condition you choose there's no real variety in the strategic approach. Not much is going on during the game, a couple of random events and the support...
This game is a real gem for fans of roguelikes. I'd describe it as a roguelike 3x game. Like a mix of Frostpunk and Civ 6. Like all great games in this genre, there is a ramping effect that that you need to stay ahead of. You need to make calculated short term tactical decisions to take advantage of - or mitigate - the effects of randomness. There are multiple viable strategies to guide your short-term decisions. I...
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.
Cite this score
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Terraformers scores 73/100 on the BANG Score (worth it). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/1244800/terraformersThe 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 15, 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.