Swarm Grinder
Skip · Roguelike · 2024
Steam Deck VerifiedThe verdict
SKIP IT.
It scores 46, under the fair line, at $7.99.
- Length
- 2.1h
- Value
- $3.80/hr
- Reviews
- 78% positive
Watch this gameOne alert when it is worth buying.
Minimum on the Steam store: 2 GB of memory, 1 GB VRAM, 451 MB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux.
An action roguelite game with alien swarms and mechs. Battle enemies to make your way through a mass of spreading and evolving cells hosting dormant enemies. Collect a variety of game-changing skills and upgrades to create unique builds.
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
The value story
August 2026 is where it bottomed out, at $2.79. It has been discounted 21 times in the 3 years tracked here, typically at 50 percent off, with about 9 weeks between sales.
It is cheaper than 69 percent of its genre, and less well reviewed than 61 percent. Among the games that feel like it, NIMRODS ($9.99, scores 59) beats it on value, while it beats Hero Siege ($7.99, scores 19).
This site sampled 560 of its Steam-purchase reviews; 3 were written by buyers who refunded it, sampled from reviews written May 2023 to August 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 69 percent of the 259 reviews written there were positive, against 78 percent overall, and those are 23 percent of everything written about it.
HowLongToBeat players log 2.1 hours as a typical playtime, and completionists log 28, 13 times as much.
It carries Valve's Deck Verified rating and runs 2.1 hours, about as long as a handheld game wants to be.
The drop-off
83% start to 5% 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
5 players online when we last checked, on Sep 26, 22:51 UTC.
Player counts from the Steam Web API.
What players say
It's a no. Nothing truly innovative, and somewhat clunky gameplay and progression that lead to (as the title of the game says) tons of grinding. But the thing is, the grinding isn't fun. One thing that drove me nuts was how to level up the bots. One requirement to get the "butcher" up a tier was to beat a map at difficulty > 0 with only blades. Try that.... you have to play the map for like 3 minutes to see if...
The game itself is essentially everything you can expect from a Vampire Survivors like game, however the fuel mechanic does the game more harm than good due to the fact that the moment you are unable to kill enemies you'll most likely run out of fuel when you've gotten too many upgrades and your fuel usage is too high, thus the game punishes you for literally picking good upgrades lmao. Yeah, it's not a fun mechanic...
Pro: Nice synergy system with skills and power ups. Not a massive scaling system (yet?), but pleasantly effective power scaling. Pro: Aesthetically appealing atmosphere - simple color palate, good retro pixel graphics, and who doesn't love a fictitious female engineer to maintenance your killer mech suit? Con: Crashes my (moderately?) beefy gaming computer with pixel graphic overload. Skill synergy means I'm...
Steam reviews, mixed to match its Steam ratio and rotated daily. Opinions are theirs.
No data upstream: critic score (Metacritic).
Cite this score
Swarm Grinder scores 46/100 on the BANG Score (a skip) as of Oct 2, 2026. The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/1375900/swarm-grinderReviews set the ceiling, and the size of the player base moves the BANG Score inside it. How it works, and where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 27, price as of Oct 1.
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