Cave Story+
Fair · Shooter · 2011
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
WAIT.
A BANGER at $5.27, only fair at $14.99.
- Length
- 6.3h
- Value
- $2.38/hr
- Reviews
- 93% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 123 MB of memory, 64MB RAM, 205 MB of storage. Windows only.
Run, jump, shoot, fly and explore your way through a massive action-adventure reminiscent of classic 8- and 16-bit games.
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
It has never been cheaper than $1.49. That was June 2026. It has been discounted 62 times in the 14 years tracked here, typically at 34 percent off, with about 8 weeks between sales. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 13 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 8 weeks. Past sales have already crossed the $5.27 BANGER line 17 times.
Against its own genre it lands in the top 17 percent on value. It is pricier than 65 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 91 percent. Among the games that feel like it, VVVVVV ($4.99, scores 96) beats it on value, while it beats Axiom Verge ($19.99, scores 52).
The press gave it 83; the people who bought it give it 93 percent. A 10-point gap in the buyer's favour.
Of the 558 Steam-purchase reviews this site sampled, 2 come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written March 2020 to September 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 81 percent of the 504 reviews written there were positive, against 93 percent overall, and those are 10 percent of everything written about it.
The drop-off
87% 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
7 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
The most frustrating 2d platformer I have played. Always feel like you are walking on ice. You "level up" your weapons by killing monsters but you lose the levels when you take damage, and your weapons are so much stronger at high levels that you constantly have to make sure you dont take damage just so you dont downgrade your weapons. Have to replay long stretches of the game because there are no save locations...
This game blows. The story is wholesome and all around good and the music is amazing but those are the only positives. The gameplay, combat, movement, and anything else associated with "playing" this game is awful. Bosses are unfun and runbacks can be a chore at times. Actually progressing is just a slog and in my 8 hours of playing never once did I enjoy actually playing the game, only the music and story. I cannot...
Do NOT trade the Polar Star for the Machine Gun; Save it for the ultimate weapon upgrade. Also, Blood Stained Sanctuary is Nightmare Fuel...one of the hardest sections I've ever played in gaming. 10/10 indie game, the blueprint for what a video game SHOULD be. Blows Hollow Knight out the water.
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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Cave Story+ scores 67/100 on the BANG Score (fair value). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/200900/cave-storyThe 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 6, 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.