Before the Echo
Worth it · RPG · 2011
Steam Deck VerifiedThe verdict
BUY IT.
Worth it at $4.99.
- Length
- 9.4h
- Value
- $0.53/hr
- Reviews
- 86% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 2 GB of memory, 512 MB DirectX 9.0c compatible graphics card (shader model 3), 246 MB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux.
Before the Echo combines elements of both rhythm and role-playing games to create an entirely unique experience.
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 $0.99. That was June 2015. Its cuts run 80 percent off as a rule. There have been 46 in the 14 years tracked, about 14 weeks apart. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 24 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 14 weeks.
Against its own genre it lands in the top 3 percent on value. It is cheaper than 68 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 87 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Everhood ($9.99, scores 86) beats it on value, while it beats Trombone Champ ($14.99, scores 66).
70 from critics against 86 percent from players, and the player number comes from people who own the game.
Steam's global achievement data says about 13 percent of players ever finish it. On a 9.4-hour game, that is a lot of paid-for hours most people never see. Inside the two-hour refund window, 56 percent of the 156 reviews written there were positive, against 86 percent overall, and those are 15 percent of everything written about it.
At 9.4 hours it is a handheld-sized game, and Valve rates it Deck Verified.
The drop-off
82% start to 13% finishA normal fall-off for a game this long. Steam global achievements
Cite this score
Embed the live badge, copy the line, or download the card.
Before the Echo scores 71/100 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/200910/before-the-echoThe 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 Sep 24.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.