A Virus Named TOM
Skip · Action · 2012
Steam Deck VerifiedThe verdict
SKIP IT.
The value isn't there at $9.99.
- Length
- 4.1h
- Value
- $2.44/hr
- Reviews
- 56% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 502 MB of memory, Direct X 9.0c / Shader Model 2.0, 348 MB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux.
Hack your way through brain scrambling puzzles while maneuvering through a thumb cramping maze of enemies.
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
March 2013 is where it bottomed out, at $2.49. Its cuts run 75 percent off as a rule. There have been 51 in the 14 years tracked, about 15 weeks apart. 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 15 weeks.
It is pricier than 74 percent of its genre, and less well reviewed than 97 percent. On the same math CastleStorm ($9.99, scores 56) and Trine Enchanted Edition ($14.99, scores 78) are the better buys, and they are the games it most resembles.
Critics scored it 65, but players land 9 points lower at 56 percent. The reviews were kinder than the room.
Finishing takes 4.1 hours; clearing it takes 27, which is 6.6 times the campaign.
It carries Valve's Deck Verified rating and runs 4.1 hours, about as long as a handheld game wants to be.
The drop-off
57% start to 2% 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
1 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
I first got this game in 2012. It was kinda fun pipe puzzle game with arcade action mechanics. As it goes on it got a lot harder and I just couldn't beat it. I assumed it was because I was a dumb kid, and kinda forgot about it. It's been 11 years, I've tried twice more to beat it, and just can't. The difficulty feels entirely artificial and the mechanics clash with eachother.
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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A Virus Named TOM scores 3/100 on the BANG Score (a skip). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/207650/a-virus-named-tomThe 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.