Starbound
Worth it · Multiplayer · 2016
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
BUY IT.
Worth it at $14.99.
- Length
- 25.8h
- Value
- $0.58/hr
- Reviews
- 90% positive
Recent reviews trending down: 72% over the last 30 days against 90% all-time.
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Minimum on the Steam store: 2 GB of memory, 256 MB graphics memory and directx 9.0c compatible gpu, 3 GB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux.
You’ve fled your home, only to find yourself lost in space with a damaged ship. Your only option is to beam down to the planet below, repair your ship and set off to explore the universe...
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 $3.74, set in August 2022. 67 discounts in the 13 years on record. They run about 50 percent off, roughly 6 weeks apart. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 3 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 6 weeks.
On value it sits in the top 2 percent of its genre. It is pricier than 84 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 97 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Necesse ($9.74, scores 79) beats it on value, while it beats Edge of Space ($14.99, scores 0).
Critics scored it 81. Players sit 9 points higher at 90 percent, which usually means a game that plays better than it reviews.
Players rate it 90 percent positive over its lifetime, but the last 30 days run 72 percent. Something recent has soured the room. This site sampled 800 of its Steam-purchase reviews; 3 were written by buyers who refunded it, sampled from reviews written March 2025 to September 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 67 percent of the 2,871 reviews written there were positive, against 90 percent overall, and those are 3 percent of everything written about it.
HowLongToBeat players log 25.8 hours as a typical playtime, and completionists log 158, 6.1 times as much.
Still 894 concurrent players, 10 years in.
The drop-off
82% start to 29% finishA normal fall-off for a game this long. Steam global achievements
Players
894 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
relogic and mojang have unfortunately spoiled their playerbase into thinking every game developer should indefinitely work on their games til the end of time, ignore the recent review bombing
I remember loving this game playing with friends when i was younger, decided to come back to it after a few years of not playing and yeah its still just as fun. Even more so if you are running Frakin Universe. That said, i am still saddened that this game isnt what it could have been, but that doesnt stop it from being a good game, especially considering its been out for 10 years at this point.
honestly, it makes me SO sad to see all these reviews saying that Starbound is 'too slow paced' and 'boring'. i have been playing this game for 6 years, and not once have I been tempted do delete it. HANDS DOWN MY FAVORITE GAME EVER!!! I have played more popular games that are similar - Minecraft, Terraria - they don't compare at all! both hard to control, and dare I say, can get boring after a while. sure...
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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Starbound scores 77/100 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/211820/starboundThe 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 11, 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.