Xenonauts
Worth it · Strategy · 2014
Steam Deck UnsupportedThe verdict
WAIT.
Worth it today. The Winter Sale opens Dec 17, and it was discounted in 8 of its last 8 seasonal sales; 80% in the Winter Sale 2025.
Today
$24.99Worth it
Typical seasonal cut
$4.9980% offWorth it
- Cost per hourS
- $0.75/hr
- Reviews▼
- 87% of 5,089
- Critics
- 77 players 10 higher
- Genre rank
- Top 3% Strategy
Holding it back: Reviews
Why
Watch this gameOne alert at $4.99 or less.
Time and effort
- Main story
- 33.2h
- To 100%
- 94.4h 2.8x the story
Price and sales
- Sales
- 62 on record
- Typical cut
- 75% off
- Steam low
- $4.99 December 2018
- Sale every
- 51d last October 2026
Players and genre
- Online
- 18 now
- Cheaper than
- 5% of its genre
- Better reviewed
- 91% of its genre
Price and player charts
The value story
The value story
62 discounts in the 13 years on record, a median of 75 percent off across all of them, roughly 7 weeks apart. Today it is at full price, and its last discount ended about 4 weeks ago.
Its score sits in the top 3 percent of its genre. It is pricier than 95 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 91 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Ozymandias: Bronze Age Empire Sim ($14.99, scores 75) beats it on value, while it beats Xenonauts 2 ($39.99, scores 37).
More about Xenonauts
Critics scored it 77. Players sit 10 points higher at 87 percent, which usually means a game that plays better than it reviews.
Of the 563 Steam-purchase reviews this site sampled, 2 come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written March 2020 to October 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 50 percent of the 157 reviews written there were positive, against 87 percent overall, and those are 4 percent of everything written about it.
Finishing takes 33.2 hours; clearing it takes 94, which is 2.8 times the campaign.
Buy now or wait
Buy now or wait
Next discount: likely in the Winter Sale, Dec 17 to Jan 4, at about $4.99 (80% off). Predictions like this were right 92% of the time when tested on 70 past weeks.
Last discount ended 31 days ago.
Sources: IsThereAnyDeal, Valve.
What drives the score
Grades: S best, D weakest
S is the best grade and D the weakest, judged as a buyer. ▲ raises the score, ▼ lowers it, ? is an input we do not have, • is a fact this genre's score does not use. How the grades work
What players say
Xenonauts is a respectable update to the original X-Com UFO game released by Microprose in 1994. If you're a fan of the X-Com series, or the original in particular, I'd recommend this game. However, you should probably read below before purchasing. The most noticeable changes, outside of the game's newer graphics, are an improved user interface that allows for better control over aircraft launches against UFOs...
2 more reviews
Download 20 mods to add real weapons and aircraft, make your entire squad from Soviet SSRs, blow up xenos in BVR with an F-104, shoot at them with an M240 Bravo. Pretty Giga.
Absolutely fantastic. This is my favourite game of all time and I can't wait to start playing Xenonauts 2. A word of advice - play the Vanilla version of the game and avoid at all cost the Community Edition branch. A bug infested mess with some very arbitrary hardcore changes which make the game an absolute slog and has some serious issues (like UFOs blacked out tiles when assaulting UFOs in mid to late game...
Steam reviews, mixed to its ratio and rotated daily. Opinions are theirs.
About the game
Xenonauts is a strategy game in which you control a multi-national military organisation defending a Cold War-era Earth from alien invasion, using small squads of persistent soldiers to eliminate the extraterrestrials and recover their technology in turn-based ground combat.
Minimum specs
Minimum on the Steam store: 1 GB of memory, Integrated Graphics, 3 GB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux.
No data upstream: achievement curve (Steam global achievements).
Cite this score
Xenonauts scores 74/100 on the BANG Score (worth it) as of Nov 8, 2026. The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/223830/xenonautsReviews set the ceiling, and price against real length moves the BANG Score inside it. How it works, and where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Oct 31, price as of Nov 7. A number here look wrong? Tell me and I will check the inputs.