Waking Mars
Worth it · Action · 2012
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
BUY IT.
Worth it at $9.99.
- Length
- 6.7h
- Value
- $1.49/hr
- Reviews
- 89% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 512 MB of memory, OpenGL 3.0, or OpenGL 2.1 with framebuffer extensions, 399 MB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux.
In 2097, life is discovered on Mars. When your mission of first contact becomes trapped by a cave-in, you must master the alien ecosystem to survive. Soon you stumble upon more than anyone expected, and with time running out, you will make a decision that determines the fate of a lost planet.
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 November 2017. 55 discounts in the 14 years on record. They run about 80 percent off, roughly 10 weeks apart. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 27 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 10 weeks.
On value it sits in the top 3 percent of its genre. It is pricier than 74 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 93 percent. Among the games that feel like it, The Swapper ($14.99, scores 70) beats it on value, while it beats Airscape - The Fall of Gravity ($4.99, scores 63).
Critics scored it 79. Players sit 10 points higher at 89 percent, which usually means a game that plays better than it reviews.
Steam's global achievement data says about 13 percent of players ever finish it. On a 6.7-hour game, that is a lot of paid-for hours most people never see.
The drop-off
47% start to 13% finishA normal fall-off for a game this long. Steam global achievements
What players say
played this game growing up it was fun for what it is now excuse me while i tend to my phyta zoa like they are my babies which they are my beautiful, unapologeticly suicidal babies
Hidden gem. Mechanics are fun and reward player curiosity: discovering new organisms and unexpected ways they interact with each other to progress. Meanwhile player gets sucked in by this curious (science-heavy) plotline of trying to uncover the mystery of where this alien life came from, why we have never seen it before, and mysterious pictures left behind by a previous unmanned drone. By the time ♥♥♥♥ gets real...
One of my all time favorites, so I had to replay it on a steam deck This is not your usual plant and crop farm game, this is building an ecosystem, that lives on its own, and your decisions may change the environment dramatically.
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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Waking Mars scores 68/100 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/227200/waking-marsThe 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.